The end of dreams

24

The telephone's ring woke the girls up in the dead of night. 

"Yes,hallo?" answered Silvia, who had fallen to sleep just near the receiver.

"Good morning, miss, I'm Jaqueline. I have called to remind you that you have an appointment with Juan in fifteen minutes".

Silvia recollected everything after some momentary confusion.

"Oh yes, thanks so much. Please, tell him we are reaching him in a few minutes".

She went immediately to the bedroom to wake up Michelle but she found out her friend was ready to go and with her case-related documents in her hands. 

"Are you okay?" asked Silvia, since Michelle's face was particularly pale.

"I don't know. There must be some mistake here. I don't understand Spanish so well, I don't know... maybe my cousin made an incorrect translation... but the text talks about two nodules in my head that are four centimetres wide... fuck, Silvia, the text says centimetres instead of millimetres!"

"Let me read..." Silvia got closer, worried.

"Laura must have made a mistake, let's be serious. Do you know how wide four centimetres are?" she said it in a trembling voice.

Michelle's eyes became swollen with tears. 

"This is not my case history! It's not what they told me about! Yet my name is written on it! You see? Michelle P." 

"Calm down, Michelle. Doctors are obliged to tell their patients the truth! You said that!"

"Rubbish! They are formally obliged. The text here is clear: it mentions a couple of four-centimetre wide metastases in my brain! And there are other metastases in one lung, in the lymph nodes, I don't speak Spanish but some Spanish words are so awfully similar to their Italian corresponding terms... My feelings were not due to some sort of psychosis! It's just what I feared... they stopped curing me, Silvia..." said Michelle, crying in despair.

"My baby! How can I leave my baby, she's just a little girl! If I had known the truth I would have stayed at home with her in these days! What the hell am I doing here? How many days can be left over for me to live, given my condition? Goddamned cancer! Goddamned lying doctors!"

Silvia hugged Michelle tightly, tighter than she ever could, trying to console her and calm her down.

"Let's go to the clinic, we may as well do it... please, Michelle, let's go and talk
to them. Le'ts take their advice too! I am sure the escozul..." she said it to her while
caressing her head.

"How could I ever benefit from the scorpion's venom? I'm done for... I want to go back home, please Silvia, take me back home. I want to go back to my Gaia."

"We have come here anyway, we're awake... let's go to that clinic. Then we'll take our
plane and go back to Milan tomorrow evening" Silvia was trying to persuade her friend.

At the same time she was fighting her own despair. 

"That's why they kept on putting off the day of my breast reconstruction..." said Michelle, who was slowly becoming aware of the entire terrible matter. 

The girls arrived at the hospital after an hour. Both of them were extremely downhearted. Michelle walked on as if she was going to the gallows. Silvia was totally unable to say or think anything. She even forgot that she was pregnant. The gates of the clinic were still closed, obviously, and yet they found twenty-four people who were already waiting. The two girls looked at each other, astounded: though it was just three o'clock in the morning, so many people were already there. 

"What if Mark should arrive too?" said Silvia in an attempt to give fresh heart to her friend who was in a catatonic state. 

During the flight Silvia had noticed that Michelle had used her whole bag of tricks to prevent Mark from coming to know about her disease. 

"We must be very careful. Here, put this on" she passed her a foulard.

They both put on a foulard on their heads, then they sat down on the steps in front of the gates. They had their inevitable dark glasses on and soon they started to listen to what the other people were saying. Those were almost all Italians and they were speaking of everything and anything but mainly of cancer. Some of them had cancer at the first stage, some others were already going through more advanced stages of it, unfortunately. Michelle had the impression that she was the most seriously ill patient of all, as well as the youngest. Still she felt pleased at hearing the others talk about the miraculous potion: that elixir was her only hope, after all. The girls spent the night this way: they did not exchange a single word but they just let themselves be consoled by the stories they heard.Meanwhile they also tried harder not to succumb to despair. 

At nine o'clock in the morning the gates were opened but the girls were already tired out. They took a look at the queue behind them and saw numberless people, maybe two hundred of them, forming a line. A very kind nurse began receiving them in groups of twenty people, one group at a time; Silvia and Michelle had to wait for the second turn, even if they had been there since three o' clock. In just half an hour they were received as well. They walked along a short path that led to ward A, then they took a seat in a little hall; finally they obtained thorough information about escozul; the medical staff talked to them both in Spanish and in English. Although they had never studied Spanish, they comprehended everything and the following English version confirmed the scarce healing virtues of the drug. 

The woman who was giving them detailed information was very frank: Escozul would improve their health condition, both by invigorating them and by assuaging their pains considerably, but it would in no way cure them from cancer. Furthermore that medicine should be utilized only to integrate the treatments they were undergoing. She exorted all of them to keep taking radiotherapy as well as chemotherapy; she also told them to continue using the drugs the doctors had prescribed to them. Escozul was just another help. Escozul would be no use in case of cancer at its final stages.

"But this is not the case for each of you, otherwise you wouldn't be here" concluded the doctress, trying to minimize their situations.

The two friends followed all the procedures just out of respect toward the unknown person who had believed in that dream by offering them such an expensive journey.

During their last personal conversation with the medical staff the girls delivered Michelle's case-related documents to the doctor in charge; he did not add anything to what his colleague
had already told them. He just complied with the routine by giving the girls a quantity of Escozul which would last them four months. Neither of them dared to ask for more.
The doctors insisted on their following the traditional therapies. Silvia and Michelle just nodded, without even mentioning the fact that the doctors in Milan had actually stopped curing Michelle, since they had told her to take just antibiotics and cortisone. Palliative treatments were all that was left over. Escozul was only an extra element of that last series. 

"Do you think my mother knows about the seriousness of my condition?"asked Michelle, while they were leaving the hospital.

"I think she read your case history... provided that it corresponded to this one." 

"That's why she didn't want me to come to Cuba with you. She was just trying to prevent me from reading it too... else I would find out the truth..." aswered Michelle, without even listening to Silvia's reply. 

"What about a fresh drink?" proposed Silvia, while pointing to the small bar in the palms shade before the hospital. 

"Good idea, let's bring forward my funeral's refreshments..." answered Michelle, trying to play down that dramatic moment.

Eventually the girls took a seat at one of the tables in front of the bar counter. They succeeded in refreshing themselves thanks to the slight coolness in the shade of the palms.