Live the same

The car broke down in the suburbs of Santo Domingo, so we didn't have to walk too far. Another guy (I can't remember his name, so I'll just call him Steve) and I got to some neighborhood and found out that there was a bus that went somewhere into the city. We had no idea where exactly, because my Spanish was terrible and Steve's was better, but still not great.

We waited for the bus for about an hour. Eventually, this little battered bus showed up, full of people, bags, and even a cage with chickens inside. People looked at us like we were aliens, but they were friendly.

There are neighborhoods in Santo Domingo that you shouldn't go to (dangerous). I have no idea where they are, and maybe we were in one of them. Either we were lucky or these stories are exaggerated, I don't know. But we were on our way into the city.

The other problem was that we had no idea where the hospital was. Luckily, someone told us where to get off to catch the metro, and from there we figured out how to get to the hospital.

We took a bus through some of the not-so-nice areas of Santo Domingo and finally made it to the metro. After that, things got easier – we made it to the hospital. We were in a real hurry, literally running whenever we could.

At the clinic, we were met by the guy’s wife and her friend—both Dominicans. But judging by their behavior, you’d never guess anything serious was going on. They were glued to their phones, laughing out loud, and barely even noticed us. They just led us to the lab and went back to the hallway to keep watching whatever they were watching.

We ended up sitting in the lab for at least two hours before they even took our tests, and then we waited several more hours for the results. Turns out, it wasn’t even that urgent. We kept trying to reach our friend who stayed with the car, but there was no signal. Meanwhile, those two ladies just kept watching videos and cracking up the whole time...