Romance about Immigration

letters, to storm offices and to get stamps on documents. She has retired as head nurse in emergency surgery, she does not even recognize the concept of closed doors and "Your man is not here now, you shall come tomorrow!"

In addition to flowers and city clercs it is interesting to talk with her on hundreds of other topics. How she had found time for reading so much and watching movies can be explained only by the steel discipline set by her Catholic school somewhere in her native Antilles. Her calligraphic handwriting on cards and inscriptions is a pleasure in itself. We regularly exchange a few bottles of wine over holidays and some cakes without particular reason, and even more regularly we gather for women's party in the neighborhood, her guests’ age ranging from three to eighty.

One day we are talking about summer vacations and how she is going to go to her native country where her island can be reached by that, what was the name of it, not steamship, smaller, she cannot find the word. Ferry? Yeah, right, ferry, boy am I an absentminded one?! The plans about the journey start crumbling, my neighbor complains of seasonal weakness, so therefore she postpones the next party. In fact, she is telling it to me for a third time and a vague suspicion begins to crawl in. I am trying to convince her to see a doctor, she swears she will call an old friend, a doctor, of course, why should she be examined by a proctor! She waves goodbye and I think the word is selected no for its meaning but for the sound of it.

A few days later the doorbell rings and tall old man asks if I have keys to the apartment of my neighbor the gardener. He introduces himself as her doctor, as well as family friend from the islands. She had called him earlier that she was feeling ill, promised to open the door and the conversation interrupted in the middle. The phone does not answer, nobody has keys of the flat in question as our neighbor lives alone and is truly independent person. I call the emergency and plead to send someone with a chainsaw - our condominium is famous with pre-war oak doors. Rescuers arrive, debate begins on how to open the door. If the neighbor has headed to open and fell right behind the door, the chances to harm exceed the chances to help. Through the external fire escape, I suggest, there is also solid door, but at least through the window we can see if she is not in front of it. A rescuers grabs a bag of tools and draggs me to the fire escape, for him not to break and enter at someone else and scare the wits of them. The adjacent window to the kitchen is semi-open, my emergency hero performs some acrobatics at the third floor level, manages to sneak in. Naturally, once inside he completely forgets about me. I speed back down and up the stairs.

It was a wise decision not to crash the main door - my neighbor had almost gotten to the treshold. Fortunately the doctor is really a medical doctor and takes the matters into his own