Chapter 5
I arrived at our meeting spot soon after. Miguel was sitting on a bench, shoulders hunched, his head buried in his hands and his glasses hanging from his shirt collar. That sight reminded me of the first time I saw Cora, sitting on a similar bench, puffing her cigarette like a goddess of the sea.
When he saw me, Miguel collapsed onto me in a tearful embrace. With puffy eyes, an unshaven face, and smelly scrubs, he was a man who had undergone a drastic transformation in the past few days. He’d always been so meticulous about his appearance. Seeing him like this broke me.
“It’s too much, everything’s going wrong at once,” he said finally. “I need help, man!”
“Hey, don’t be like that. Where have you been?”
“I … I couldn’t stand being in that apartment. That body Hugo got … I just can’t stop thinking about how he killed that man. Did the dinner really happen?”
I hugged his neck, stroking the top of his head. I always thought Miguel was interesting, handsome, even sexy in a nerdy way, but at that moment, all I could see was a shattered man in desperate need of help.
“Stealing that woman’s body wrecked me, Dante. The cops showed up at the hospital today and questioned everyone again. I’m sure they know it was me.”
If Miguel had answered their questions looking like that, it wouldn’t take a great detective to put him at the top of their list of suspects.
“They’re just fishing,” I said. “Everybody got one of those summons to give a statement today, didn’t they? Just stay calm and nobody will find out.”
“Even if no one finds out, Dante, I still know what I did! I’m supposed to be a doctor, a professional, and I aided in the theft of the body of a deceased patient from my place of work. I’m in this up to my neck, there’s no way around it. They’ll find out, and then that’s it, my career is over…”
I knew there was no point in saying anything. I closed my eyes and waited for my friend to get it all out. A few moments later, he looked up.
“The son of the woman we took from the hospital was there today, with the cops. It was horrible. He broke down in front of everyone, begging for the chance to bury his own mother. I almost got up and told him everything.”
“Calm down, don’t be like that.”
“Not having a body to bury is like having to live forever with a ghost.”
“Did you tell Rachel anything?”
“No, I … I stayed at her house the past few days. She knew something was up, obviously. But I didn’t say anything.
” Miguel took a deep breath and wiped his eyes on the hem of his shirt, then put his glasses on.
“It’s unbearable, Dante. I can barely look my girlfriend in the eye. I can barely face my patients.”
“Did you tell anyone anything, Miguel? The police?”
“Of course not … Why?”
“No reason,” I said. I figured it was better not to mention any more, or I’d have to tell him about Detective Amóz’s little visit, which would only get him more worked up.
Miguel was a mess, but he knew how to take care of himself: He wasn’t crazy enough to call the cops.
“I know you talked to your mother on the phone the other day. Just be careful about what you say. Please.”
He gave me a sad smile and his eyes filled with tears again.
“My mother is where I find comfort, Dante. She’s the only thing that matters to me in the world. And now, with this news, it feels like God is punishing me.”
“What news?”
“I thought you already knew…” he said, confused.
“Yesterday I was really down. I got in a fight with Rachel and needed some air. So I called my mom, and she didn’t even notice that I was feeling bad because …
she was feeling worse. She had some tests done and the cancer’s back with a vengeance.
Spreading like wildfire. She’s going to need another surgery as soon as possible, or… ”
Now I understood what he meant by everything’s going wrong at once.
Miguel didn’t deserve this, and his mom didn’t deserve this.
She was like a second mother to me. A year earlier, when she was first diagnosed, she came to Rio de Janeiro for treatment.
For several months, we’d witnessed the anxious waiting game for a surgery slot, the brutal rounds of chemotherapy; we’d watched her personality gradually erode, falling away in tufts along with her hair.
Miguel had spent all his savings on a good surgeon.
Since he worked in a public hospital he knew how poor the conditions were and wanted his mom to be treated somewhere private.
We hugged in silence. I still felt guilty about the situation, but at that moment I thought that, as far as cruelty went, there were much worse things in the world.
People who embezzled funds from public hospitals, who trafficked organs, who trafficked people.
Evil knows no limits. Human beings are scumbags by nature.
No matter what anyone says, we’re all the same.
Rich or poor, Black or white, old or young, it doesn’t matter. We are all equal in our scumbaggery.