“Have I?”
“Lie down. Let me hold you. You’re tired.”
“I mean it. I can’t enjoy anything. Who is given a beautiful gift and before she’s even tried it on imagines it lost?”
“Someone who doesn’t want to lose anything.”
“You always have an answer.”
“Stop being so hard on yourself. When you’re in pain, it’s like observing someone being tortured during the Crusades. Forget the past. You can’t change it.”
“What if it’s the only thing I can remember anymore?”
“Then hold on to the good memories. I’m just the lucky man who fell in love with a girl in a white two-piece bathing suit fifty-six years ago on Viareggio Beach.” Olimpio helped Matelda into bed.
“I’m blessed. The terrible things that happened to me came with a gift to be opened once the difficulty passed. I lost my father, but then I had my stepfather, who was kind to me. He grew up without a father, so he had empathy for any child who knew that kind of abandonment. You know how that goes. Whatever disease you have is the one you want to find a cure for.”
“All this happened a long time ago.”
“You got that right. And I’ve the bones to prove it.” Matelda shifted under the covers to find a comfortable spot. “It’s here. The day I dreaded has arrived. I’m old.”
“So am I.”
“I’m breaking down like a used car.” She sighed.
“As long as it still runs and gets you where you want to go, who cares?” Olimpio kissed his wife good night. “Even when we’re broken, we’re beautiful.”
CHAPTER 11
Viareggio
1929
Early-morning sunlight bathed Pretucci’s office with such intensity, there was no need to turn on the work lamp over the examining table.
Pretucci perched on a stool on one side as Domenica Cabrelli, nurse in training, stood on the other. Her hair was tied up neatly under a cap. She wore the navy apron of the apprentice. Her pockets were filled with nursing essentials: scissors, gauze, thread, and a tincture of iodine.
“Are you ready? Let’s make fast work of this. The mayor of Pietrasanta has the gout.” Pretucci checked his watch.
“Again?”
“Again, Signorina.”
At twenty years old, Domenica was earning her practical hours as a student nurse under Pretucci. He had arranged for her to study with the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother, a Franciscan order of nuns in Roma.
Pretucci folded his arms, sat back, and observed his student.
Domenica placed a ripe orange on the table. The outer skin was loose enough to pinch. She opened the kit with the equipment used for inoculations. She removed a syringe.
“Ten cc’s,” Pretucci instructed.
Domenica cleansed a small area of the outer skin of the fruit with a small gauze square soaked in alcohol. She raised the vial of practice serum up to the light. She flipped it over to check the amount inside. She held the syringe to the light. She assessed the vial and filled it to the line of measurement. She aspirated the syringe by tapping on it, removing any bubbles. She squeezed the pump with her thumb. A droplet of the liquid appeared on the syringe. She held the orb steady on the table with one hand and held the syringe in the other.
“You want to inject at a forty-five-degree angle. Find the fat,” Pretucci reminded her. “You don’t want to pierce the muscle. Well, if you do, the patient will let you know it.”
Domenica pinched the skin, creating a small fold. She eased the syringe into the skin of the orange, releasing the pump until the serum was gone. She gently removed the needle, placed it on the work tray, and swabbed the area again with gauze soaked in alcohol. She looked up at her boss.
“Good. Now, when it’s a patient, will you have that confidence?”
“I hope so, Dottore.”
“When you return to Roma for your final exams, the practicals are given by the Sisters. If the needles don’t scare you, the nuns will.”
“My mother always says, ‘A good seamstress is not afraid of needles.’?”
“A yard of satin doesn’t scream when you puncture it.”
“I can handle the patients. The more chaos, the louder the screaming and yelling, the calmer I get.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t question it, Dottore. I just do the job that must be done.”
“Sister Eugenia asked me your weaknesses on the job, and I couldn’t think of any. You have an affinity for the work. You have the talent to be an excellent nurse.”
“Thank you.”
“Be careful. The nuns are persistent. They trained you well in medicine, and they expect something in return. They will appeal to you to join the order.”
Domenica smiled. “Most of my prayers have gone unanswered, which makes me wonder if He listens. Why would He send out the call to someone like me to join the blue army?”
“I wouldn’t share those feelings with Sister Eugenia”—the doctor picked up his hat and case—“until you’ve completed your exams.”
“Yes, Dottore.”
“It’s completely selfish on my part. I want the nuns to pass you and send you back to Viareggio to work for me. I need a good nurse. If you fail, I imagine I will have to offer the job to Signora Maccio, who is a fine nurse but never stops talking. I’ll be driven mad if you don’t get your license and return to the village as soon as possible.”
Pretucci left, leaving Domenica to prepare the clinic to open the next morning. She straightened the tinctures, cleaned the instruments, and swept the floor.
The ripe orange she had used to practice inoculations lay on the instrument tray. She sewed a thick thread through the skin, and knotted it into a loop before taking it outside.
Domenica stood on her toes, pulled a branch on the barberry tree close, and hung the orange on it. She let go of the branch, which snapped back into place overhead.
Soon the birds would peck at the orange until there was nothing left but the string. Domenica went back into the office, stood at the window, and watched as the finches made their descent.
CHAPTER 12
Viareggio
NOW