“Luca,” Luca said defiantly. “My name is Luca.”
“Of course it is. Who could forget Luca Taviano and his beautiful red hair?” the doctor said with a smile. “We don’t see many boys with hair like that in our country, isn’t that right, signora?”
It was true, and it made Nonna proud, just like the red hair of his father, Paolo, before him. Giovanni had gone all the way to Genoa in the middle of the war to adopt the baby from an orphanage run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. He had told Letizia that the nuns had no knowledge of the baby’s background, but it hardly mattered—the Blessed Virgin had answered her prayers and given her the child she always longed for but couldn’t produce on her own.
“Come, Luca, take off your clothes, and let’s have a look.”
After some goading from Nonna, Luca reluctantly complied. As Ruggiero rose and moved closer, his old-man smell became overpowering. He had just a few teeth left, the color of rotten bananas. While Luca closed his eyes and held his breath, Ruggiero inspected his patient’s legs and arms, felt for lymph nodes, peered into his mouth and ears, and finally listened to his chest.
Ruggiero stepped back, thumbed his chin several times, then issued his verdict. “Santa Cristina.”
“Santa Cristina?” Nonna repeated weakly. The mere mention of the place made her shudder. It brought back a terrible memory, the worst night of her life, a night she had tried hard to erase from her mind for the past ten years.
“The cold seems to have moved into his chest.”
While his grandmother dreaded the idea of having to return to the hospital in Rondello, Luca couldn’t have been happier. The examination over, he would soon be out of the clutches of the disgusting old man and his wild animals.
“There’s nothing to be alarmed about, signora. The boy will get some antibiotics and a few blood tests.”
“Blood tests?”
“Just to make sure, signora, just to make sure.” Ruggiero watched his patient leap off the kitchen table.
Luca was already in the street, bouncing and running, when Nonna emerged from the house. It was a beautiful spring day, and he was outside, no longer cooped up in that awful house with that awful man. In fact, he was so excited that he almost forgot to ask Nonna about Santa Cristina.
“It’s a place where people go when they don’t feel well,” Nonna explained, looking off to the side.
“Oh,” Luca said, lapping up as much fresh air as he could. “But not like Dr. Ruggiero’s house, right, Nonna?”
“Right, my child.”
“That’s good.”
“There will be other children there. And big rooms with nice, clean beds.”
“Beds?”
“Sometimes people have to stay there for a while.”
“Oh,” he said, still unclear. “You mean it’s like a hospital?”
“Santa Cristina is a hospital, Luca.”
Suddenly, all his good feelings evaporated. Luca’s eyes went wide with fright. Santa Cristina was the hospital in Rondello where they took Mario when he broke his leg. It was also where Franco’s sister went when she had the infection in her brain. Santa Cristina was a bad place. A terrible place. Far worse than Dr. Ruggiero’s. According to Mario, his sister had spent a week there without sleeping a wink, because everybody cried all night long.
“I don’t want to go, Nonna.”
They passed Favola’s central piazza, where carts and tables were lined up in rows, as they were every Tuesday and Thursday morning, filled with fruits and vegetables, meats and cheeses, from Favola and the surrounding towns. “Look, Luca, the fragoline di bosco are in season. Your favorite. Why don’t we buy some?”
“I hate wild strawberries!” he shouted.
“Don’t be upset,” urged Nonna, hugging him. “It won’t be so bad, I promise, and Nonna will stay there with you.”
Luca didn’t believe her. Images of screaming, crying children flooded his mind. Soon, he would be one of them. He threw himself down on the cobblestone street, covered his face with his hands, and refused to budge.
4
“Are you okay?” Carla asked when Nina picked up the receiver.
No, she wasn’t okay. She was far from okay.
“I was worried when you didn’t show for coffee.”
They met every morning before work at the coffee bar across from Carla’s apartment, 7:00 a.m. sharp. As soon as Lorenzo, the barista, saw them, he’d make a cappuccino for Carla and an espresso for Nina. They would split a chocolate-glazed cornetto and a biscuit. But Nina hadn’t made it to the bar this morning.
“I can’t believe how stupid . . .”
“It’s not your fault. Guys like Crespi don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. You’ll get over him. Meanwhile, you can’t lose your job—it’s past nine, and Giulia is looking for you. We just got a new admission, a kid with fever who’s making a big scene. She figured if anyone could handle him, it would be you.”
“All right, I’m coming,” she said, hanging up the phone.
Nina hadn’t realized how late it was, and this only upset her more. She had always prided herself for being on time. Even when she didn’t feel a hundred percent, she’d put on a good face and do everything expected of her without complaint. Yet this morning, she continued to procrastinate, brushing her teeth until her gums bled, then making a mess of her makeup. The thought of people seeing her in this state, people who knew about her and Matteo and would know about the split. She’d be a laughingstock.
By the time she got on the bus at Piazza Goldoni and found herself wedged between an overweight ticket collector and a group of rowdy students, her dread and shame had given way to a growing anger.
Santa Cristina was two blocks away from the train station. The ugly, modern four-story brick hospital stood next to a seventeenth-century baroque church believed to house an important relic, a piece of wood from Christ’s cross, where patients and families went to pray during stressful times. As Nina walked through the hospital doors, she decided to go straight to the doctors’ lounge and confront him. That bastard, making peace with his wife. Hah! Maybe she’d grab a scalpel on the way up and slit his throat. That’s what he deserved.
But Carla spotted her at the elevator bank first. “Thank God I found you,” she said. “The kid I was telling you about, he just bit an orderly. They need you now. He caused such a scene in urgent care they brought him straight up to the ward. We’ll take the stairs.”
Nina felt as if her head were about to explode, from the letter and the wine and the idea of Matteo slinking away with his cowardly excuses like a thief in the night. She could hardly think straight. If only there were time for a quick coffee.
Carla wouldn’t hear of it and charged ahead until they reached the pediatric ward. Bed 6 was in the far corner, the curtains drawn. Entering, they found a young boy with red curly hair, sitting on a chair by the bed and shaking his head defiantly at an orderly. An old woman knelt beside him, pleading with the boy: “They’re only trying to help, my love. You have to stay still. Nonna is right here next to you. Please, Luca.”
Despite the throbbing in her head, Nina sized up the situation immediately: With certain children, you only had a small window to carry out a simple procedure like a blood draw or IV placement. If you didn’t act quickly, the window closed, and no matter how much you explained or pleaded, you would only ratchet up the child’s anxiety until the task became impossible. The best thing to do now was to leave and come back later.