The weekend arrives like a window finally opening. The sky is clear, as if it had decided to be kind for a few hours. I walk slowly to my usual café; I arrive twenty minutes early, as always. I like to choose the table against the wall, the one facing the door, which allows me to see who is coming in. I order water first, to give my head time to clear. The waiter recognizes me and brings the menu without asking. I don't need it. I stare at the wood of the table, the waxed shine that is wearing away where hands rest most often.
Claudia shows up exactly ten minutes late. The clock could have announced it. She sits down without asking permission, dragging the chair with a gesture that comes naturally to her. She smiles with her eyes first.
"Are you sure you don't want to go somewhere else?" she says. "This is too orderly for you."
"That's exactly why," I reply.
She orders tea that will take just long enough to reach her preferred temperature. I order coffee, even though I've already had two; I need the routine so it doesn't take away my weekend.
"So? How was the famous shift?" she asks, leafing through the menu as if she needs an excuse not to look at me directly.
"Weird," I say.
"Weird how?"
"Too neat. Too clever. As if everyone knew what was going to happen before it happened."
She raises an eyebrow. She knows my way of beating around the bush until the edge gives way.
"Are you talking about a clinical case or a conspiracy?"
"A death," I reply.
Claudia puts down the menu and watches me silently for a second. Death is no stranger to our conversations, but we know when it's not just a statistic.
"Did you have to confirm it?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Did that affect you?"
I shake my head.
"No. It was the atmosphere. Everything was ready when I arrived: signatures, records, impeccable protocol. Correct, too correct. As if they had been expecting it."
The tea arrives. She calculates the time with the patience she taught me to imitate: she blows on it, waits, tastes it. I take a sip of coffee and feel the bitterness order my tongue.
"And what did you do?" she asks.
"What I always do: review the records. I looked at the resident's notes, the nursing logs. I spoke to both of them."
"And...?" She leans forward slightly, not out of anxiety, but out of complicity.
"The resident indicated a reevaluation by the head physician. No one carried it out. Neither Veronica nor Tomás. They did the bare minimum."
"Do you think it was on purpose?"
"I don't know. Veronica fits the role. Tomás..."
"What about Tomás?" She doesn't hide it. A part of her face that she rarely uses at work lights up. "I've seen him. A Greek god who chose the wrong career."
"Clinically, yes," I say, and I understand the irony.
Claudia smiles like someone who has just opened a window I wanted to keep closed.
"Are you going to get more involved?" she asks, almost singing the question.
"I'm not going to let it go," I reply.
The conversation drifts toward the trivial—the neighbor who sings boleros, the plums on sale at the market, a meme I don't understand—and then returns like a river to its course.
"You seem tough," she says. "And tired. The two can exist at the same time, but not for long."
"I'm not allowing myself to be tender," I reply, surprised that I said it.
"Allow yourself to be tender," she concludes. "Don't expect the system to offer it to you on a silver platter."
She falls silent. People come in, go out, order takeout. At the door, a child plays with his mother's shadow as if it were a rope. I sigh. Sometimes I wish the records included those scenes: the shadow rope, the laughter of someone who isn't sick, the waiter who remembers how you like your coffee. Not for poetry, but for context. In the absence of that, I return to the edge.
"There's something else," I say.
Claudia looks at me, glad that I'm finally getting to the point.
"Tomás," I say, knowing that now the word is complete. "He doesn't talk much, but when he does, I feel like he weighs his words. As if he knows the effect of each syllable. There's something about him that doesn't add up, but I find it hard not to listen to him."
"You're attracted to him," she says bluntly. "And you're scared of how listening to someone makes you feel."
I don't answer. She's one of the few people I don't need to answer to feel understood.
"Since Ignacio, you haven't let yourself be touched by what you can't control," she continues. "And sometimes what you can't control is the only thing that saves you."
Ignacio.
I don't like that name coming out of her mouth, but it bothers me even more when she's right and I deny it.
"It wasn't because of him," I say. "It was because of what I was left with afterwards. It was as if my skeleton had fallen apart and I had to put myself back together on my own. No one noticed. Or they didn't say anything. It doesn't matter."
Claudia looks down at her tea; I'm not the only one watching the margins.
"Sometimes I think you never came back from that relationship," she says quietly.
"I came back in my own way," I reply.
