Brett made a noise; words were too difficult now.
‘Signora, I’m going to move you. Just a little, so I can see what’s happened.’ He gestured to Flavia, who knelt down on the other side of the motionless woman. ‘Hold her shoulders. I have to straighten out her legs.’ He reached down and took her left leg by the calf, stretching it out, then did the same with the right. Slowly he turned her on to her back, and Flavia lowered her shoulder to the floor. All of this flickered through to Brett as a new wave of pain, and she moaned.
Turning back to Flavia, the doctor said, ‘Get me a pair of scissors.’ Obedient, Flavia went back into the kitchen and took a pair of scissors from a large flowered ceramic pot on the counter. As she stood there, she felt the heat radiating up from the pan of olive oil, still on the burner, hissing and sizzling at her. She snapped off the flame and went quickly back to the doctor.
He took the scissors and cut through the bloody sweater, then pulled it back from her body. The man who had beaten her had worn a heavy ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, and it had left signs of itself behind, small circular impressions that stood out in greater darkness from the livid flesh around them.
The doctor bent over her again and said, ‘Signora, please open your eyes.’
Brett struggled to obey, but she could get only one of them to open. The doctor took a small flashlight from his bag and pointed die light into her pupil. It contracted and she involuntarily closed her eye.
‘Good, good,’ the doctor said. ‘Now I’d like you to move your head a bit, just a little.’
Though it cost her a great deal, Brett managed to do it.
‘And now your mouth. Can you open that?’
When she tried that, she gasped with the pain of it, a sound that pushed Flavia up against the other wall.
‘Now I’m going to touch your ribs, signora. Tell me when it hurts.’ Gently, he prodded at her ribs. Twice, she moaned.
He took a packet of surgical gauze from his bag and ripped it open. He dampened it from a bottle of antiseptic and slowly began to clean the blood from her face. As soon as he wiped it away, more seeped from her nostril and from the gaping seam in her lower lip. He signalled to Flavia, who knelt again beside him. ‘Here, keep this on her lip, and don’t let her move.’ He handed the bloody gauze to Flavia, who did as she was told.
‘Where’s the phone?’ the doctor asked.
Nodding her head, Flavia indicated the living room. The doctor disappeared through the door, and Flavia could hear him dialling and then speaking to someone at the hospital, ordering a stretcher. Why hadn’t she thought of that? The house was so close to the hospital they had no need of an ambulance.
Luca hovered over her, finally contenting himself with bending down and pulling the covers back over Brett.
The doctor came back and stooped down beside Flavia. ‘They’ll be here soon.’ He looked down at Brett. ‘I can’t give you anything for pain until we’ve taken X-rays. Is there much pain?’
To Brett, there was nothing else but pain.
The doctor saw that she was shivering and asked, ‘Are there more blankets?’ Hearing that, Luca went into the bedroom and came back with a quilt, which he and the doctor placed on top of her, though it seemed to do no good. The world had become cold, and she knew only cold and growing pain.
The doctor stood and turned to Flavia. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I was in the kitchen. I came out, and she was on the floor, like that, and there were two men.’
‘Who were they?’ Luca asked.
‘I don’t know. There was a tall one and a short one.’
‘What happened?’
‘I went for them.’
The men exchanged a glance. ‘How?’ Luca asked.
‘I had a knife. I was in the kitchen, cooking, and when I came out, I still had the knife, and when I saw them, I didn’t think, I just went at them. They ran down the steps.’ She shook her head, uninterested in all of this. ‘How is she? What have they done?’
Before he answered, the doctor moved a few steps away from Brett, though she was far removed from hearing or understanding his words. ‘There are some broken ribs, and some bad cuts. And I think her jaw might be broken.’
‘But there are no signs of concussion. She responds to light, and she understands what I say to her. But we have to take X-rays.’
Even as he spoke, they heard voices from below. Flavia knelt beside Brett. ‘They’re coming now,
Two white-jacketed men appeared at the door, and Luca waved them into the apartment. They had left their stretcher four flights below, near the front door, as it was always necessary to do in Venice, and carried with them instead the wicker chair they used to navigate the sick down the narrow, winding staircases of the city.
Entering, they glanced down at the blood-covered face of the woman lying on the floor as though they were accustomed to seeing things like this every day, as perhaps they were. Luca removed himself into the living room, and the doctor warned them to be especially careful when they picked her up.
Through all of this, Brett felt nothing but the strong embrace of pain. It came at her from all over her body,
