Free The Yellow World by Albert Espinosa

your hospital roommates outside of the hospital
    You’re my brother, my little brother from the hospital!
    —my hospital brother Big Antonio, a singer
    I’ve been lucky enough to have great roommates. In another chapter I’ll speak about some of them. They’re like brothers you have for hours, or days or months. They really are like brothers, potential “yellows.”
    I love the feeling of coming into a room dressed in your street clothes, finding someone unknown (wearing pajamas and with his closest family members around his bed), and knowing that in a few days you’ll be intimate friends.
    Every time you get to a hospital they give you the bed closest to the window. It’s like an unwritten rule, but they know that you’ll need to go to the window and look at the world you’re leaving behind for a bit. Another unwritten rule is that the patient doesn’t have to get into pajamas on thefirst day. The new arrival has twenty-four hours to acclimatize.
    It’s a struggle to take off your day clothes and go to bed at noon when you feel well. Normally, after putting on the hospital pajamas, it takes you almost another twenty-four hours to get into bed.
    These first forty-eight hours are when your roommate starts helping you. Sometimes with words, sometimes only with gestures. Sometimes, simply and straightforwardly, by explaining what he’s got, what he felt when he arrived, and what he’s been feeling in the hospital. Experience is the basis of communication; to see yourself reflected in someone else means you’re halfway to winning the battle.
    My best roommate was called Antonio and he was from Mataró. He had a huge hole in the sole of one foot, almost big enough to hide a Ping-Pong ball. But he was all energy, all nerves. He had more energy than almost everyone I’ve met since.
    He was nineteen and I was fourteen. He made me laugh a lot. He let me spend almost four days without getting into pajamas and protected me from the doctors and the nurses; he said he liked seeing me dressed, that it made him feel as if he had a visitor.
    He had a little piano that he used to play songs, and little by little, using music, he started to help me. He would play and I would sing. We wrote great songs. Our most successful one was “Give Me a Weekend Off” and our next-biggest hit was “Write Me a Ticket for the Sun.”
    He was an amazing person who, without knowing it, wasfading a little every day. Every day there were fewer doctors who came to visit him and more people who came from outside. This is the clearest sign that you’re dying: when friends start to visit you at all times and the doctors ration their visits because they haven’t got much to tell you.
    He spoke to me about women and love. It was his favorite topic: how to find the perfect woman, how to find the love of your life. When he had only two days left he was still looking for it, still philosophizing about it. I think it was love that made him so special; the search was reflected on his face.
    He died. I didn’t see him die. We never saw them die: They almost always went home to die. We knew that when they left they would die, but we said goodbye to them when they were still alive; that was always very good.
    He left me his piano; he said that one day it would be worth millions. I still have it; I still play it. There’s no doubt he also left me some of his energy. I didn’t share it with him, I asked for it all; I asked for it and he gave it to me. It’s inside me still and I’m sure that it’s 90 percent of all the passion I have.
    I had twenty roommates. Nineteen were great; one was horrible. (He snored, he didn’t talk much, and when he did he was dull; he just kept on repeating: “I am a human being.”) The other nineteen have influenced me. It’s a positive statistic.
    I’m still looking for roommates. I think it’s what I look for most of all. You can find roommates in real life; you just need to know that you won’t find them in a