The Cooler Through the Procession

At 4:35 on Holy Thursday afternoon, Eliseo strapped the blue cooler to the back of his motorcycle and checked the label one more time: BLOOD, URGENT. Inside were four bags of blood for a woman who had been in a car accident. The surgeon at the hospital, on the other side of the old city, would be waiting for it at five. "We'll be starting without it if we have to," the nurse, Clemencia, had told him on the phone. "Please don't make us."

He knew the streets of the old colonial center as well as he knew his own kitchen. What he had not checked was the route of that afternoon's procession. Three blocks from the hospital, the street in front of him disappeared under a sea of people. A procession was coming slowly along the cobblestones. The road ahead was covered with a long carpet made of colored sawdust and flowers. Families had been working on it since dawn. Nobody would be crossing it on a motorcycle.

Eliseo turned around and tried the next street. The procession was there too, at the corner, and a police officer shook his head before Eliseo could even speak. It was 4:48. In twelve minutes, the doctors would be starting the operation, and the blood would still be in a cooler on the wrong side of the city.

He parked the motorcycle against a wall. He untied the cooler and held it against his chest. Then he started walking, as fast as he could, between the people. He went under a balcony, around a family eating ice cream and along the edge of the sawdust carpet, taking tiny steps so he wouldn't damage it. Ahead of him, men in purple robes were walking in two long lines. Behind them, dozens of men were carrying a huge wooden platform on their shoulders. There was no space to go through.

One of the men in purple turned his head. He looked at Eliseo's face, then at the cooler, then at the red word on the label. He didn't say anything. He raised one hand, and the two lines of purple robes stopped and opened, just enough for one person to pass between them.

Eliseo ran through the gap, up the hill and through the doors of the hospital at 4:58. Clemencia took the cooler out of his arms without a word and disappeared down the corridor.

An hour later, walking back to his motorcycle, he met the procession again. The same man in purple was still at the edge of the line. When he saw Eliseo, he lifted his hand once more, very slightly, and this time Eliseo lifted his in return.