I remember

I remember a long time ago, someone, maybe a forgotten bearded wise person, told me a thing that I have never forgotten since. I remember, he, or was it a she, a wrinkled lady
with bright lips maybe, she was confident of the truth of such statement. I
remember how I remained silent, thoughtfully, digesting one by one those words,
my eyes lost as my neurons processed, verified with life examples if what she
said was right or not. I remember how young I was when I heard those words, and
how still a few rays of hope resided in me. I remember how unfair life had been to me so far…only an appetizer of what the rest of my life, until this very moment would be. I
remember the sting in my chest, the pain I was submerged in at that moment, the
exchange moment with that man or that woman. I remember now, it is incredible I
almost forgot…after all, I think this thing is working. I remember, yes, it was
the nurse in one of the first hospitals I lived imprisoned, voluntarily hostage.
I remember her clearly, her gray hair, her pink cheeks and rounded face, her graceful
moves, her healthy spirit, her red lips moving as she told me what she said
that day. I remember the needle in my arm, my pale right arm, extracting my
sick blood, the poorly spirited blood invaded since birth by invisible alien
bodies that no one, not me, not the nurse that told me the words that now
resonate in my temple, not the doctors, not the experts, specialists, traditional
healers, curanderos, witches or anyone I saw until today, knew. I remember every look of each and one of them giving me empty answers, echoing in my head. I remember their words, trying to
look for other words to give me hope. I remember how I lost a piece of hope
after each and one of those failed options I could, I should try. I remember
the collateral damage, the scars in my arms, my legs, my brain, my soul. I
remember the holes that all those frozen needles, hundreds and hundreds of cruel
needles left in my arm, full of coagulated ill blood of mine, a product of
waste that kept me dead and alive for all these hours populating all these
days, inundating all these years, filling all these decades that were my life.
I remember that day, her eyes and the movement of her lips, her mouth as she
told me her statement, or was it her secret? ,her life secret. I remember that
day, and the sky, and the smell of death of the flowers of the person on the
other bed of the room, and the texture of the condensed, stiff air in the room
penetrating in my lungs, into the other patient’s lungs, into the nurse’s lungs.
I remember thinking about those particles of air floating, in the room, warm
and coming from the breath of the nurse as she told me her secret, her
philosophy of life paved with hundreds of patients she had seen in her life. I
remember brightly how I almost could see those particles of air that had resided
for seconds in her lungs that had been transported through her body using her uncontaminated
blood as their vehicle. I remember how I thought of them disappearing into the
other patient’s chest, inflating, cheering the advent of new energy,
celebrating the arrival of stamina, of life. I remember how I was caught in
this mental game, and how I saw the newly released particles of oxygen from my
neighbor into the atmosphere of my miserable ecosystem and how my brain attracted
them into my nose. I remember then, how the hairs of both my arms, intubated,
prisoners, raised disgusted by the thought of having in my body air coming from
other sick bodies, full of parasites, secretions, viruses, pathologies, just
like mine was. I remember I took a deep breath, processing her words. I remember
how those were the only words that reverberated in my mind, while I injected in
my aged arm, for the last time, that elixir that would give my death a life, the only solution I could find to this never-ending cavalry. I remember… of course I remember what she whispered, what she proclaimed, what she prophesized so long ago: That the key to happiness was
having good health and bad memory.