I set off for the hospital just before dusk shaking in my boots with a head full of worst case scenarios. As I come up on the hospital I see that it´s surrounded by a wall much like the Berlin wall and just as delapitated, covered in messages urging the community to protect the Patagonian environment, "Patagon, pon su mano por su región". These messages altruistic enough I´m wondering what this wall keeps in that shouldn´t get out? Looks more like a prison wall than anything that should be constructed for a hospital. Unfazed, knowing at this point I would go to an African witch doctor, I didn´t care: ¨FIX ME, I´M BROKEN!" I pass the threshold into the dark, dingy hospital. I hear the door hinge swing closed behind me and echo... echo... echo... bang... bang... creeeaaak! Can we get some lights on in here and cut it out with the Halloween, haunted-house ambience that Americans pay high dollar for only once a year? I can hear the nurse coming for me, her heels clicking on the lanoleum floor, long before she arrives from a series of dark doors that lead to a deeper darkness. She affirms that I´ll be able to consult a doctor that very evening and that I only need to wait a short while. I find a chair close to the window so that I can maximize the last moments of light and fall back into my Ernesto Sabato book. I read intently trying to block out the faint sounds of drills and chainsaws in the background, not allowing myself to think too much about the unsettling noises. Construction, I tell myself, it´s only construction.
About 20 minutes later 2 nurses come with the kind of cooler we fill with beers and take to the lake. They invite me into an examination room where I try my best at explaining in a proper Spanish just really what´s going on with my bowel movements. Nice. After recounting all the various outdoor water sources we´ve been drinking from for the last three weeks the ladies ask if I have a phobia for injections. Yes, but only if I see the needle. "Alright than you better turn towards the wall because this one´s going in the rear" she tells me with a smirk buried somewhere under all those layers of cheap make-up. I bend over a hospital bed, face the wall and lift my red dress giving them the left cheek and attempting to keep concealed the plum ripe bruise I´ve got on my right cheek. The older of the 2 grabs my dress, hikes it up all the higher and yanks my panties down. No we´re talking. She proclaims something like "Holy Mackerel!" when she sees left cheeks´bruise and I simplify another long-winded biker story. She gives me the prick I need for my resurrection and I´m quickly on my way, this time limping. Sometimes life calls on us to take in the butt.
I leave the hospital saying aloud "Thank you Chile for saving my ass!" Really. I was treated on an emergency basis, given 3 days worth of muscle relaxers, 3 days worth of pain killers and an injection and it costed me nothing. Again, Chile, thank you but I think I´ll stay away from your "agua dulce" (sweet water)!
A nice fruity ride to Puerto Tranquilo
After a couple of days of rest I hitched a ride out of town on a fruit truck towards Puerto Tranquilo drinking beers with the boys and watching the scenery go by.
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