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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/jarofgoodness on 2024-09-23 04:22:34+00:00.
The smoldering sun broiled my forehead as I made my way down a back alley in Tijuana. The road was made of broken bricks of various shades of red, each rising up to different heights above the level that would have made them flush. I suppose at some point in the distant past they were new and beautiful. Back then the alley probably saw more traffic than it does now, I thought.
Up ahead and to my left there was an old wooden door in the side of an abandoned building. It looked like it had been a grocery store specifically meant for tourists at some point. Now it sported shattered windows, graffiti, and trash clogging up the front entrance. A young Mexican boy named Pedro stood a few feet to the right of the door and was pointing at it and staring at me with a very concerned expression on his face.
"Senior," he exclaimed, "please. Go to my Uncle's rug shop. You don't want to go in here."
I stopped in front of him. "This is that Doctor's office I asked you about, right?" He lowered his arm.
"Si, but you should not go in there. My cousin knew a boy and his friends Mami went in there and never came back out," he plead.
"So, your cousins' friend's mother?" I asked.
"Si. He cry for three weeks!"
I gave him a crisp American twenty dollar bill and thanked him for showing me the way. He turned exasperated, and walked away slowly.
I returned my gaze to the old wooden door hanging crookedly on rusty hinges with it's chipping pastel green paint. I'd come a long way from San Diego for this. I'd lost my job and with it my health insurance a few months earlier. Having come down with a lung condition afterwards for which a treatment did exist, I'd found myself in a financial situation which put that treatment out of reach for me. A friend of mine had heard of a Doctor in Mexico who offered the treatment at a fraction of the price. And that led me here.
They said his name was Doctor Diablo, which didn't set my nerves at ease. The condition of his office was also causing me concern. But this was Mexico. Things were different here. I shouldn't expect the same kind of clean shiny offices like we have in the States. In fact, I was feeling kind of guilty for even worrying about it. You can't judge people like that, I said to myself. It's kind of racist and I certainly didn't want to offend the good Doctor.
So I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, imagining the stress draining out of my half clogged lungs as I did. I felt better after that and slowly opened the door. It squeaked. The floor of the hallway inside creaked as my foot pressed down on what seemed flimsy plywood covered with linoleum tiles.
There was another door just inside that led to a small room with a reception desk and a couple of cheap folding chairs, the metal kind you might find at some public school function.
No one was there but a box-fan was on in the corner blowing the hot air around as if pretending to keep the room cool. There was a little bell on the desk so I rang it. A minute later a man came out from a backroom. He was middle aged and dressed in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. He had dark hair and a mustache. He looked me up and down and then examined an open notebook.
"Ah," he said. "You must be the American." I nodded. He smiled. "You know I'm an American too. You see, Mexico is in North America so we are both Americans."
"That's right," I said as he laughed. I guess this was supposed to be funny. I appreciated him trying to give the situation some levity.
"You left your phone at your hotel like we agreed?" he asked.
"It's in my car. I haven't checked into a hotel."
"Oh I see," he scratched his chin and thought for a few seconds. "You know the Federales are always trying to shut us down. We can't take any chances. Where did you park your car?"
"It's in the lot behind Hernandez Emporium."
"Oh, that far? Good. That's good. Ok. The Doctor will see you now. Just follow the hallway and when you get to the door go down the stairs." He then retreated into the backroom through the door he'd come out of.
The hallway was the only other way out of the room. It was dimly lit with florescent tube lights that barely let out a glow and a window to the right. A small wooden cabinet was on the left. The floor seemed to be concrete under it's worn and peeling paint. There were a couple of closed doors in the short corridor and an open one at the far end.
I walked through and entered the open doorway into a dark hallway which had a few open doors on either side. I looked into those rooms as I walked past.
The first one had boxes on the floor and several shelves on the far wall. On one of these shelves I noticed several glass jars with strange looking contents. A few seemed to have dried up fungi or plant specimens but a couple had small skulls which seemed to me to be from small monkeys.
