The scream
I think I know when it all started, Esther. Back then Momo and I always hung out together, she was my best friend. We went out with our friends at weekends and traveled to the beaches of the southeast and northeast of Brazil on holidays. We were so close that for a while I felt like I knew what it was like to have a sister.
I remember a conversation we had when we went to Ilha Grande for the New Year holidays. We had just arrived, dropped our bags at the pousada and were laying out our beach towels on Praia da Júlia, the closest beach to the village of Abraão. It was on this day that she told me for the first time about her boyfriend. How was it possible that she had a boyfriend and I didn't know him? Over the next few weeks, she mentioned him again and again. I found it increasingly strange. But if that were the case, she wouldn't call him her boyfriend, would she? I began to think of those conversations as her own weirdness, the kind that everyone is entitled to, like a woman who doesn't have the courage to confess to her friend that she's been without a boyfriend for a long time.
A few months later, she would start dating Francisco and her life would revolve around his sister's psychiatric problems. When we met, she would spend hours describing the crises of her sister-in-law, who was morbidly obese and needed very strong medication to control her compulsions. When her relationship with Chico ended, she isolated herself, no longer wanting to leave the house or receive visitors. We only communicated by telephone. In one of these conversations, she told me that her employer, the owner of the university where she worked, had asked her to take care exclusively of the health of his son, a university professor in his 40s.
A wealthy, cultured, good-looking, seductive man who wasn't gay: her new patient was a phenomenon of nature. She did what any woman in her position would do: she fell in love. But the detail I haven't told you yet is that he was a heavy drug user. That's why he needed medical attention. His father had confined him to the house for detox treatment and had hired an exclusive nurse and doctor at his service. It wasn't long before she discovered that the nurse was dealing drugs for the teacher, and she decided to take care of her patient herself.
With intensive treatment and away from drugs, the patient began to improve and could soon resume his life. However, a few weeks later, she called me in a state of shock. She needed a friend to talk to. Her patient had escaped surveillance and gone to a sauna. There, unable to consummate the sexual act, he had taken out his frustration on the call girl and beaten her up. However, her screams had attracted the attention of the sauna's security guards, who quickly solved the problem by punching the professor in the side of the skull with both hands. Feeling severe headaches, but without any marks on his body that would warrant a complaint to the police, he went home, took a shower and went to sleep. He never woke up again. Cause of death: concussion.
From then on, Momo's condition degenerated rapidly. She had become too involved with her patient, and his death had been too traumatic. Despite numerous invitations to go to the movies or have a snack together, I never managed to see her again. Until one day, when she finally accepted my proposal: she wanted me to go with her to visit a friend who was also having problems. When we arrived at his house, I finally found out what was wrong with her. Their conversation was that of two drug addicts who, because they are doctors, have easy access to all the psychotropic drugs they want. I stood there, static, listening to them laughingly describe all their symptoms: the compulsions, the drug-induced states of absence, the obsessive thoughts, the difficulty in leaving the house, the phobias, the dark nights...
Since then, we've only met once more. I invented that I needed a prescription for an antibiotic and would drop by her house to pick it up. When she opened the door, I saw a young man coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and rummaging through his suitcase in search of something to wear. At least she was accompanied by someone... I learned later, from you, that she had become very close to a pair of brothers. Orphans. Her life currently revolved around the two of them, and together they formed a family nucleus. Could this boy I saw be one of them?
This news you've just given me, Esther, I can hardly believe it... I suddenly realize that she spent a long time screaming for help, but what reached my ears was nothing more than whimpering. What should I have done to prevent this from happening?
Translated to english using DeepL
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