recovered notebook

unearthed in a massive room-cleaning crusade: one small green notebook, previously presumed dead, documenting my most recent summer's travels. found inside (below): covertly executed pen sketches of some of the disheveled characters occupying the zoo-like waiting room of a Barcelona Hospital where I sat for five hours awaiting treatment. never in my days have i seen such carnage! women with their eyes rolling in their heads praying to Jesús, ancient men with skin like cracked earth holding their heads in their withered hands, shaking and sobbing-- in the "back hallway," a pale, pudding-like woman rolling on her back howling like a vengeful ghost, another missing both her legs wheeled in on blood-soaked cotton sheets. never in my days.