"Which is not coming back," she laughs softly, without malice. "But it doesn't matter. I'm just telling you: don't fall in love with control. And don't dismiss a good wish."
She raises her cup in the air. I do the same with my coffee, which is already cold.
We then walk along the wide sidewalk that surrounds the square. The autumn sun sticks to the leaves and repairs what it can. She talks about her daughter and I talk about Wilson; we negotiate the purchase of flowers for her balcony; we ask a street vendor for a bouquet of tulips that will last less than promised. We return to my house when the sky begins to turn orange.
Claudia enters as if it were her own. She turns on the speaker and plays an acoustic playlist that doesn't get in the way. I adjust a cushion and run my hand along the edge of the counter as if caressing a spine. She opens a bottle of wine she brought in her backpack.
"Your house is so tidy that it makes me want to mess it up," she says.
"It's not aesthetics," I reply. "It's mental order."
"I know," she says. "Even so, let me move something. A plant, a picture. I need to leave my mark."
I let her. She moves a plant three centimeters. I notice. We both laugh.
"And your life?" she asks, without theatrics. "When are you going to move it three centimeters?"
"I'm moving it," I say.
"Not inward," she objects. "Outward."
I don't argue. She doesn't insist. She lights a candle. The wax drips slowly, as if time has given up its haste for the first time. We toast. It tastes like fruit and afternoon. Between sips, she tells me that her daughter improvised a play at school: she played a doctor with a toy stethoscope and diagnosed a stuffed animal with "sadness in its tummy." We laugh. The image stays with me longer than I admit; perhaps that's why, when I return to the subject of the hospital, I do so with less edge.
"How long has it been since you've been involved with someone?" she asks for the second time.
"Clinically..." I try again.
"Don't be ironic," she cuts me off. "How long has it been since you've let yourself be loved?"
I think. There are answers that require an honesty that the body does not always grant. I can count months, I can count names. I don't want to. I tell the truth that I can.
"I don't remember," I murmur.
"Then it's time to remember," she says, with a smile that doesn't push. "It doesn't have to be serious. A couple of encounters that turn you on. You can't put off forever the pleasure that someone other than yourself gives you."
She gets up, picks up her bag as if it were a sleeping cat. At the door, she hugs me briefly, with just enough force to readjust something. She leaves without looking back. I tidy up the glasses, wash the table out of habit even though it's not dirty, close the bottle with the cork that preserves the aroma. I stand in the middle of the living room, breathing as if remembering instructions.
I think of Tomás, yes. Of the way he stood beside the patient, with an attentive stillness that seemed deliberate. Of his brief comment: "I've seen it." I think of Verónica, of her economy. I think of the black section of the camera, of the temporary passes, of the approximate clocks. I tell myself: don't lose the thread. If the weekend exists, it's to keep breathing, not to forget everything.
That night I don't dream. I remember. Not whole images, but fragments that stay where they hurt the least:
My mother's voice coming through the walls.
The slam of the door that closed a house more given to shouting than to hugs.
The day I learned that if I don't pay attention to every detail, something bad happens. I didn't cry. I observed. I took inventory. I rearranged the room like someone putting together a map to get out. And I continue to do so.
Sunday dawns washed clean. I walk to the market just to see colors that aren't those of the hospital. I buy tomatoes, a bag of lemons, two avocados that promise to ripen tomorrow. The landlord offers me chili peppers; I say no, that the spice makes my eyes water. I return with the bags and a bouquet of small flowers whose species I don't know. At home, Wilson greets me with his usual cheerfulness. He follows me to the kitchen and sits down to wait for something to fall. Nothing falls. I give him a cookie for his perseverance.
I put coffee in the French press. Four minutes. I push the plunger slowly. I pour it into the cup Claudia gave me: one with the word "margins" printed on the side. Sometimes I think my whole life happens there: on the margins. The center is the hospital, the case, the routine. What sustains it are the edges: the plant moved three centimeters, the smell of coffee, the unobtrusive playlist, the way Wilson rests his snout on my knee as if he were signing off on what I'm going to write.
I open my notebook. I write down:
— Confirm with the front desk the names of technicians with temporary passes.
— Check with Maintenance on the camera OT.
— Ask IT for reboot logs (time already set: 7:12–7:19 a.m.).
