My mother convinced me to go anyway, so we started making arrangements the very next day. I flew down to Santiago, D.R a few days later with one of my brothers from the Bronx, New York that I knew pretty well from my father's side. The plane ride was pleasant with great conversation between my brother and I. He was the only one out of all my four brothers from my father's side that ever came around. He reminded me a lot of my father because of his personality and humor. He told me that my father had been in the hospital for a week and a half now. He said my father knew he was sick, but never did anything about getting better and now he had cancer in his prostate, liver, and it was starting to take over his body. He also had diabetes which was what got him in the hospital to begin with because his sugar got very high. Once we landed, I could tell the difference in the air because it smelled pure, and tasted like the beach and coconuts. We left the airport and rode in a really hot, small taxi cab to his sister's house where we were going to stay. As soon as we got there, we got in the shower, got dressed, and went straight to the hospital. .
This all happened so fast to me, it almost didn't seem real. I felt like I was falling down a deep hole that would never end. Just the thought of seeing my father after all these years was overwhelming, and not being able to share the experience with my mother was unbearable. The hospital smelled like it was full of dead people and it looked very old with this pale turquoise that was on every wall and dark green doors to every room. We walked down a hallway and headed to a separate guest room that was right next to my father's room on the ICU floor. On the way, we passed an open door that had a dead body inside on a flat bed made of metal. It looked like they just left the person there to die. It was horrible to look at. I had a very bad feeling about this hospital and for what was to come.