Chapter 6: Nurse Number Three

The clinic in Genoa kept my father on the top floor behind two glass doors and a man at a desk.

Santo had a friend there, a night nurse who owed him a favor.

She handed me a set of green scrubs, a mask, and a badge that said NURSE 3.

"You have until the shift change," she said. "After that, the corridor camera sees the new girl, and the new girl is not you."

I tucked my hair under a surgical cap.

Santo stood in the stairwell with his arms crossed.

"Rule one," he said.

"I know, Santo."

"Rule one says you do not tell your father you are alive if you cannot be sure who hears it."

"I know what rule one says."

"I am not sure you do."

"My father is the only person left who never lied to me," I said. "I am going in."

He looked at me for a moment.

Then he reached out and straightened the mask over my nose.

His hand did not linger, and I felt it anyway.

"Go."

The man at the desk barely looked up.

I walked through the glass doors holding a clipboard, with my eyes on the floor.

My father lay in the end room by the window.

The machines beside him blinked green.

He looked smaller than he had in March.

His left hand lay open on the sheet, and his eyes were already on the door.

They moved over me, and they stopped.

I shut the door behind me and pulled my mask down.

"Papa."

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