— See what time the incidents were recorded.
— Prepare questions for Processes ("align expectations" is not a verb, it's a disguise).
Sometimes, making lists is another way of praying.
I let the rest of Sunday go. I do the laundry; the sound of the washing machine spinning is the metronome of the day. I fold, put away, sweep a little, put down the broom. I think about calling my sister and don't. I don't insist. I watch a movie that doesn't quite grab me; I turn it off. I read ten pages of a book I haven't made any progress on in two weeks; I close it. I take a short nap, like an animal that lets go of only what is essential. When I wake up, it's too late to come up with another plan.
I cook just enough: tomatoes with salt, oil, some green leaves I don't know the name of; toast. The glass of water tastes like a small victory. I turn on the yellow light in the living room lamp and, for a moment, the house becomes a country I understand. I allow myself ten minutes of not thinking about the hospital. I turn on the radio, and a song I had on cassette plays. I laugh. Sometimes your body reminds you that not everything was clinical.
Before going to sleep, I return to my notebook. I write a single sentence, like someone leaving crumbs for Monday:
"What no one writes is also a decision."
Claudia would say that I'm cheating, that I write so I don't have to talk. She's right. But it's the cheat I know, and today it works for me. I close the notebook. I turn off the light. Wilson turns over twice before falling asleep. So do I, inside.
Monday. The hospital smells of fresh chlorine and bread that never appears. I arrive early. The guard returns my minimal greeting. I climb the stairs; I avoid the elevator for emotional sport. In Quality, the mail promises a week of phrases designed not to be said. I decide to beat the noise by an hour.
I go down to the gatehouse with the letter ready. The usual guard greets me with a nod that resembles respect. He copies the extraordinary income form. I search with my finger for the names of the technicians. I mentally underline: temporary pass, external supplier, 7:10–7:25. I note in the margin: ask for names, social security numbers, supervisor. Don't leave anything generic that I can make concrete.
I cross over to Maintenance. Roxana greets me in her gray sweatshirt with a pencil tucked into her bow. She shows me the work orders related to cameras on the screen. She doesn't insist on interpreting them; she knows I prefer to plan my own route. I ask her to have Audit present when the log is delivered. She nods. Not everyone nods with such calmness. I thank her without further ado.
I go up to Monitoring. The technician on duty loads the section. The black screen between 7:12 and 7:34 no longer surprises me. "Overwritten after five days," he repeats. I listen to him as if I were hearing it for the first time. I have learned that respect is demonstrated repeatedly.
Before lunch, I cross the cafeteria. I look around with a habit that has become a reflex. I'm not looking for him, but he appears anyway. Tomás walks by with a tray, greeting me with a minimal gesture. I respond in kind. That game of economy has its own grammar. I allow myself to look at his back for two seconds. Then I go back to what I was doing.
Early in the afternoon, Processes calls me in to "align expectations." I sit in front of a PowerPoint presentation that dishes out bullet points and colors as if that could anesthetize the questions. I talk about hours, income, responsibilities. They talk about flows, continuous improvements, committees. We agree on meetings that won't solve anything if no one looks at the big picture. I take a calendar with dates. They get the impression that I was reasonable. Everyone wins a little. No one wins anything.
I return to my desk with the familiar feeling of having pushed forward an inch. Sometimes an inch is enough. I open my notebook and write in the margin: "Don't forget Arturo." I say his name softly. For a second, it brings back the humanity that the hospital wears away. I think of Claudia moving a plant three inches and laugh to myself.
At the last minute, the guard notes a supplier's departure that smells like coincidence. I mark it. I don't force it. I've learned to let some pieces come together on their own, as if the magnet of events knew its job.
I turn off the computer with less guilt than other days. On the street, the air feels clean. I drive home. Wilson waits for me with his usual calibrated joy. I give him a summary as if dictating to the wind. He tilts his head and asks for food. I serve him. I have bread with avocado and a glass of water for dinner. I sit on the edge of the bed and let the day fall apart in silence.
Before going to sleep, I open my notebook once more. I write:
"Moving forward doesn't mean running. It means not letting go of the thread."
I close it. I turn it off. And for the first time in a long time, I feel that the weekend has left me less broken than others. It's not peace. It's something simpler: having moved the world three centimeters closer to where I can hold it.