She nodded meaningfully, and they stepped back, slipping behind the noisy group and past the distracted nurses.
She followed Nicu through the arched corridor, fluorescent light panels buzzing above the scuffed green linoleum. It was almost cave-like. The layout of the public wards looked as if it hadn’t changed since the seventeenth century—halls bookended by spiral staircases and nursing stations. As they passed closed wings stretching into shadowy recesses, Aimée wondered whether Nicu’s confused expression, that twitch, was due entirely to his mother’s illness; she sensed there was something else on his mind.
Ward C contained ten curtained partitions, a bed in each, some open, some closed. It smelled of disinfectant. Chipped white enamel bedpans hung from the wall, reminding her of men’s starched shirts. She heard beeping machines; a snore rose from behind the curtains.
Nicu looked around, put his finger to his lips and then pulled back the curtains on the left.
Over his shoulder Aimée saw an empty hospital bed; on the rolling table sat a food tray with an untouched cup of bouillon, a skim of congealed fat floating on the surface.
“Maman?” He pulled at the blanket as if there might be a woman hidden under it. “Where is she?”
At a glance Aimée took in strewn sheets, an abandoned respiratory machine and a blank heart-rate monitor with wires trailing from it. Disconnected tubes dangled to the tiled floor.
“You’re sure we’re in the right ward, Nicu?”
Nicu held up a menu slip with her name, Drina Constantin—a check marked next to the clear liquid menu. “I don’t understand. She was here an hour and a half ago. Less.”
An emergency operation? Her breath skipped. Maybe they were too late.
“Gone for tests?” she said. “Or maybe a procedure?”
“They ran tests all afternoon,” said Nicu. “Her fever spiked. She was gasping for breath. I thought the end was coming. She rallied somehow. Tonight she was so tired, the doctor wanted her to rest. Why would they move her?”
Worried, Aimée didn’t know what to believe. It was all so strange—the young man waiting for her in the dark, the angry relatives, the missing patient. She still didn’t know why she was here. Could René have been right, was this some kind of scam? Or had this frightened boy just lost his mother? Even if he had, what did it have to do with her?
The nursing station wasn’t the hive of activity she expected. Two nurses sat, their pens clicking as they filled in charts.
A middle-aged nurse looked up, her twist of hair held in place by a chipped green hair clip that matched the walls of the well-worn facility. “How did you get in here?”
“Has my mother gone for an operation?” Nicu asked.
“I’ll have to ask you to leave. Visiting hours are over,” she said, her voice firm.
“After I see her,” said Nicu, his eyes flashing. “Please check on Drina Constantin, Ward C. Was she sent for more tests or a CAT scan?”
“I remember you,” the nurse said, her mouth pursed. “She’s taken her medication and is resting for the night.”
“My mother’s gone.”
“Monsieur, please leave before I have you escorted out.” She shot a look at Aimée and added, “Both of you.”
“Don’t you understand?” Nicu said. “Her bed’s empty. She didn’t leave on her own—she can’t walk.”
“Ce n’est pas possible, Monsieur. You’ve made a mistake.”
“No mistake,” said Aimée, glancing down the dimly lit corridor. One empty gurney. A tight knot of dread was forming in her stomach. “Call security. Find her doctor.”
“Attendez,” said the nurse, sounding unhappy and picking up the phone. “Let me verify with the staff.”
Judging by the murmurs and looks passing between the nurses, something was off. Aimée sat on a cold plastic chair and watched the hands of the wall clock move. She tapped her sneaker on the green linoleum. Nicu paced, then sat down on the plastic seat next to hers.
“Nicu, what’s so important that your mother has to talk to me now, after all these years? What was this about?”
Nicu shook his head, his eyes clouded with worry, or maybe fear. “All she said was that it had something to do with the murder of a detective named Leduc, who’s your father, non?”
The mystery behind her father’s death, in a bomb explosion in Place Vend?me, had never been solved. Just another dust-covered file in the bowels of the Brigade Criminelle. Over the years, the only lead had been a rumor; a plane crash in Libya took care of everyone involved, and there was no one left to ask.
Aimée felt her heart pounding. “Your mother knows who killed him? Did she give you a name?”
“No name.”
She fought back the image flashing into her head, his charred limbs on paving stones, one lone shoe with a foot still inside. The horror flooded back. A sob erupted from deep inside her.
“Proof,” Nicu said, “you need more proof that I’m telling you the truth, right?” He thrust his hands into his pockets and pulled out a crinkled black-and-white photo, tucked it in her hand. “Keep it.”
A scene of her in knee-highs, looking up at a younger version of her father, smiling; behind them a market stall with a woman in a long skirt with a young boy holding a model airplane. Nicu looked about eight, Drina a little older than Aimée now. What year could this have been?
“Tell me more, Nicu.”
“That’s all I know. She needed to tell you herself. She insisted.”
A trio of nurses assembled hurriedly around Aimée and Nicu as a thirty-something male doctor strode toward them. “Who unplugged the Ward C patient from the machines?” said the doctor, his brow furrowed. “Why did you take her off the medication drip? I want her chart.”
“We have no record of her being moved,” said the nurse with the green hair clip. She didn’t look stern anymore.
“I don’t understand how this patient could have been disconnected without my approval and knowledge. Check the wards, the whole floor.”