The Plimsoll Line Read Online Free

wasn’t quite sure why, the cellulose mask he wore crumpled under his chin, drawn by the elastic bands that stretched across his jaw, trapping his ears, like the elastic bands of a child’s mask. He remembers he managed to shake off this absurd fascination and, still having found no answer to his question, raised his eyes back to the now silent face of the doctor, who remained standing opposite them with drooping arms, as if considering the effect produced by his words. This interval of silence, however, was very short, for Ana hurried to break it. “Get out of here, leave us alone, please,” she said with a forcefulness that days later, when he recalled the scene, he judged to be incoherent. Perhaps she, too, had failed to comprehend the significance of the medical euphemism and that’s why she expressed herself with a coldness inappropriate for the situation. Or perhaps not. He doesn’t know, nor can he ever, but he remembers it as though he were a spectator observing the scene reflected in a pane of glass—his wife’s profile and, opposite it, the surgeon’s green apron, spattered with drops of dried blood, both reflected in the window of the ICU, which was screened by slatted blinds behind which Laura lay dying, surrounded by a useless mesh of tubes, saline bags, and artificial respirators; the silhouette of Ana with her index finger bent in the direction of the surgeon’s mask as she said “get out of here, leave us alone.” But he doesn’t recall the doctor’s reaction; perhaps he attempted to mutter a less laconic apology, or awkwardly formulated an explanation as to the importance an organ donation could have at that time, that must have been it, which is why she pushed the piece of paper away and, pointing at his cellulose mask, said “leave us alone and get out of here.” He was the one who, with bureaucratic automatism, signed the documents held out to him, the authorization for the extraction of Laura’s organs, which for a moment appeared in his mind as still-living objects, pieces of a lizard’s tail jumping around and moving off to hide in anonymous cracks and warm fissures, and scratched his signature at the bottom of the documents, then shook the doctor’s hand, which felt as fragile as a bird’s foot, though he couldn’t be sure about this, it may only have been a false impression within the sequence of events; in the next few days he shook lots of different hands—soft, invertebrate hands, arid, stubborn hands, damp hands, icy hands, invisible hands of smoke. He then watched the doctor disappear behind a tuft of blond hair, while he embraced his wife, still not understanding, aware of her suddenly soft body that felt limp in his arms, and her voice repeating in his ear,“Oh, please . . . oh, please . . . oh, please.”
    In fact, he didn’t understand anything. He had a memory of tobacco-colored stones and plaster guardian angels. He retained the impression of air on the back of his neck, and a few faces, not many—that of his brother, Óscar, swollen behind ample aviator sunglasses, the weight of his hand on his shoulder, though they didn’t say anything to each other, alongside other, equally contorted faces turned toward Ana. He told himself he had to protect her, but he couldn’t, because at the same time, he had to make an effort to stop those same faces arousing his own pain, which, since the start of the day, had remained anaesthetized beneath his coat. He managed it until he felt a cold sweat descending from the nape of his neck to his tailbone, followed by a wave of nausea and the unstoppable reflux of a watery soup of María Fontaneda cookies, very strong coffee, and black kiwi seeds. He moved away from the group of mourners and vomited into a rosebush. He was given a bottle of water and forced to swallow a pill as he sat on the stone edge of something. Somebody fanned him. It occurred to him that this made no sense, was ridiculous—nobody has a fan in December, with that