Our Hospital

Our Hospital / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on October 10, 2013

Raimundo arrived early to an offsite clinic affiliated with General
Calixto García Hospital that was located in the basements of two old
satellite buildings. The waiting room was full and the rumble of voices
prevented him from concentrating on the book he had brought along to
make the obligatory wait more tolerable. Suddenly an older woman entered
the waiting room. She was a newspaper vendor hawking Workers and
inviting everyone there to buy a copy to pass the time while waiting
their turns. She went on and on, telling everyone she had to do this in
order to eat, that she had been a worker at the hospital for many years
and that, if she did not do this, she would die of hunger because her
pension was so meager, though even when she was working, she still
barely made a living.

It was then that an eighty-year-old man, who was waiting to be seen,
spoke up and said, "Señora, this is fascism and all our rights are being
taken away. This hospital is disgusting. It looks like it hasn't been
cleaned for months. We're in a dark, humid basement and no one has even
put a fan down here to get a little air circulation. If the doctors
can't take it, then what about the patients?"

"Tell it like it is, old man," someone there said.

The murmur of voices rose in crescendo. Everyone began commenting on the
filth, the shortages, the lack of sanitary conditions, the hassles they
had to endure to get there by bus because not everybody had ten pesos
for a tarecón (a taxi from the 1950s).

Suddenly, a male nurse looked down the wide stairway leading to the
basement and called out to the patients in the waiting room, "This man
has had surgery. Can someone give me a hand getting him and his
wheelchair down the stairs?" The clinic's door opened and a doctor,
fanning himself with a piece of cardboard, said in a loud voice, "Next"

The same old man takes the floor again and raising his voice, so that
everyone can hear, says, "Gentlemen, this is our hospital!"

9 October 2013

Source: "Our Hospital / Rebeca Monzo | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/our-hospital-rebeca-monzo/