The morning was clear as the water’s edge; the scent of freshly cut grass drifted in from the parks, but at the hospital and the morgue he only breathed air stinking of chloroform from the red vials behind purple-tinted windows, amid sounds of pincers and cork stoppers.

At times it made him think of the countryside, blanketed in long stretches of alfalfa pastures: it was his maternal family’s ranch where he had gone to rest ten years ago. Throughout his life he had passed through dark tunnels of sadness, with fleeting thoughts of suicide that were dispelled on that bucolic ranch with alfalfa pastures. He remembered happy mornings beyond compare, when he had no other reason to be happy except the clear sky. For a long time he thought of this solitude like an old girlfriend, the memory of which was summoned only by a phonograph record or a particular perfume. A girlfriend with the scent of freshly cut grass, surrounded by the sky and sounds of the country.

He believed he was cured, there at the ranch, thanks to the buzzing of the bees and the insects that in harmony with the ringdoves would weave soothing blue patterns on the highest crowns of the trees. But as soon as he returned to the city, thoughts of suicide settled into his body once again. It was then that he chose to study medicine, and it was his patients who saved his life.

He left the hospital after rounds as if leaving the beach after sunbathing.

He walked three blocks before calling a taxi. He thought of his wife telling him he should walk to work. She said goodbye to him every morning with the same refrain: “You never exercise,” “You never exercise,” which echoed in his ear like the annoying buzz of a fly, already tiresome before it was uttered. He got in the taxi. He had to be at the patient’s house on Tacuarí Street at noon. They had phoned him five days earlier and asked him to make a house call—the man’s knee was wounded and he couldn’t go out. They told him to come at six o’clock in the evening. When he arrived at the house the doorman let him into the foyer and said ceremoniously: “The gentleman cannot see you now, he is with a woman and we are under strict instructions not to interrupt him.” He had to insist, and until he pulled out his identification card like a gun, the doorman wouldn’t waver. He heard the very loud voice of a man coming from one of the rooms, but the other voice was perhaps speaking in hushed tones because he couldn’t hear it. The doorman knocked at the door, tilting his head attentively to listen. The voices dispersed. The door opened, closed again, and after a moment opened once more with the housekeeper’s outstretched arm allowing him to enter.

The bedroom had no character: it looked like a bedroom in a department store window. The owner of the house, tall, thin and hollow-eyed, shook his hand. He was complaining of a pain in his left side. He stretched out on the bed, in striped shirtsleeves, and the fingers of Afranio Mármol began to play the drum against that pale man’s abdomen, stomach, and back. He still couldn’t give a diagnosis; the liver was inflamed, but that wasn’t cause for alarm. And so, changing the subject from possible illnesses, they began to talk about personal matters. That woman who until recently was in the room was his lover, for ages she visited him every afternoon. He couldn’t live with her for social reasons, but she came to see him every day, taking care of him like a mother would, applying poultices. She was surely spying on them now through the glass door. He lifted the curtain slowly: “Doctor, look over there.” Afranio Mármol turned around and didn’t see anything. “She is the one who arranged the flowers in that vase,” the pale man said, getting out of bed and putting on his jacket. And that’s how the consult ended that day.