BarcelonaUpper -case fear is the fear that a child will never pass a misfortune. Dani Alba (Sant Pere de Ribes, 1973) approaches this abyss with the novel Dandination (Labreu), a fiction that starts from a reality: the 399 days of guard and anguish for his son Jan – in the fiction – in the Vall d’Hebron. The novel advances agile and vibrant – without sensibbles or morbidity – towards the new world that appears when life forces you to open a parenthesis.
Have you made a master’s degree to lose fear?
– And that was coached, because I had a cancer at the age of 29. But it has nothing to do. When the disease falls on you, you fight to the maximum not to die, you believe your fingers and what God wants; If I die, I die. But wafer, a son is the great universal fear. Jan was 15 years old and arrived at the hospital at risk of dying. From the diagnosis a scenario of luck is launched. But no, I have not lost the fear because Jan is still alive. If you are a mother, we share this fear.
Completely.
– Fear a call, an accident. Until it comes true: “This looks like leukemia.” Father, mother, family, friends, everyone lives different. You have to protect the patient. At that moment you know nothing, but you know that you start something very beast, until a certain medical normality comes. You never feel a number, but you know you are not the only one.
T’adaptes to a routine?
– I think it is the most like a war, when the war is over too much and you have standardized it. “A bomb has fallen home, the other has died.” You end up normalizing absolutely radical situations.
“If we are told that they have to cut a leg we thank it because it is not a beheading,” you write.
– If you were asked every day what you would give, you would leave the hospital with the child live and with nothing. There are people from different cultures, of different social positions, who react differently, but we all want to be in the place of our children.
Of course.
– It is a more intimate journey than it seems. You spend many hours alone, thinking, talking about the illness. You find partners of illness with whom you are comfortable and you can even frivolize or go see Barça. The stronger the nucleus surrounding the patient, the more likely to make it passable. Moms are a wall, they are very strong, lead the situation and have a higher burden on their father. We make the intendance and logistics, they do not separate. I slept for seventeen days in the car until we could enter the Xuklis house. Then everything is in the hands of medicine and luck.
Is a constant match ball.
-Living dantest situations, moments of impact: the nano has no constant, his arm falls, they are taken to the ICU and they say, “Get ready, there is this possibility.” But there is a father on the side, with whom you have affinity, who has been nano at the ICU for three days. And, suddenly, my goes out and his does not. And you will not see anymore. They clean the room and someone else comes.
Uncertainty is the worst?
– I think it is not to trust what doctors are doing. I decided to rely 100% in medicine and in the Vall d’Hebron team.
But I guess inside you feel two voices, the angel and the devil.
– You consider many situations. I contemplated the possibility of the absence of Jan with some naturalness. He even made decisions: he will happen and I will do that. I spent quite a while in imagining a life without my son.
Why? To reduce the tension?
– If not, you do not live. I shared that life space, that time, with 75 children with cancer. Of the 75, nine are not there. I have had nine children under ten in the arms that are not there now. This is not normal, few people have happened. These deaths you make you yours because you played there, you wrote, you took care of them because your mother needed to rest. I will have to work for this.
In the novel, in addition to following what happens to Jana and how parents live, nurses have their own plot. Gina is experiencing a love story that contrasts with the hardness of life inside the hospital.
– For me Gina is a metaphor for the beautiful things of life. The desire, the things that are worth living, are ephemeral times, which come and leave, and maybe they will return; That is why the title is Dandination. It is also a tribute to the Gines, nurses and doctors. Despite having sometimes temporary contracts, services that need to improve, shift changes, they maintain a level of excellence and bestial empathy. They also fear and face loss situations and continue and continue with a bestial humanity.
The father is frustrated by seeing that the world continues to turn, that friends go on vacation.
– It makes you angry. Because it is unfair. There are relationships that change, there are distances that grow, there are silences that remain. Because Jan was not in Moscow, he was in Barcelona. One day I bought a cap in the center and found a friend loaded with Christmas shopping. These situations make you enlist. There are also people who have to stop or come every day. Very sincere friendships appear. Without an environment, it is impossible.
Joan befriends Sergi, a neighbor of Montbau.
– I spent many hours in the bars of Montbau, talking to real strangers as if they were friends because they were much closer than any friend. I have learned to forgive the absences that may have needed.
What happens 400 days later?
– Life surprises you. When I leave I need to get rid of that. I live 220 kilometers from home. I have missed a lot of controls in the hospital because I am working. My son is fine, he is doing a tourism cycle, he has taken his card, he has traveled to Morocco, in the Pyrenees, in Rome, he is moving forward and learning to live with collateral damage. I don’t settle but I’m not angry. Because I have it.
Has your relationship changed?
– We have always had a good relationship, I have not been an absent father. But you do have a lot of contact, a lot of skin, especially in the outpatient stages in which we can sleep. This bond continues and with 18 years this is very cool, I value it a lot. We are very confident.
What comforted you?
– I wanted to be alone. He took the subway and made the whole green line. I liked the noises that were not those in the hospital. I assure you that you fuck you inside a well at 50 meters and continue to hear the chemotherapy pump and the noises on the oncological plant. I also started writing Instagram posts, so I don’t have to explain it. And he wrote the book in the room when Jan slept or when he was in the waiting rooms and hallways, at night, he read them to the nurses, asked for help, they told me about his things. They are wonderful.
What do you take from this trance?
The Jan.
