Havana Lunar Read Free

made an exploratory incision with the scalpel. Fortunately, I found the mass near the surface and completely encapsulated by membrane. Excision was completed quickly and without complications. I took a culture of the residual fluid with an aspirator and asked the intern to sew the patient up and send her on to post-op. Then I requisitioned the biopsy exam and wrote up a preliminary convalescing plan, treatment to be adjusted upon identification of the infecting microorganism.
    By the end of the shift, Tonia was stable in the ICU. I informed Tonia’s parents that surgery had been successful and that I expected the girl’s complete recovery in a matter of days. Candelario arrived to relieve me for the graveyard shift.
    When I left the hospital toward midnight, there was a teenage girl in new blue denim jeans and a powder-blue top standing beneath the neon sign outside. She had a pretty face, light skin, and the dirty-blond hair of a true rubiecita. Our eyes met and she walked over to me. Casually overlooking the mark on my cheek, she handed me a sack. “It looked like you were never going to get a break, so I brought you something.”
    Inside the sack was a malted milk and a sandwich. “Where did you get this?”
    â€œAt the Habana Libre cafeteria.”
    â€œThey let you in?”
    â€œA friend picked it up for me, a foreigner.”
    â€œThank you. Let me pay you.”
    â€œI won’t take your money, doctor. That girl you operated on tonight is my closest cousin.”
    â€œPlease, share this with me.”
    â€œNo thanks. I already ate.”
    I bit into the sandwich: ham and cheese on bread that wasn’t stale.
    â€œYou’re a lifesaver. I haven’t tasted anything in twelve hours.”
    We talked about the heat while I finished the sandwich and the malta. Then she looked me in the eyes and said, “Pardon me, doctor, but a girlfriend told me you have a clinic where you can do the HIV test and keep the results secret.”
    I looked over my shoulder—nobody. “Yes, but when it’s necessary I recommend treatment and counseling.”
    â€œI’m not going to one of those sanitoriums.”
    â€œYou’re getting ahead of yourself. My polyclinic is on 12 y 23 in Vedado. There are open consultations this Saturday and Sunday from 8:00 to 5:00. I close for an hour at midday.”
    â€œI’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said. The girl walked off into the night.
    * * *
    Back at the attic, I flipped on the light and said to El Ché, “The sun through the French doors has been sucking the color from your face.”
    El Ché replied, “You look like hell yourself. Even if there’s not much to eat, you should at least keep clean-shaven.”
    â€œI can’t buy a razor anywhere. And who are you to talk, barbudo?”
    â€œMy beard is different. It’s symbolic.”
    â€œI’ll say: totemic.”
    I flipped on Radio Reloj. “ Economic aggression from North American reactionaries has not dampened the spirits of the volunteer brigades picking cucumbers in Varadero …”
    There are certain advantages to occupying the third floor, like fewer encounters with the CDR and other people of the street. It’s quieter up en el tercer piso and cooler in the breezes from the Florida Straits, and although there are relocados downstairs, none trudge overhead. For the past few years, I have resigned myself to every six months seeing all that sustains me—the real value of my salary, my ration of food and coffee, my allowance of sex, and the square footage of the house I can call my own—cut in half. I have a galley kitchen where I make coffee (when there is coffee) and slice whatever scraps of vegetables I can find on the bolsa negra with a dull scalpel salvaged from the pediátrico. The bathroom is tiny with a toilet, a basin under an iron tap, and a shower three feet square. In the living room there’s