Midnight Housecall at the Cocaine Hotel
By Raymond Duncan
Writer’s note:
I’m workshopping a new series of short stories that track the mishaps of a travel writer. Each story, including the one below, is a work in progress. I’m honing the character and exploring different facets of his life and journey. I appreciate your comments and feedback. -Raymond
Good to get acquainted with La Paz, Mort Fleabottom reasoned, with the misplaced confidence that precedes all truly spectacular disasters.
Strolling through El Alto, La Paz, Bolivia, the world’s highest international airport, he saw all the oxygen tanks lined up and thought, not for me. I’m good to go.
Outside, he hailed a taxi. “Hotel Tranquilo,” he said, pleased with his use of Spanish.
In the hotel, “I believe I have a reservation.”
Hotel Tranquilo’s desk clerk checked his ledger. “Sí, Mr. Fleabottom. Indeed you do. For one week, correcto?”
“Sí, Señor.”
“Bueno. Here is your room key. Room 34.”
With key and suitcase in hand, Mort stepped smartly down the hall, affecting the confident air of a seasoned globetrotter.
Slightly lightheaded, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. After all, La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, at 2.3 miles above sea level. You have to expect a little initial discomfort.
Fifteen minutes later he was out on the street, ready to stretch his legs after the three-hour flight from Santiago, Chile.
A short-lived stretch, it turns out.
Five minutes outside the hotel, the world started to spin like a kid’s top. What the…?
His legs turned to rubber. His knees met the street gutter with all the grace of walking out of the water with his swim flippers still on.
Oh shit! He needed a doctor!
Mort mumbled the word “Help.” But the bowler-hatted locals offered no help—his distress was apparently as noteworthy in La Paz as traffic in New York.
With vision blurred, he baby-crawled toward his hotel, in and out of the gutter like a confused crab.
Inside the hotel, the desk clerk was missing. Mort groped his way along the empty hallway to room 34, the world spinning crazily all the while, heart pounding like a star drummer.
The next hour was spent writhing around on his bed, drenched in perspiration. Confused. Dizzy. Breathing hard. His carefully cultivated composure completely abandoned.
Finally, he willed himself to climb out of bed and crawl to the bedroom door—travel writing suddenly seeming less attractive than basic survival.
Staggering out to the main desk , he pleaded for a doctor (no telephone in the room, go figure).
The desk clerk helped him back to his bedroom and said he’d run to fetch a doctor, his expression suggesting this might be a familiar errand.
How much time passed was a mystery. All Mort knew was that eventually his bedroom door opened.
Someone was looking at him—a man wearing a white apron splattered alarmingly with what appeared to be blood.
He clutched a black sack in his hand. Behind him hovered the young desk clerk.
By now, completely out of it, Mort was beyond precise focus. Still, at least help was in the room, standing beside his bed.
That was something, right? But the man’s blood-splotched apron wasn’t altogether confidence-inspiring.
Even less reassuring was when the desk clerk mentioned he couldn’t find a doctor. Instead, he’d brought his friend, Ernesto.
Just who we need, crossed Mort’s mind with perfect clarity.
“He’s a veterinarian,” the desk clerk said. “He can probably help.”
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A veterinarian? Probably? For the love of God!
The two of them maneuvered Mort to sit up on the bedside. His head lolled with all the control of lava meandering down the mountainside.
“Open your mouth,” Ernesto said.
“Mouth? It’s not my throat,” Mort managed. “It’s my head. Horrible headache. I’m dizzy. My heartbeat’s skyrocketing.”
“I need to look down your throat,” Ernesto insisted. “Please be quiet.”
With those words, he jammed a tongue depressor into Mort’s mouth with the delicacy of someone checking a horse for dental problems.
He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it into Mort’s gaping mouth. “Say aahhhh,” he mumbled, as if this was a perfectly reasonable request under the circumstances.
Satisfied, he tossed the tongue depressor to the corner with casual disregard for basic hygiene, put away his flashlight, and reached into his black sack.
Out came what looked like a large old-fashioned medical syringe in a plastic cover—an instrument that would not have looked out of place in a museum of medieval torture devices.
Ernesto smashed its cover on the nightstand with the casual violence of a man who regularly subdued uncooperative livestock. Shards splattered across the floor like confetti.
He rolled up Mort’s sleeve and jabbed in the gigantic needle with what could only be described as enthusiastic professional confidence.
“There. That should do it,” he said with the satisfied air of someone who had just successfully treated a prize bull. “Now get some rest.”
Whatever he shot into Mort’s arm must have been some kind of adrenaline intended for a creature weighing half a ton.
His heart pounded even more wildly, and in a pool of perspiration, he twitched around his bed in a manner worthy of a mongoose-cobra face-off.
Mort fumbled to try to play relaxing music on his cell phone, hoping for pop music. But only Aymara or Quechua music stations were broadcasting what sounded like auditory torture.
This whiny, plaintive music was so profoundly depressing it was rumored to inspire suicides in even the most emotionally stable listeners. He moaned a little and mumbled how he wished his wife were there.
At some point during that fitful night, his symptoms subsided with the same mysterious suddenness, and he drifted off into a troubled but satisfying sleep.
Sometime later his eyes fluttered open just after sunrise. A miracle! He felt completely back to normal! Imagine that! Back to normal.
What the hell had happened? What was that all about? Had the entire experience been a hallucination from watching too much TikTok?
The morning newspaper suddenly slid under his bedroom door. Mort snagged it and lay back in bed to read the local news before venturing out again, congratulating himself on his remarkable recovery and resilience.
Wait a minute! What’s this?
To his utter astonishment, there on the front page was a large color photograph of Ernesto in his blood-stained apron!
He was standing outside the hotel, pointing at the building with the grave authority of Bolivia’s president himself.
The story, which Mort managed to decipher through his rudimentary Spanish, ran as follows:
Last night the veterinarian, Dr. Ernesto Morales, was called to the Hotel Tranquilo to assist a seriously ill American university student.
When Dr. Morales arrived at the hotel, he went straight to the student’s room, only to find the young man at death’s door.
When he examined the student, he discovered that he had swallowed a small balloon filled with cocaine. The student had intended to smuggle the contraband into the United States.
The balloon had ruptured inside the student’s stomach—a lethal event, as the veterinarian soon discovered from the student’s trembling and ultimate cardiac arrest.
He died within moments after Dr. Morales arrived.
The student, essentially a “mule,” a drug smuggler, was not alone. His roommate, who had been watching what was happening to his friend, had experienced a fatal epileptic seizure.
He died in the ambulance speeding him to the local hospital.
Aha! That explained the throat examination. Later that morning, the desk clerk informed Mort that he’d experienced acute altitude, known as soroche.
All of which leads to Mort’s advice: Should you ever arrive at La Paz airport, be sure to stop inside the terminal. Sit down. Take the oxygen. Go to your hotel. Lie down and rest. Acclimate before running around town as Mort did.
Take it from him. Do this and you’ll have a much better time of it and significantly reduce your chances of being mistaken for an international drug smuggler with a balloon of cocaine stuck in your digestive tract.
