601

A serie of unrelated events brought me at the door of the room 601, the 21st of December. I wasn’t expected, and i didn’t expect to be here, almost in the middle of the night. These past years, I crossed many corridors, halls, places with marble on the floor and shimmering gold on the walls, and I always had this shivering feeling that, someway, all this beauty will reflect on me.

There was, this time, no gold, no marble, no echo of my shoes beating up the floor, just the sickening and dizzy smell of chlorine, a passed-greenish linoleum, marked by time and people. I knocked on the door and heard a very light groan for answer. He was there, lying in his unclean sheets, pale as death, the eyes clear as water. He looked at me for at least ten seconds that seemed to last an eternity, like he was trying to put a name on my face, trying to reconnect who I was. He didn’t succeed, maybe he tried to apologize but didn’t say words that made sense. The man was now an empty shell of the being he used to be.

Somehow, I thought a part of me died this day, something that would never come back and as I was trying to hide my tears when I left the hospital, I thought that the Mayas were right. Something happened today, the world as if I knew it, would never be the same.