The Dream of My Return

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IT WAS ONLY AFTER ABSTAINING for five days without any decrease in the pain in my liver that I finally decided to make an appointment with Don Chente Alvarado, a doctor Muñecón had recommended long before but whom I hadn’t yet called, still hoping that my favorite doctor would finally answer the many calls I’d made to him all week without anybody picking up, which made me assume that he and his secretary were both on vacation. It was only when a woman answered and told me that this was no longer Dr. Molins’s office, that in fact Dr. Molins no longer had an office because he had returned to his native Catalonia two months before — which made the pain in my liver go from bad to worse at the mere thought of being hospitalized — that I immediately called Muñecón to get Don Chente Alvarado’s phone number then dialed it to request an urgent appointment.

That afternoon, I made my way to the building where Don Chente lived on San Lorenzo Street in Colonia Del Valle, full of every possible prejudice because I assumed that he was an allopath who would use any pretext to poison me with chemicals and then charge me an arm and a leg for the consultation — according to what Muñecón told me, Don Chente had been one of the doctors most coveted by wealthy Salvadorans before the civil war but had been forced into exile after recklessly treating a wounded man who turned out to be a guerrilla fighter.

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