Carme Chaparro > Carme's Quotes

“I didn’t know it, but that was the last time I was going to see Bruno. He was right there, my son, in the passenger seat, lit up by the little dome light of the Peugeot. That’s my last image of him, and I mean, goddamn, it’s a really shitty one. I can’t even see the little dimple in his chin or those long eyelashes that made everybody fall in love with him. The last time I saw him, Bruno was an orange face full of shadows,
and I could only guess at the hollows of his eyes. Suddenly, something hit the car hard on the driver’s side, and we started to slide to the right. We’re going off the road, I thought. My god, we’re going off the road.”
― Carme Chaparro (author), No soy un monstruo

“I opened the door, and there I was, on the other side of the glass.
On my son’s side.
The side where I should have been, long before him.
I reached out my hand. I saw how my fingers shook, which was strange because I couldn’t feel the trembling, as if that were someone else’s hand, practically in the dark, reaching out. Or as if something
had separated my hand from my body. I touched him. I was surprised at how cold he was. His skin had not only lost its warmth but also its elasticity. My son was icy and stiff, as if he’d been sculptured in marble and death had converted him—for all eternity—into one of the statues above the tombs of kings and nobles to remind the living of the dead who were rotting below. I slid my fingertips along the curve of his nose.
I touched his lips. I stroked his cheeks. I kissed him. Goodbye, my son. Goodbye. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry I wasn’t the best mother
in the world for you. The mother you deserved, the mother I didn’t know how to be.
I lifted my eyes. On the other side of the glass, Mama was looking at me with tears in her eyes. Her tears had formed a streak of mist that grew like her grief”
― Carme Chaparro (author), No soy un monstruo

“Maybe you can change the proportions, but a hospital still smells the same. Blood—oxygenated by contact with the air—is the first thing the body’s warning system perceives. A smell of old iron, a smell you can almost taste. Thick and repugnant.
The smell of danger.
In a biological animal reaction that has allowed the human race to survive, the oldest parts of our brain, the limbic system and the hypothalamus, associate the smell of blood with an emergency. Either we’re wounded, or we’ve wounded the prey we came to hunt. The message says to hide or attack. To treat the wound, or kill.
That’s why a hospital puts us on alert, because it smells like blood. Or so we think. In truth, the hospital smell is a mix of blood, alcohol, disinfectant, and chlorine, alongside the ketones given off by certain sick bodies—very volatile and thus very expansive—and gases like oxygen and nitrogen, and of course the medications used to treat the patients. However you alter the proportions in that mix, strangely enough, all hospitals smell the same.
Of blood, fear, anxiety, and despair".”
― Carme Chaparro (author)