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6
RICARDO

When I came to, I knew that if I didn’t find help soon I was going to die. I decided to make my way back to the main courtyard. On the way there, I came across some other prisoners. They stopped to stare at me, but none of them did anything. I must have looked a sight, stumbling along and coughing up blood.

In the corner of the courtyard, I saw a door with a red cross painted on it and the word ‘MEDICO’ written beneath. There were three inmates already waiting outside, so I lined up with them. When it was my turn, a short man with glasses ushered me into a tiny room and pointed to a seat. Apart from a shelf stacked with thick medical textbooks and a stethoscope on the small table, there was nothing to indicate I was in a doctor’s surgery. The doctor himself was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and looked no different from the other inmates. I later learned that he was an inmate, having been jailed for stabbing his wife fourteen times.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked him. He shook his head.
‘No. Sorry. No speak English,’ he said, before launching into an explanation of some sort in Spanish.

I couldn’t follow much of what he was saying except that he was asking me for a payment of twenty bolivianos. I pretended not to understand. Instead, I patted my chest and coughed so he could see how serious my condition was.

‘The costo is twenty bolivianos, please, mister,’ the doctor then said in English, ignoring my coughing. I told him I couldn’t pay and showed him my empty pockets, just as I had done with the major. When he saw that I had no money, he apologised and then stood up and opened the door. ‘Sorry, mister,’ he said, trying to get me to leave. The next patient started to enter the room.