Travel Reference
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vestiges of illness), I hadn't been able to shake the rattling cough that has constituted the
bonus round of every cold I've ever had.
Alas, I'd had sinus infections before and was thoroughly acquainted with every delight-
ful symptom: headache, chest discomfort and a thrumming, low-grade fever. Not to men-
tion the feeling that a sumo wrestler is squeezing your Eustachian tubes between his sweaty
thighs.
The instant this diagnosis occurred to me, I began to wonder what my chances were of
getting any sort of decent treatment on this lovely but decidedly second-world island.
Deep breath. As usual, I was leaping yards ahead of myself. First I had to tell Michael.
“Miguel?” I said, trotting out the nickname I sometimes used when I was being ingra-
tiating or coy or simply wanted my way.
“Huh?' he answered, half on his guard, half preoccupied with trying to take in the local
sights.
“I think I'm sick.”
This got his attention.
“Like what, your stomach?”
I shook my head sadly.
“Not really.”
He slowed the car to a crawl.
“Then what?”
I looked past him towards the crystal-blue Caribbean lying just beyond the stone balus-
trade separating Esperanza from the sea.
“More like my sinus thing.”
He stopped the car completely.
“Oh God,” he said.
He reached over and took my clammy hand in his. We sat there for a minute or two,
staring out across the water towards the glorious sunset, delaying the moment when we
would have to swing into action, the moment beyond which we would never again be on
this beautiful island for the first time with both of us (purportedly) in blooming health.
“What do we do?”
This was me, feeling very lost. He thought for a moment.
“Didn't we pass a hospital on our way to the house?”
My mind flashed back to the modern but decidedly deserted-looking medical facility
we'd zoomed past with Felicity a few hours earlier.
“I think so, but it looked closed.”
“It had an emergency room. That can't be closed.”
Oh yes it can
, I remember thinking.
But I didn't say a word.
The emergency room wasn't closed, but it might as well have been.
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