Page 80 of One Year Ago in Spain
She tried a couple more times, but it clearly wasn’t working.
Her stomach growled. Her clothes were rumpled and grass-stained, and she was sure her breath smelled exactly like the thick, white, pasty bacterial colony that had grown in her mouth overnight.
And then she looked at the clock on her phone.
“Fuck!”
She had promised Soledad and Aracely that she would be at Matías’s bedside all morning while the family attended Carlos and Diego’s evento conmemorativo. She had sworn Matías would not be alone, that she would be in that chair.
And now it was well past noon, and they would be arriving at the hospital soon, if they weren’t already there.
Claire leaped up and ran.
—
When she reachedthe hospital ward, Claire exhaled in relief. The waiting room was empty of the de Leóns. They must still be at the evento conmemorativo.
Claire began to walk toward Matías’s room, past the nursing station.
“Disculpe,” a nurse behind the desk said.
“¿Sí?” Claire didn’t recognize her.
“¿A quién está buscando?”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that more slowly?”
The nurse wrinkled her forehead, not understanding.
“Lo siento,” Claire said. “No entiendo. Más lento?”I’m sorry. I don’t understand. More slowly?That had been part of the “useful phrases” primer in the lessons she’d been studying this week in Matías’s room. Not that it would help if the response was still words Claire didn’t know.
“¿A quién está visitando?” the nurse said, obligingly at half speed.
Ah, Claire could decipher that. It was a pretty basic grammatical construction.
Quién= who.Está= is/are. And then the action verb.
Who are you visiting?
“Matías de León,” Claire said.
“¿Cómo se llama?”
“Mi nombre es Claire Walker.”
“¿Y su relación con el paciente?”
“My relationship with Matías? I’m his girlfriend. Soy su novia.”
The nurse arched a brow at Claire, then shook her head. “No. Su novia ya está aquí.”
Su novia =his girlfriend.Ya =already.Está aquí =is here.
“What?” Claire said. “No, that’s—es imposible.” She pointed at herself. “Yosoy su novia.”Iam his girlfriend.
The nurse pointed at her visitor log.
On the first line for today, as soon as visiting hours began, the handwritten entry read:
