After pausing for a moment to see if either of them had something to say, the doctor went on. ‘Maria Grazia, her sister, came the day after it happened. And told her.’ Suddenly, she placed her palms flat on the desk in front of her and studied them. She used her thumb to turn the wedding ring around, watching it move.
‘I was on duty, and I heard her scream.’ She watched the ring as intently as if some other person were moving it, or it was turning by itself. Her eyes did not leave it as she said, ‘I went to her room and found her screaming at Maria Grazia, ‘I did it. I did it.’ She sighed and shook her head.
‘The girls didn’t come for two days after it happened, then Maria Grazia brought them again.’
‘How was that?’ Griffoni asked.
The doctor looked across at Griffoni and then Brunetti and went on. ‘After they left, Domingo and I went in to check on her. She’d pushed the covers down and was trying to get up.’ She looked at her fingers again. ‘He and I held her to keep her in the bed.’
She paused for a moment and then said, her surprise real, ‘It was very easy. All those things you read in books about the superhuman power of the dying: it’s not true. Domingo held her, and I went to get something to calm her. There was no strength left in her by the time I got back, but I gave her the injection anyway, and she slept through the night.’ She stopped speaking. Long experience told Brunetti that the story was near its end and that to ask anything might annoy her.
‘I mentioned his death some days later, only once,’ she said, her voice falling into a terminal cadence, ‘and told Benedetta how sorry I was. She ignored me and turned her face away.’ The doctor did much the same, looked away from them and again stopped speaking. She studied the tops of a thin row of pine trees that were visible from the window of her office.
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I think it’s time we spoke with your patient, Dottoressa,’ he said. ‘If we may.’
3
Griffoni stood. Dottoressa Donato pushed herself, not without effort, from her chair and moved towards the door. She paused there to wait for them, then opened the door and started back towards the nursing station. They followed silently, neither glancing at the other, eyes on the slow-moving bulk ahead of them.
The nurse’s desk was empty, the counter entirely free of papers or instruments. Dottoressa Donato passed it and turned into a corridor on the left. Here, the photos were in colour, same size, and all of single, lone trees. Brunetti recognized a birch, standing alone beside a river; a cherry in the centre of a field; a chestnut nestled up against a cliff; and an enormous maple perched on the top of a hill. In each case, the photo was a portrait that managed, in a way that Brunetti noticed but did not understand, to show the life the tree had had. The birch leaned towards and longed for the water; the cherry’s leaves were almost grey with thirst, no water in sight; the chestnut appeared frightened; while the maple claimed command of everything around it and looked as though it would somehow defend that claim.
The doctor stopped outside a door, turned to them, and said, ‘I’ll tell her about Dottoressa Griffoni first. I imagine you’ve planned to have her do the questioning, while you,’ she said, glancing at Brunetti with a neutral face, ‘try to remain meek and invisible.’
Griffoni laughed. She put her hand over her mouth, but too late to stifle the sound. Abandoning caution, she turned to the other woman and said, ‘I wish you were my doctor.’
Dottoressa Donato smiled and lowered her head at the compliment, then looked at Griffoni and said, ‘But then you’d be a patient here. And I wouldn’t wish that on you, my dear.’ Warmed by truth and sympathy, her voice resonated deeply in the space around the three of them.
The doctor tapped on the door, waited a moment, then tapped again. There was a noise from inside. She opened the door and stepped in. She turned to Griffoni and Brunetti, held up her right hand and patted at the air. Turning back, she went into the room and closed the door.
Neither of them moved, nor did they speak. Griffoni took a step backwards and leaned against the wall, crossed her ankles and folded her arms. She looked as though she were waiting for a bus or a vaporetto and had all the time in the world.
Brunetti stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked to the window. He saw the row of pine trees and bent closer to the glass; the earth under them was raked clean. Flowers grew in no particular order around the trunks. He realized that the patients could see flowers if they stood by the window. If, he hastened to tell himself, they could manage to get to a window.
An elderly man came down the corridor towards them, leading an even more elderly dog, a fuzzy beige mass that walked sedately at his side. ‘Come on, Eglantine, only a little bit and we’ll see your mamma.’ At the word the dog looked up at the man. ‘That’s right, sweetheart. You know where she is.’ Saying that, he reached down and released the dog. Tossing away the years, the dog scampered down the hall, yipping in excitement, and disappeared into the last room on the right.
Her entrance was answered by human squeals, equal in delight. The old man wrapped up the lead and stuffed it in the pocket of his jacket. Woollen jacket, Brunetti noticed in amazement. The man excused himself for walking in front of them, went slowly down the hall and into the same room, where voices welcomed his arrival.
The door where Brunetti and Griffoni stood opened; Dottoressa Donato emerged and pulled the door almost closed behind her. ‘She said she’d like to talk to you both.’
Griffoni pushed herself from the wall, asking, ‘Would you prefer to be with us, Dottoressa?’
The older woman’s face softened, but she said, ‘No. I think it’s better if there are only the two of you.’ Seeing Griffoni’s expression, the doctor explained, ‘It takes her some time to understand what she’s told. It would be better for her – and for you – to keep things quiet and calm and as simple as possible.’ She saw the look Brunetti and Griffoni exchanged, and added, speaking very softly, ‘She’s still lucid; don’t worry about that. She’s not taking as much as she should to stop the pain.’ When neither of them spoke, she continued, ‘I think it’s like having a television on loud all the time. She has to concentrate very hard to understand.’ Again, she paused, then added, very quietly, ‘It’s bad, when it’s in the bones.’
Saying nothing further, she turned back to the door and pushed it open. Silently, Griffoni and Brunetti passed in front of her, and the doctor closed the door from the outside.
A bed projected from the wall at the right of the door. Although a hand-knitted red blanket lay across it, there was no disguising the fact that this was a hospital bed: metal railings on both sides, lowered now; an outlet and mask for oxygen in the wall behind it. Two plastic bags containing liquid, one transparent and one orange, hung from a metal stand on the far side of the bed. The liquids dripped into plastic tubes that ran down and disappeared under the covers.
The head of the woman who lay there was covered with greying stubble that accentuated the hollows above her ears. She appeared to have been tossed or dropped on to the pillows that propped up her back and head, leaving her body tilted to the right. She nodded towards them but did not smile. Griffoni approached the bed and stopped beside the single chair next to it. The woman nodded again, and Griffoni sat. Brunetti walked to a second red chair that stood in front of the window but found the seat so hot that he sat upright, reluctant to press his back against the plastic panel that had been in the sun all morning.