I wondered for a moment if this guy was some kind of witch doctor, but then I stopped myself. No, I thought, there's no place in my thought process for that kind of cultural bigotry. I'm sure he's just a collector.
The next room had a padded table in it with extensions for arms and legs which included leather straps. Again I had a moment of fear. If someone were strapped down on that thing, they'd be helpless for any psychopath to have their way with. "Stop it," I said to myself. "I'm sure it's just for violent mental cases. They have these at insane asylums to protect the staff from out of control nutcases."
The third open door was to a room with cinder-block walls and a single dim light in the ceiling. Hung on the walls were what seemed to me to be medieval instruments of torture. Apprehension filled me up in an instant and I almost turned to leave. Then I came to my senses.
"What are you, some kind of racist?" I asked myself. "Just because you're in Mexico doesn't mean that every doctor is some kind of fly by night quack or serial killer. How do you know what those things are for? Are you a doctor? Did you go to medical school? Okay then."
I reached the end of the hall and to my left was the stairwell. I followed it down into the cool basement level. The drop in temperature was a relief and set me much at ease.
The basement was comprised of two rooms from what I could tell. The first was a small waiting room with several chairs and one florescent tube light flickering and buzzing away as they do. I sat down to wait and the doctor entered a minute later through the only door.
He wore a white lab coat and had a traditional stethoscope draped around his neck. His eyes were bloodshot and set back into his head within crater like structures on his heavily creased leathery face. He bore a black mustache and goatee which, along with his tattooed right hand, gave me the impression of an East LA gang member. Otherwise he looked like any ordinary doctor you'd see in any normal hospital.
"Gringo?" he said. "You here for the lung infection?" I nodded. "You got the money?" I handed him a folded stack of cash I had set aside in my pocket. He counted it, then fixed his eyes on me. "Okay. Come in the back."
I followed him through the door into a small operating room. The place was a mess: wires from various machines on the floor, dusty old equipment everywhere, and one of two surgical lights broken. Pale blue tiles went halfway up the wall and wrapped around the room. Above that cheap wooden paneling had a chipped and peeling light green paint job. The surgery table was in the center and was the only thing about the room that looked normal.
He instructed me to sit on the table and so I did. He fumbled through a cabinet and pulled out a thick metal wand like thing which was attached to a tube which he hooked up to a machine. When he turned it on it made a whirring sound.
"Now open your mouth up," he commanded, "I gotta check your lung pressure."
I opened my mouth wide as he lurched forwards like a madman, shoving the thing deep into my mouth. He held my face with both hands one on each side of my mouth, pulling the skin hard as if forcing me not to close my lips. He pushed and I fell back on the table as the wand slid halfway down my throat.
I could feel it vibrating in my neck. It seemed to be alternating blowing and then sucking air in. I thought he was trying to kill me and was using the front of being a "doctor" to lure in unsuspecting victims.
The man was strong and I couldn't pull the wand back up. I began panicking as I choked. He howled as I did. "Just take it Gringo! Just take it!"
Just as I was about to suffocate he pulled the thing back out and calmly turned and approached the machine the device was hooked up to. I rubbed my neck and breathed in deeply as he flicked a few switches on the unit.
"Hmm," he said. He turned to face me. "Well. You definitely got a problem hombre." He started fumbling through another cabinet.
He was just used to people fighting the procedure. It's a reflex. I mean shoving something down someone's throat. I'm sure everyone fights it. Of course, I thought. He's not a psycho. It's just his style of practice.
A wave of shame overtook me for thinking otherwise. Here he was just trying to make a living and I come down here from the United States with all my privilege and prejudices thinking he's some kind of criminal.
Just then, he turned around from the cabinet having retrieved another instrument. It was a set of black pressure sleeves like is used to check blood pressure. Only they were huge and all connected. He wrapped the largest s...
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