In the city of Ciego de Ávila, she walks through life with a good instinct and a noble soul, available for everyone who arrives at the number 11 medical office or at home, because both of them are almost the same: one below, the other above.
It could be said that she lives in her own workplace, 14 steps away. You go up, you go down; you go upstairs and she welcomes you, without the schedule recriminating, without a smile and with the usual phrases: «What's wrong with you? Come up ». She has been doing it for more than a decade of work, although in times of pandemic the distancing has forced her to educational and distancing phrases.
This woman is one of those who does not look at the clock, nor count the hours, which, one after another, form the days, the years and almost the entire life of those who decided on the profession as a child, when they reached for a stethoscope as a toy to "listen to" the doll Loreta.
As a young person, one day she had the certainty that she would never leave the profession and, later in time, that she would spend the rest of her life, there, in the Family Doctor and Nurse's Office on Margarita Street, on the corner to Abrahán Delgado Street, where she serves a population of more than 1,200 people.
I met her many years ago, due to many references that came to me in the different versions, both from managers and patients: "That medical office is one of the best in the municipality", "she is very responsible and they have everything in order", "you can bother her at anytime, she's always available. Anyway, everyone agrees that Marlen is an excellent doctor and tireless worker, with the unconditional help of Graciela, her nurse.
Executives and patients attest to this; including Normita, Juan, Teresa, José, Dania, Pablito and Cordero, the veteran party leader, among them.
Zero maternal deaths among the population under her care and that of children under one year of age or of school age are in her quiet triumphs, which she avoids talking about, although now she silently cries for the people, for the neighbors who will no longer climb the hill because of COVID-19.
Marlen López Marzabal looks over her shoulder, sitting on the balcony of her house, where she tries to escape from COVID-19, a disease that brought her unrest, which caught her and has not yet left her alone. Someone like me, who observes it, notices it: shortness of breath, bright eyes…, «lack of appetite and loss of taste yet,” she comments.
Honorable, but daring and authoritarian professional, she does not stop thinking about that month of March that changed her life, because she won the right to enroll in the Camilitos, as they call Camilo Cienfuegos military schools in Cuba, where she would lead a new life, very different from that of any pre-university center.
_"I'm going to go to the camilitos," she told her mother.
In addition, Miriam, who was not prepared for such a decision, frowned and closed her slanted eyes, but the daring and authoritarian Marlen, as I told you, did not reverse the decision of her life.
This Military school shaped her and her character. There, she learned the true meaning of the words sacrifice and dedication without limits.
At that institute, she had her first student love, which failed in those years, but it was recovered later and become her current husband, unfortunately, convalescing from the pandemic these days.
Soon, new challenges began to come to her: studies, the Comprehensive General Medicine master, internationalist missions in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil, and COVID-19, the most difficult of those she has faced and hopes to overcome, like the other ones.
Moreover, she emphasizes, “it is imperative to buy time to care the afflicted people as quickly as possible. A mistake or delay are fatal, they can mark the limit between life and death, in this scenario that is becoming very difficult and complex.
If Marlen does not understand something, it is that many times people believe they are immunized ones when they received a single dose of vaccine, or two, and then fail to comply with health protocols that, together with growing social indiscipline and lack of medicines, can bring worse consequences and irreversible.
SARS-CoV-2 is traitorous and it is not always known who the carrier is, who may be infected or where the positive one was; even the individual who helps you may be sick. For these reasons, you have to be careful in a kind of epidemiological situation that struggles for signs of perpetuity.
When she went into the hospital, there were several serums on her arm; however, at the same time, with it attached to her body, she helped the other doctors to treat patients admitted for COVID, faithful to the protocol, because “they can lack of medicines, but not the desire to help those suffering from this devastating pandemic. We realize the terrible moments that a COVID patient goes through when he contracts the disease.
"Despite all the tiredness that health personnel may be, we cannot get tired because fatigue would be like a defeat, like turning our backs on those who need help in the most difficult moment of life."
The days of admission were enough for her to see and believe, because heartbreaking scenes are experienced in a care center, from the arrival of emergency cases, to the moaning phrase of someone accompanying a loved one: «a doctor, please, a doctor, he is dying ».
Exhausted doctors by more than 16 months of struggle, but there, next to the patients, without a single complaint about the hours stolen from sleep, because of the overcrowding impossible to avoid. “In the end, even today, in Cuba more people are saved than those who die, despite the lack of medicines and the unsustainable and stubborn USA blockade. These facts give reason for reflection, to know that not all is lost. I saw both sides, that of life and death, as a patient and as a doctor. For this reason, from my job, I will never hesitate to offer my hand in this battle, which belongs to everyone».