It is possible that you do not remember me, but it is also possible that you have been desperately searching for me all these years — who can say. We met thirty years ago (thirty!) working in the same office, doing more or less the same thing. It is such a distant story that I can hardly remember who I was then — what I thought, what I wore, what interested me. If I think about it, that was quite possibly my first job. What we did was transcribe marketing interviews into documents that someone would then analyze in order to sell things to people. It sounds rather primitive, but that was how things were back then. I remember you, because I have no other choice. Allow me to explain.
Several years ago, the public health system launched a mobile application that allows one to register for services, make appointments, complete procedures. As I am always a little distracted with these things, I tried to register too late. You must understand, Leonardo, that at that time I was perpetually heartbroken, as I was in the full bloom of my twenty-five years. At that age one is always a little destroyed — by one love or another, by a terrible job, by a friendship ruined beyond repair. I dutifully downloaded the application, entered my personal information, and it would not allow me to register, without telling me why. I thought perhaps someone had used my phone number, I suspected a system that fails in absurd ways — you understand. And so I went on for months, trying to register without success.
Then the pandemic arrived. There was no longer time to think about such bureaucratic details. Things were a matter of life and death; the health system was occupied with keeping people alive at all costs, desperately trying to spare us from contagion, illness, and death. We were isolated, there was panic, there was no oxygen in the hospitals. It was absurd to ask for bureaucratic assistance at such a time. Eventually the offices of the health system began to reopen, little by little. To visit the office in person we had to stand two meters apart and wear masks, there could be no more than a certain number of people inside the building at once, and so I stood in a long queue in the middle of the city to try to resolve the situation.
There, a poor masked man told me: "It says here that your name is Leonardo. That you are a man." I almost told him I only wished it were so, Leonardo, because the truth is that being a woman in this country, in this world, is a parade of horrors. But I armed myself with third-world patience and waited an hour to be seen by the sole IT specialist present in the entire building. This other young man asked me strange questions: Did you work for the university? Did you live in this other province? What is your date of birth — this one or that one? Do you know a Mr. Leonardo? His diagnosis was that somehow two records in the database had been merged. Yours and mine.
I ask your forgiveness, but I was forced to pull you from the depths of memory, from a time when I had no idea what awaited me in this long and turbulent life. I had not yet met the man I would marry, and later divorce. Nothing that mattered had happened to me yet. Leonardo, I remember you. You were younger than me, very talented, perhaps too kind to others. We were neither friends nor enemies; we did not talk much because we had to transcribe, each in our own solitude, those marketing interviews. And yet, somehow we ended up as a single entry in the health system's database — the most sacred record of the nation — a kind of involuntary marriage. You will understand my panic, my sudden horror. I immediately asked how such a misfortune might be remedied, but of course the IT boy sent me home with nothing but a promise.
The following day, trusting nothing, I sent an email to the IT department in order to have at least a case number to follow up on. There I had to write the preceding paragraph of this letter, almost word for word, in order to explain myself all over again. Someone eventually replied to the email thread, confirming that I was not a woman imagining things, but that all of this was in fact happening to me. That until they managed to separate us in the universe of the database, we were destined to be the same person. The panic returned somewhat, but that small validation made me feel that things were on the right track, that the system was working better than expected, that everything would be resolved without difficulty.
After several months of silence, I wrote again to follow up on the case and was told there was no news. That is all right, because life is complicated, Leonardo. One must have patience. In our countries we are monks of bureaucratic patience, prepared to face anything. I, for example, was considering going back to my husband, because one sometimes has an irresistible urge to stumble over the same stone twice.
One day, on the front page of every newspaper, the headline was that the health system had been hacked by an extortion group. The entire system had been compromised and a vast sum was demanded for its release. Political and administrative chaos erupted: in this country there is never money for anything, much less to pay a digital ransom, much less outside the ordinary budget approved through a tangle of anti-corruption control mechanisms and through the mechanisms of corruption itself. It was impossible. Leonardo, perhaps you know better than I do how this matter was resolved — which spent weeks going nowhere. I was distracted and by then resolved not to stumble again, unless it was over a better stone. The only thing I did was check the service system to confirm that my case number was still there — and it was not. The entire case management system had vanished completely. None of it existed anymore. I would have to start over.
At this point I considered contacting the hackers to tell them that perhaps I could offer them a modest sum to clean the database — our record in particular — and finally separate us from one another. I do not doubt that you are a good person, but this arbitrary and non-consensual union causes me anxiety, and should that anxiety give me gastritis or migraines I simply would not be able to see a doctor, as I would have no way of booking an appointment.
I had lost all hope and let at least a year go by. I thought I ought to give the poor IT boys time to recover from all of that. One must give oneself time to heal, said the psychologist I pay for in the private system. I did not go back to my ex-husband. But even so, I kept thinking I ought to fix the matter, not allow myself to be defeated by the institutional apparatus. This morning, more out of habit than animated by any hope whatsoever, I tried to register in the system and by chance it worked. It worked, just like that! I could not begin to explain the happiness I felt upon seeing my information neatly displayed on the screen of my mobile phone. A modern miracle, a wonder. I danced in my kitchen, I called my mother to tell her — it was an event in my life. I still cannot get an appointment because there are none available, but is it not incredible?
This is a kind of farewell letter, then, Leonardo, for our relationship has reached its end. I hope I will be able to forget you now, as it does not seem right to have someone who is practically a stranger circling about in my imagination. It has been a pleasure to share my health file with you. I hope that you, like me, have found a way to detach yourself from what you do not need.