My mother and I were waiting for clearance from the hospital to go in to visit him, my father. At the time of our arrival, he was celebrating his funeral ritual with a former priest friend of his. His personal nurse was outside standing with us. We invited her to a coffee. None of us said a word about anything.

We got there because the night before, his best friend Gustavo, had called us to tell us about his state, and how my father had been sending his goodbyes through his cellphone to everyone, except him, my mother and me. I bought the tickets to Bogota, and we parted the next day at 7:00 am to be at the hospital at 9:00 am. That was the time when the visits start. His personal nurse got a call from the priest, we all got up and she went to the reception to talk to the ladies in charge of the clearance permits. I was the one going up next.

I tried to sneak in a bottle of rum to his room. I knew that the thing that he needed the most was the taste of good liquor, but sadly I was caught with before the entrance, so I had to leave it behind with the rest of my belongings. When I got to his aisle, he was being held in a room with a sliding glass door. All the rooms that were in that same aisle, were filled with sick people, each of them more sick than the last one you saw. I didn’t get a good feeling knowing that my father was in such a corridor filled with tragedies.

A nurse came up to me when I stood in front of my father’s room. “He has a really severe infection that can be transmitted through air, so to enter is needed that you wear special clothing and close the door tightly as you come in,” she said while pointing her index finger at a tray full of boxes filled with disposable clothes. I put on a set of gloves, an apron, a hair net, and a set of shoe sleeves and slowly entered the room.

Upon entering the room, I found my father laying in bed with his eyes open, with nothing more than a thin blanket over him. He closed his eyes for a moment when he saw me. As soon as I walked in, he extended his fat, yellowed and bloated hand to me asking for help; he wanted to sit down in the big brown leather chair that was next to him. A nurse from the hospital was standing outside watching over me to see if I needed help.

My father sat naked on the bed. His complexion was a deep yellow hue, extending from his head to his knees, including his eyes, gums, and teeth. His lower legs exhibited a purplish discoloration with pale patches scattered across them. Beneath his lower back, multiple abscesses of varying sizes and stages of maturity protruded, while on his hip, a sizable wound gaped, dressed with bandages saturated in medicinal ointment. Within the wound, screws were visible, securing his femur in place to prevent movement. Numerous tubes were affixed to his body, some aiding in the drainage of bile fluids, while others, positioned along his back, served to alleviate fluid buildup around his lungs.

Because of the amount of needles, I didn’t know how to grab onto him, and because of his immobilized leg, I didn’t know how to carry him. The nurse went into the room and said, “Don’t worry about the needles, they won’t come out and he won’t feel pain from moving them. Hold his leg and grab his shoulder, I will push his weight onto you when I stand him. It should be easy enough then to rotate him into the chair.” After we were finished, I grabbed the thin blanket and covered the lower half of his body.

My father sat heavily on the chair, and while breathing slowly and painfully, we looked into each other’s eyes for what seemed to be a long time. It wasn’t until I teared up that my father asked me how I was doing. With nothing more than a profound feeling of defeat, I sat down on the floor, put my head on his lap, and tried to cry, but nothing more than tears came out.

“Everything is going great,” I said, “Hopefully I will get a raise by October as I told you before.” “Happy?” he asked. “Very,” I said, “This is the opportunity that I have been waiting for.” I felt how he tried to move his hand next to me, but he just put it down where it was. “My mother doesn’t stop bothering me about the house,” I said. “What happens with the house?” he asked. “She wants to change everything about the house, the only thing that will remain the same if she gets her way is the address,” I said. He tried to laugh but the pain didn’t let him, he put his hand over my head. “She will drain us out of our money; you should talk to her when she comes up,” I said, “I won’t be able to buy the other car that I really want if she keeps this up.” He tried to laugh again.

I got up, wiped away my tears and picked up my things. “I will go down to get my mother,” I said. I went next to the door of the room, took all the disposable clothes off, and stepped out of the room. I moved the sliding door smoothly until it clicked and went down for her.

While my mother and my father spoke, I called my accountant and our bank manager, to put them up to speed with the situation and ask them if something was needed to secure our money into my bank account. They told me that they would call me back in a while if something was needed to be fixed. I crossed the street to drink coffee in the cafeteria that was in the lobby of an expensive hotel, just a few steps away from the hospital.

My mother came in with her head low with a real sense of dread for the first time in her life, as her only and true support in life, was going to leave her behind. I tried to say something to her, but before I could even try, the bank manager called back, telling me about the authorization needed from him to pass the money around. I immediately got up and walked back to the entrance of the hospital to talk to his personal nurse; she told me that I would need to wait a little longer to go up again, there were more visits.Came back to the restaurant, my mother and I ordered one chicken sandwich cut in half with two cappuccinos. We sat while the food arrived, and when it did, she asked me if this was the right time to do it. “Yes,” I said. We didn’t talk until I got the call from his nurse; it was my time to come back to the room.

The second time that I entered his room, I couldn’t help but just look at the floor; this time there was no emotion, he knew why I was in the room again. “I need a call to the bank right now, to authorize a transfer, also need your cellphone to change passwords and accounts now,” I said, while slowly looking up to him again. “Weren’t we already prepared for all of this?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, “But there is a final call that we need to make to finish all of this now.” I handed the phone over to him with the bank manager already waiting in the line; they talked for a bit and then he said, “I fully understand and I authorize Mateo to do the needed movements,” then he hung up. My father gave back my phone and said, “I told your mother that I want another bedroom for me when I go to visit.” He paused for a moment to catch his breath, “I will be alright,” He said while smiling at me. “So instead of telling my mother to spend less money, you give her more reasons to leave me dry,” I said smiling back. He tried to laugh.

“Am I a good son?” I asked while I was picking up my things. “Yes,” he said while looking away from me. “You are the best father,” I said. He looked back at me with a smile. “Your mother told me that you brought a bottle of rum,” he said. “Yes, but they didn’t let me get it in,” I said. “Leave it at my house,” he said, “Put it underneath my clothes, I don’t want anyone to find it.”

Those were the last words that my father and I exchanged. The next day, he would be placed into a coma, waiting for his vital signs to normalize and evaluate if an operation is plausible. The next visits were spoiled by a son talking to his old mother, imploring her to not die. They were visiting her in the room next my father’s, “Too much despair”, I though. And a mother, reading and washing her young but comatose son over and over again. She was located in the room in front of my father’s, “Too much pity”, I though. The last day that I visited him at the hospital, I carried a small ball of cotton filled with rum; when nobody was watching, I rubbed it on his lips.

My last visit regarding the subject of his death was done the day that he was buried. I sat down at the last row on the left side of the church. I stayed in the ceremony until a message notifying me the last wire from his account came in. I got up and sat on a bench in front of the church. The sun raised over the clouds and covered me with its light, and for the first time the symbol of what it could mean, felt muted.

Category: story