Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

FEROCITY

observed him longer than was necessary. He smiled. He re-assumed the chilly persona that must have fit him comfortably and spoke to the nurse. The stump needed to be washed with delicate soap, he told her. An antiperspirant would reduce excessive sweating, while the inflammations should be treated with lotions. “A corticosteroid cream,” he specified in a voice that was a caress to the patient ’s ears, and an order to the nurse. Public hospitals. Orazio knew those places. Once a cousin of his had had her appendix removed, and after the operation they’d left her in the hallway for five hours. The head physician was a nameplate on a door with no one ever behind it. However much the old man might look at him, from behind the protection of his summa cum laude degrees, Orazio recognized in his eyes a strange eagerness to please. And so he lay motionless in the bed. He stared at the head physician so that the old man’s eyes followed his as he shifted them toward the other bed. “Isn’t there a fucking thing you can do to make him shut up?”

Two hours later, he’d been moved. A single room with a private bathroom. Really, an oversized room overlooking the eucalyptus trees in the courtyard.

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