Chapter 12: Four Minutes

They came for me at ten past midnight.

Two orderlies in green, a nurse with a clipboard, and the wheels of the bed squeaking over tile.

Ciro walked beside me down the corridor with my hand in both of his.

He didn't say anything.

At the double doors the nurse said, "That's as far as you go, sir."

He didn't let go.

"Ciro," I said.

"I know."

"You have to let go of my hand."

"I know." He lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to the knuckles, hard. "Come back to me. That's an order."

"You don't get to give orders."

"Then it's a request."

"Ask me nicely."

His voice broke on a laugh.

"Please," he said. "Please come back."

I smiled at him, because it was the last thing I could think to do.

Then the doors swung open, and the cold came in, and he let go of my hand.

The anesthesiologist said, "Count backward from ten."

I got to seven.

I don't know what I expected.

I thought there would be a tunnel, or a light, or my grandfather.

There was only the hill.

I stood under the cypress at Saint Agnes in a white dress I didn't own, in the full heat of the afternoon.

I was not sick.

I put my palm on the bark, and it was warm.

The hole was gone.

There was no dog, no gravediggers, no headstone.

There was only the green grass sloping away and the long shadow of the tree laid across it.

I thought, so this is the plot.

It was a very good plot.

It had the only shade on the hill.

Somebody behind me said my name.

It was a low voice, rough with something, and I knew it.

"Serafina."

I didn't turn around.

I thought about the ninety-nine things.

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