“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?” Carla had a hand on her hip and, with the other, was flipping through Luca’s labs. “The blood tests are all out of whack. His white counts are high, and he barely has any platelets.”
Nina was surprised. Despite the low-grade fever, Luca didn’t look very sick. On the other hand, it made sense when you considered those horrendous black and blues. Maybe it wasn’t her fault then, she thought. Well, at least not entirely her fault—the boy had a platelet problem; of course he was going to bruise. Did the charge nurse know? Did Signora Taviano?
“Do you want me to switch shifts with you?” asked Carla. “I don’t think you should be around that asshole right now.”
God knows the last thing Nina wanted was to be near him. But she’d made a promise to Signora Taviano. She’d sworn that she would always be around to look out for Luca. She wasn’t going to renege now. Sooner or later, she’d have to deal with Matteo anyway. “I’ll be okay, thanks.”
“Let me know if you change your mind,” Carla said. “And don’t forget about tomorrow night. Eight p.m. at Da Lucia’s. Look sharp. Giacomo’s friend is a catch—mark my word.”
Nina shook her head. They’d been friends for almost twenty years now, ever since nursing school in Turin. Nina had already been there two years when Carla entered the program, pushed into it by her parents, her father a doctor, her mother a schoolteacher. The first time they’d met in the library, Carla was in tears. She’d made a big mistake. Besides not being good in science, Carla confessed that she grew queasy at the sight of blood. Nina lied, told her it was the same for her when she started, and convinced her to stick it out a bit longer. She took Carla under her wing, showed her the trick of closing her nose and breathing through her mouth to avoid queasiness. Before long, her new friend began to like nursing. When Carla finished school, Nina helped get her a job at Santa Cristina and made room for Carla to live in her apartment. Now the roles were completely reversed. Carla was married, had three children, and was looking after Nina. How in the world did that happen?
“Look, I’m just not ready to meet someone right now.”
“Sorry, the table’s booked. You’re coming if I have to drag you.” Carla wagged her finger at Nina, then left before she could object.
Nina took down Luca’s chart and read the latest entry. The blood tests must have come back late yesterday after she’d left the hospital. Carla was right; this was no simple viral infection. She saw the request for the consult, but there were no notes from Matteo yet. She checked her watch: 10:00 a.m.
As she steeled herself for his arrival, she heard his voice—deep and strong with a slight rasp that always reminded her of Claudio Baglioni, the Roman singer all the girls in high school went crazy over. Matteo was standing behind the nursing station, in the hallway by the elevators. He seemed to be talking to a patient’s family.
Closing her eyes, she strained to listen. Despite everything that had happened, she still wanted to hear his voice. It took her back to when everything was still good and she was happy. He would talk to her when they made love, whisper in her ear. Yes, this is how it was when they made love, her eyes closed, the sound of his voice behind her. She couldn’t help it—despite everything, she still wanted him.
“Nurse,” she heard him call out.
What?
“Nurse Vocelli,” he called again.
The tone of his voice had sharpened, losing all its warmth and obliterating everything she’d felt a moment ago. She stood up and walked over to Matteo. He was with Letizia and Giovanni Taviano.
“Nurse, I was just explaining the test results to the Tavianos.”
Nurse?
“Dr. Ruggiero was right to send Luca here,” Matteo continued, nodding sympathetically. “He may have had a cold, which is certainly going around now—in fact, I have a bit of a cough myself—but I believe there’s something more serious going on.”
Letizia fell backward. Had there not been a wall for her to lean against, she might have collapsed onto the floor.
“Don’t be upset, signora,” said Crespi, putting his hand reassuringly on her shoulder. “Whatever we find, there will be treatment, good treatment, and Luca is a strong boy, a healthy boy. I’m confident he’ll respond to the treatment. You’ll see.”
Letizia Taviano was a stocky woman with thick arms and legs, but her soft, doughy face and the cotton floral dress she wore made her appear fragile. Her husband, on the other hand, looked sturdier. Lanky and tall, he had angular features and deep lines etched across his forehead and around his eyes. He stood fixed and silent like a tree rooted in the ground.
“Signore Taviano, are you okay?”
Matteo was right to ask, Nina thought. The men she encountered over the years might appear strong with their stoic expressions, but they rarely held up well in these situations, and almost always less well than the women.
Giovanni answered with a grunt.
“We’ll be fine,” said Letizia, recovering her composure. She took hold of her husband’s arm. “Please take care of our Luca. He’s all we have.”
“I promise,” said Crespi. “We’ll talk again later after the bone marrow test and come up with a plan.”
As they turned to go, Nina followed. She wanted to reassure Letizia and also get away from Matteo as fast as she could. But a tug at the back of her shirt held her back.
“Nina, wait.”
The voice was behind her again, low and tender.
She turned. “So now it’s Nina and not Nurse Vocelli.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out to her.
“Don’t touch me.”
Matteo looked around to make sure no one was watching. “I had no choice, Nina,” he explained. “I’ve never seen the chief of medicine so mad. ‘That’s why we have rules,’ he shouted at me, ‘and you know what happens when the rules are broken.’ He was referring to the time when Roberto and Franca were caught screwing in the on-call room while their patient was coding.”
Nina knew exactly what the chief was referring to.
“He said if we didn’t end the affair immediately, he’d have no choice but to let you go.”
“Let me go?” That’s not what the bastard had said in his letter. Then again, why should she be surprised? She was just a nurse, a woman in a world ruled by men. If one of them had to be fired, it wouldn’t be Matteo.
“Naturally, I smoothed things over with the chief. I told him it was a mistake and assured him that our relationship would be strictly professional from here on in. As long as we stick to our roles at the hospital, make a good show of it, we should be safe.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. It hasn’t been a week, and I’m already going out of my mind. Screw the chief, he can’t keep us apart,” he said with pleading eyes. “We were meant for each other. You know that in your heart. In two years, when Francesca goes to university, Maria and I will get divorced. I promise.”
“Liar,” she whispered harshly.
8
In a cordoned-off area at the back of the blood lab was a small desk, on top of which lay an old, basic microscope, and a cabinet filled with slides. A shelf above the desk housed a row of hematology textbooks. Matteo Crespi placed the slide he held in his hand on the microscope platform. He peered through the lens and adjusted the focus until the blood cells began to materialize, red and blue and shades in between, different shapes and sizes, representing distinct lineages and stages of development. In all these years, it never failed to amaze him, this magnificent dappled sea of bone marrow, ever regenerating and replenishing itself in an ongoing cycle that made life possible—red cells that carried oxygen to the tissues, white cells that fought off infection, and platelets that made the blood clot.