Sun, Sand, Shootings…
I was back in London this weekend, mainly to deal with handing in my keys to the old flat, getting my deposit back and things like that. My landlord, Nicholas, was off travelling in Brazil, so I was due to meet his wife, Elma, at the flat to sort everything out.
Thanks to the standard Southwest Trains level of service, I arrived out of breath and half an hour late, only to find a girl pacing around outside the flat looking vaguely confused. She was a prospective tenant there to see my old room and had been waiting for half an hour for Elma to turn up (It didn’t matter that I was late, woo!)
Elma arrived about 10 minutes later, looking completely distraught. After the great British panacea of a cup of tea and a biscuit and some cajoling on our part, we eventually found out that the previous day Nicholas had been shot twice while withdrawing cash at a bank in Rio.
Thankfully, it looks like he should be okay. He was hit in the arm and leg, and the doctors were confident that he would still have full use of both limbs, but it’s still pretty scary. It’s like the standard Brazilian horror story played out note for note.
The most disturbing part of the story was when she described trying to find a doctor to perform the operation to remove the bullets. In the UK, good surgeons tend to build up a reputation as being the best in the field for things like heart bypasses, or organ transplants. In Rio the doctors are ranked according to how well they treat gunshot wounds.
(No idea if the girl decided to take the room after hearing all that, but I suspect not.)