Orientation, part 8

During my second week in Spain I started to feel sick. Within a few days I began to recognize the symptoms of a urinary tract infection—the burning and discomfort were all too familiar to me, though I hadn’t had an episode for a couple of years. Spain had a socialized medical system, and I wasn’t part of it, but there were many doctors outside the system, in private practice. I was anxious about finding a doctor, but I figured that the easiest way to deal with this would be to get to Únidad Médica, an English-speaking medical group that advertised in Madrid’s English-language publications. I made my appointment—what a joy to be able to do it in my own language!—and plotted my route to the downtown area.

Mike was going to be leaving on a business trip that afternoon, and he’d decided that rather than leave his Mercedes in the airport parking lot, he ought to drive my old Alfa. So he’d driven my car into the city that morning and left his car for me.

It was a treat for me to have the fancy car, which drove so nicely. But the traffic into the city that morning was dreadful. Oh, God, I’m not going to make my appointment time, I thought, feeling panic as I watched the clock blink toward 10 a.m. I was miserable physically, and the cars ahead of me were crawling up Avenida Príncipe de Vergara.

Finally I reached the ramp leading down to an underground parking garage. Heart pounding, I threaded the narrow slope, took my ticket, and cruised for a space. I parked, locked, and ran, worried about finding the doctor’s office.

What I forgot to do in my state of fear was to remove the front of the car radio. Almost every car in the country had been equipped with a new kind of radio that had a removable front. There had been an epidemic of car-radio robberies, and this innovation had pretty well stopped it—the radio’s guts didn’t work at all without the front panel’s controls. But in my hurry I didn’t think to take mine.

The doctor at Únidad Médica was kind and helpful, and he sent me down to the corner farmacia (drugstore) with the name of an antibiotic. I didn’t need an actual prescription, I learned—you could go to any farmacia in the country and purchase any drug, except for the heaviest narcotics, on your own. Mentally relieved though still feeling rotten, I took the stairs down to the parking garage and approached my car.

Shock stabbed me as I noticed the shower of glass shards that had fallen next to the passenger door. I realized with mounting horror that there was glittering glass on the front passenger seat, too. I scanned the dashboard and saw the colorful spaghetti of wires sticking out of the hole where the radio had been. Oh, God, no! Not this! Not now!

My chest began to hurt, and I was about to cry. But I took a deep breath and dragged myself up to the cashier’s booth.

“Me han tomado la radio del coche,” I told the cashier shakily—they’ve stolen my car radio. He shrugged and suggested I call the police. I asked for a pay phone, but he said I’d have to walk down the street to find one. I felt totally defeated.

I went north on Calle Serrano, really struggling not to cry. I peeked into several shops, but I didn’t see a phone until I found a little basement bar. Would it even take my coins? I wondered. Many of the public phones in Madrid took phone cards only, and I hadn’t yet figured out where to buy one. But it did have a coin slot, so I called Mike’s office.

“I need some help,” I told him, gulping so as not to cry. “They smashed the car window and took your radio. I’m so sorry!”

He was sympathetic. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I was at the doctor. I was late, and I was in such a rush—I just forgot to take the front of the radio,” I said, finishing in tears.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Do you want me to come?”

“No!” I said without thinking. “Send somebody who speaks Spanish!”

At least my instinct was right—Mike and I would never have been able to handle the police by ourselves. He sent Chema Domínguez, the older brother of my babysitter Begoña, to take care of me. Chema was patient and helpful, getting a policeman to take a report and explaining that I’d still have to go to a police station and file a denuncia, a more formal description of what had happened.

“But you can do that in any police station in Madrid,” he said, “and that means you can do it at the suburban station in Aravaca, because Aravaca is officially part of Madrid.” I wrote down his instructions for how to find the station, and then he helped me carefully brush most of the glass out of the car so I could drive it home. I was still in all kinds of pain—from the infection, the crying, and the regret—but I was okay, and the car was fixable.

I got myself to the police station that afternoon without too much trouble, and the officer who took my report was perfectly nice and seemed to understand my Spanish. Then I had to make an appointment at the Mercedes dealer to have the window and the radio replaced. That went pretty well, too. But I was still feeling like a miserable failure later when I got a surprise phone call from my friend Evan back home.

Evan, a good friend since college days, was just calling to check on how I was making out in my new home, but he got an earful of what an idiot I considered myself to be and how impossible things were for me. “I’m sorry to dump this on you,” I told him, sobbing. “I’m really not this bad all the time, I swear!”

“Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it!” Evan said. “I know you’ll be fine. There’s bound to be a transition.” And he listened to my crying via satellite for a few more minutes.