Article for World Nomads

It is 6:00am in Managua, Nicaragua and I’m working on my 30^th sleepless hour at the La Mascota Hospital. Holman Padilla, the main character in my documentary film, has just awoken in pain from one of the most complicated surgical procedures possible: a pediatric heart surgery. Holman and his mother knew that without the procedure, Holman would eventually die. Still, it was hard to watch his sternum cut open by a bone saw.

Eventually I’ll have to leave and go back to the hotel. I need to transfer my footage, sleep, and eat. There isn’t anywhere to sit except for a few chairs outside of the ICU bathroom and I hate taking up a chair when Carmen, Holman’s mother, is sitting on the hospital floor.

I catch a taxi back to the hotel, and a phone call wakes me 6 hours later. It’s Holman’s nurse.

“Where are you? Do you know that Holman and Carmen are about leave? They’re waiting for a taxi to take them back to their village.”

In an instant I am on my feet. I fell asleep cradling my camera and now there is an angry red impression of it pressed into the side of my neck. How could he be leaving the hospital less than 12 hours after a heart surgery?

“The doctor thought it would be best stay away from the hospital. Most kids die around here from infection.”

I race back to the hospital, sprint past the gate, and find them standing outside in the rain. Holman’s aunt brings an umbrella and they huddle together. They are shivering, but so happy to leave.

I am sitting in the back of a taxi now; Holman is sitting in the passenger’s seat on his mother’s lap. They are not wearing a seatbelt because Holman’s chest is still sore. We are going 20 kilometers over the speed limit and we hurtle toward their house in the rain, to a tent pitched against the side of a rock, no heat, no doors, no bathroom, which is somehow safer than any hospital.

I realize absent-mindedly that I have no idea where I am going or how I will get back. I have a vague impression that the village is 30 minutes away, but my Spanish vocabulary is limited to basic needs and I am the cliché American who cannot speak another language.

We pull into an alley and the taxi driver scoops Holman up and carries him to the house. He sits outside on a plastic picnic chair for a few minutes then quietly slips away to rest.

It is dusk when my camera runs out of battery and I am forced to surrender the thing that constantly prevents me from living in the moment. Into the night, the extended family arrives, one by one, to hear the great tale of Holman’s trip to Managua. My Spanish and I struggle to stay a part of the conversation but after much effort, we finally admit defeat and stand in shadows, watching Holman’s family experience the universal joy of having a family together, once again.