One day, not long after Beniek’s departure, I’d come home from school and found Granny crying on the couch. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t even tell me what was wrong, until she finally calmed down, saying that they’d found something in Mother’s lungs. “It’s not serious,” she’d said, her tears beginning to dry on her cheeks. “The doctors will take care of it.”

I stood in the cold morning and thought of how we’d sat in the hospital waiting for them to release Mother. How the clock in the waiting room had kept on ticking, how I’d held on to Granny’s hand like a life vest. Smoke around us, oozing from the cigarettes held by nervous hands, the air gray and heavy, impenetrable. And, finally, the doctor, tall and dry, with a rigid face, saying he had bad news.

I walked to the nearest hospital, as the lady had said. It was an anonymous block I’d rode past countless times without ever seeing it. By the entrance, a man with crutches and a single leg, wearing a ragged dressing gown, was smoking a cigarette. Inside, gray corridors filled with the sharp smell of disinfectant. I pulled a number by the reception desk and took a seat in the queue on one of the benches. Groups of people were waiting in miserable silence, pierced only by the wails of patients lying on makeshift beds in the corridor. Hospital time took over, solid and unfeeling like a glacier. A man across from me was reading the People’s Tribune. From the front page Party Chairman Gierek glared at me. He was shaking hands with someone off-frame, his face mousy and thin-lipped and so utterly smug. My hands turned into fists inside my coat.

“Number thirty-three!”

It was my turn. Behind the glass, in her little cubicle, the nurse kept her eyes on the papers in front of her. I explained everything again, this time in more detail, trying to sound humble, to make it seem as serious as it felt.

“Is the patient here?” she interrupted, looking up for the first time.

“She’s at home. I need to speak to a doctor, about the symptoms.”

Her expression was lifeless, bored. “This is a hospital. Come back with the patient or take her to a doctor’s office. Number thirty-four!” Her eyes discarded me.

“Please, I already went there, they have no appointments this week. Can’t I just see a doctor for a moment?”

“I don’t make the rules around here. Number thirty-four!”

I was about to protest again when someone shoved me away from the counter. Heat sprung up in me.

“Move,” huffed the middle-aged man who’d been queuing behind me, smelling of sweat and onions. “You’re not the only one here with problems.”