In a narrative blurring fiction and reality, Luís Moreira Gonçalves, assisted by Brazilian illustrator Felipe Parucci, recounts three months of living and working in a hospital in Rondônia, amid the Amazon rainforest, to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
Since moving to Brazil in 2017, Luís Moreira Gonçalves was working as a researcher at the University of São Paulo when he was summoned by the government of Rondônia to aid in the pandemic crisis due to an acute shortage of healthcare professionals.
Lacking clinical experience at the time, the Portuguese doctor described himself as “an almost accidental witness (…) in one of the most significant places, during one of the most crucial events in recent years” in Brazil, as he revealed in an interview from São Paulo.
The events he witnessed compelled Gonçalves to feel “an obligation to write” and share those “months of hell.”
“That’s the altruistic reason. The selfish reason was that it did me good. I left there, possibly with post-traumatic stress, and writing about it helped me a lot,” he admitted.
Throughout more than three hundred pages, Gonçalves details the distress of initial COVID-19 treatment procedures, resuscitations, intubations, the severe lack of staff and medical supplies, numerous death certifications, and interactions with victims’ families.
He recalls farewell messages from some patients before being intubated, aware of their slim chances of survival. “The last thing many told me was a plea to be saved,” he noted.
“It was incredibly intense. How do you make decisions about who lives and who dies? I went through months of hell, and I believe no one fully understood what happened. I hope it helps professionals reflect, to experience a sort of mini-catharsis,” Gonçalves added.
In the graphic novel’s epilogue, the Portuguese doctor pays tribute “to all those on the front lines, particularly the underpaid ones who risked their lives and their families’.”
‘Dormindo entre cadáveres’, released in Brazil over the summer and arriving in Portugal this month, “isn’t a journalistic account or a war diary,” but is inspired by real stories and people he met during those months.
Hence, “everything in this book is false, and everything in this book is true,” including a depicted scenario where Gonçalves managed to sleep without nightmares among COVID-19 victims wrapped in black bags in the morgue.
Regarding his work, Gonçalves stated that it is up to readers to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare systems, and societal changes, if any.
“A discussion has yet to occur, and I do not know when it will, on what went right and wrong. In Brazil, there’s a punitive mindset about the events. I believe it would be more beneficial to avoid punishment and instead learn from it. People had many epiphanies, but we haven’t changed much as a result,” he lamented.
Luís Moreira Gonçalves, aged 40, hails from Trofa (Porto) and has always aspired to be a scientist, engaged in research. With degrees in Medicine and Chemistry, he joined the University of São Paulo, where he had initiated a research group, but left following his medical requisition during COVID-19.
After working in Rondônia, he served in Pernambuco, Bahia, and the interior of São Paulo. He has since pursued a career in Psychiatry, which he currently practices, without ruling out professional opportunities, including a potential return to Portugal.
‘Dormindo entre cadáveres’, by Luís Moreira Gonçalves and Felipe Parucci, marks the first graphic novel published by Zigurate.
