“Cristina?” called the doctor.
There was no reply. The door finally gave way and flew open with a bang. I followed the doctor into the room. It was dark. The window was open and an icy wind was blowing. The chairs, tables, and armchair had been knocked over and the walls were stained with an irregular line of what looked like black ink. It was blood. There was no trace of Cristina.
The male nurses ran out to the balcony and scanned the garden for footprints in the snow. The doctor looked right and left, searching for Cristina. Then we heard laughter coming from the bathroom. I went to the door and opened it. The floor was scattered with bits of glass. Cristina was sitting on the tiles, leaning against the metal bathtub like a broken doll. Her hands and feet were bleeding, covered in cuts and splinters of glass, and her blood still trickled down the cracks in the mirror she had destroyed with her fists. I put my arms around her and searched her eyes. She smiled.
“I didn’t let him in,” she said.
“Who?”
“He wanted me to forget, but I didn’t let him in,” she repeated.
The doctor knelt down beside me and examined the wounds covering Cristina’s body.
“Please,” he murmured, pushing me aside. “Not now.”
One of the male nurses had rushed to fetch a stretcher. I helped him lift Cristina onto it and held her hand as they wheeled her to a treatment room. There, Dr. Sanjuán injected her with a sedative and in a matter of seconds her consciousness stole away. I stayed by her side, looking into her eyes until they became empty mirrors and one of the nurses led me gently from the room. I stood there, in the middle of a dark corridor that smelled of disinfectant, my hands and clothes stained with blood. I leaned against the wall and then slid to the floor.
…
Cristina woke up the following morning to find herself lying on a bed, bound with leather straps, locked up in a windowless room with no other light than the pale glow from a bulb on the ceiling. I had spent the night in a corner, sitting on a chair, observing her, with no notion of time passing. Suddenly she opened her eyes and grimaced at the stabbing pain from the wounds that covered her arms.
“David?” she called out.
“I’m here,” I replied.
When I reached the bed I leaned over so that she could see my face and the anemic smile I’d rehearsed for her.
“I can’t move.”
“They’ve strapped you down. It’s for your own good. As soon as the doctor comes he’ll take them off.”
“You take them off.”
“I can’t. It must be the doctor—”
“Please,” she begged.
“Cristina, it’s better—”
“Please.”
I saw pain and fear in her eyes but above all a lucidity and a presence that had not been there in all the days I had visited her in that place. She was herself again. I untied the first two straps, which crossed over her shoulders and waist, and stroked her face. She was shaking.
“Are you cold?”
She shook her head.
“Do you want me to call the doctor?”
She shook her head again.
“David, look at me.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and met her gaze.
“You must destroy it,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”