The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Nurse

I didn't look at the bed.

If I looked at Marcello, she would too.

"Then you hung the wrong bag," I said.

The nurse's mouth opened.

"I didn't hang it. You did."

"From your tray." I stood up and smoothed my skirt. "Who signed it out of the fridge?"

She didn't answer.

"Your name's on the log," I said. "Not mine. I'm just the wife."

She looked at the bag in her hand.

I could see her doing the math.

If she told Tiziana a lot was wrong, the first question would be who signed it out.

"Pharmacy mix-up," she said finally. "It happens."

"I'm sure it does."

She wrote something in her log, dropped the bag in the biohazard bin and left without another word.

I fished the bag back out the second the door shut.

"She'll tell," Marcello whispered.

"She won't. She's scared of her too."

"Everybody's scared of her."

"Then I need something she's more scared of."

I spent the day planning it.

At four, I went home and came back with three more bags of the embalmer's saline.

I also brought a silk flower arrangement from our chapel, white roses in a low glass bowl.

"A wedding present from the funeral home," I told the man at the door.

In Marcello's room, I set it on the dresser across from the bed.

I wedged my phone into the roses with the camera facing the IV pole.

I set it recording at a quarter to eleven.

At eleven, the door opened.

This time Tiziana didn't let me near the tray.

She came in with the nurse right behind her and stood at the pole herself.

"Read me the number," she said.

The nurse turned the bag over and read the lot number aloud, every digit.

Tiziana took it from her and checked the sticker with her own eyes.

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