13. Muisne's Stubborn German

We waited a few moments to see where the waves weren't breaking and in which direction they were breaking. I revved the engine and got on the crest of a wave, like when surfing, I would run at full throttle before the next wave comes, but we were surprised when the doctor was giving the injured man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

-Doctor help. Drain the water quickly or we'll sink.- I told him.

The doctor and two relatives of the wounded man who accompanied us began to draw the water from the boat at full speed, I went back to riding on the crest of another wave and we fell to the other side, but we stayed in the air, as if suspended, we even flew a three-meter drop, before hitting us again with the sea, but no longer raging waves.

"Was the patient saved?" Asked Máxima, who did not blink, nor did she eat while Geraldo told her her story.

- The patient lived until he was taken by ambulance to Quito. In the capital, after three weeks he died.

-But he didn't finish telling me what he's doing now with that yacht,

- I travel from here to Manta, Esmeraldas or Tumaco, bringing fuel, food and more things that my fishing boats need.

-He has many fishing boats. ?

- If some. Most of I have them in Tumaco and Manta.

-I still remember his father when he first arrived. Even he was not a doctor, he came to do the rotating internship at the Muisne Hospital. It was 1981, so I helped him cross his mother, who was Balao's secretary at the time, and very pretty, she came for her birthday with a friend, bringing her a cake. His father had a problem with his elbow, which had been fractured, he told me that while climbing a mountain and that he fell into a crevice, they put some nails that were coming out. After this visit, his father told me that he was determined to live with his mother forever, if she accepted him.

The following year I saw them arrive just married to Cape San Francisco, they were very much in love, she left everything to follow him to an almost wild place, because it was not like now, there was jungle everywhere, wild animals, wasps, even crabs were They went up to the houses, there were huge groups of blue crabs, with huge claws, on the road between Bunche and the Cape, attacking people.

 I, who was in Bunche the day they brought a girl bitten by a snake X on a stretcher, they had to cross the cliff that separates Cabo de Bunche with high water, doing acrobatics on the cliff. Blood was coming out of the girl's pores, I crossed them to the hospital. There they did not have antivenom and her potato used other medicines, but managed to save the girl from her, although the muscles of her leg atrophied and now she walks with a limp.

Her father liked swimming very much, he crossed swimming from the Landfill to the Isle of Muisne. We were all surprised to see him swimming when we took the passengers from one side to the other. Later the boys began to imitate him.

-Well, how many things I had heard him say to me had been true.

- Well doctor, I have to leave for Manta on the yacht, it has been a pleasure meeting you.

- Similarly. Excuse me, you know where a German who is a mechanic lives.

-Of course, who does not know him, he has a spare parts warehouse in front of the Hospital.

- Thank you. Good luck.

-Thank you doctor, surely we will see each other again if he continues to work around here.

Máxima said goodbye to Geraldo, crossed the park to the church and entered it, hoping to find on the walls the murals that her father told her had painted. But they were gone. Apparently they had been erased, but the black Christ crucified on a tree if she was. What they erased were the war tanks, and the soldiers in olive green uniforms and machine guns crucifying that Christ.

She entered the hospital and greeted the staff, it was no longer as she had described, a one-story concrete hospital with a large palm garden. They had done many constructions, she had a mechanical movement, of patients and personnel, like that of any hospital in Quito, or Esmeraldas, without that human closeness that her father described to her, when she made her pre-rural.

In front, as Geraldo said, was Bernard, a skinny German, almost bald, white, in a small space full of screws, machines, and gadgets, in front of a computer, where he carefully kept the accounts. He did not have a shirt on, he had lived alone for a long time, his wife and his daughter lived in Quito, her son, who had also studied medicine, was doing rural work in Bolívar and Mompiche, precisely in the place where she he also had patients.

- Sorry. Are you Bernard?

- Yes, how can I help you, answered the German without taking his eyes off the computer.

- My name is Máxima and I am the daughter of Dr. Umiña.

"At the times I hear from him," he answered with his clear Spanish but with pauses, adjusting his glasses to recognize the visitor. He is an old friend that I have not seen for many years.