I FEEL SHORT OF BREATH

I wake up and out of curiosity I open the curtain with my hand, I can see how they take out bundles on stretchers, put them in a truck and take them away. They all have masks.

What’s going on, for fuck’s sake. I turn to the other side and see a person I had never seen before in my life. He’s lying down, with that typical blue robe, just like mine, but he looks really bad.

The atmosphere is horrible, with that depressing white light, clogged with nurses and doctors running everywhere and just making me nervous. Suddenly out of the dry ice comes a nurse. She’s washing her hands, putting on gloves, a gown, a mask, some kind of bags on her shoes and covering her hair… bitch, it takes forever, she’s been doing the whole damn ritual for almost 20 minutes.

She comes closer, why is she coming closer? Wey, it’s Katita, Mrs. Katita, yes the one who sang in church when I was a kid, what the hell is she doing here? She takes my temperature and when she sees the thermometer she makes a scary face and scares me.

I can’t stand it anymore, I cough and cough and every time I do it my chest hurts as if they were sticking needles in me; and my back and abdomen as if I had done 200 sit-ups, I get tired and I don’t stop sweating, the sweat gets in my eyes, and blurs my vision, I feel like fainting, but I don’t want to faint, not now, I think of her.

Then I start screaming in desperation, why am I in this place, where is my wife, I’m not sick, get me out of here!

I am agitated and the faster I breathe, the less I feel the air coming in, I am afraid, I am getting desperate, I feel like my nostrils are the size of a pin, I try to pull air but it is impossible, I feel anxious, I need oxygen, I feel I am suffocating….

And at that moment I hear: Come and have breakfast!

I’m so freaked out that I’m even dreaming of that shit.