Wednesday morning, two days before the internship ended, I stood in my underwear taking inventory like a very tired shopkeeper: ribs showing, hip bones jutting, collarbones sharp enough to slice bread. “Forty-eight hours,” I told the mirror. “You can survive forty-eight hours.”
I woke properly at six and counted it out again—Wednesday, party Saturday, departure Sunday—like beads on a rosary. Half-asleep, I flashed on almost kissing Matteo under the fig tree before Tuscany: his hands gentle at my waist, sun on my neck, the whole world still possible. That was just several weeks ago. That girl had evaporated.
The mirror gave me a stranger—sunken cheeks, dark circles, a body trying to disappear—so I dressed and went to breakfast. The corridor smelled like disinfectant and coffee; the courtyard beyond it smelled like sage and hose water and morning. At the staff table I pushed food around like I was drawing constellations in tomato sauce.
“Isabella, you haven’t eaten in days. Are you ill?” a nurse asked, concerned eyes and warm hands.
“Just nervous about university,” I said, and tried on a smile that didn’t fit.
“You need to take care of yourself.”
“I will,” I lied, and excused myself before the lie had time to fog the room.
By ten I was leading art therapy in the garden—five patients, watercolors, the air smelling like rosemary and clean paper. Leaves whispered. The fountain ticked like a slow metronome. Signora Rosa, kind and careful with the brush, studied me over the rim of her glasses.
“You seem so sad, Isabella. Are you alright?”
“Just tired. Almost done,” I said, like fatigue was a homework assignment.
“You’ve lost so much weight since you arrived. We worry.”
Even patients noticed. Great.
Late morning the head nurse, Teresa, gathered everyone in the corridor. People straightened instinctively as Ferraro approached—“Dottore,” handshakes, quick nods, that little brighten the building reserves for him.
“Dr. Ferraro has arranged a farewell dinner for Isabella this Saturday to celebrate her completion,” Teresa announced.
There was polite applause. Ferraro did that humble tilt of the head. “Isabella has been exceptional,” he said, voice smooth with terminology—“rigor,” “professional conduct,” “observational acuity”—and when his eyes found mine, the smile was all calculation. A promise disguised as praise. Saturday, then one more day. I could do this. Probably.
At lunch I took my tray to the far table and opened my journal to the pocket where the first letters slept. I should have burned them. I flattened one instead.
By evening I crossed the quiet corridor to his office. The laptop was open, classical music low, wine in his hand, posture perfect. The window held a slice of late gold; dust swam there like tiny moths.
“I noticed how sad you’ve been,” he said, gentle as a prescription. “This might cheer you up.”
He pressed play. My mother’s face bloomed across the screen—young, luminous. Venetian Summer, 1995.
“This is the film I saw as a student,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off her. He moved closer without seeming to move at all.
The ballroom scene arrived: Gianna in emerald green, spinning, laughing, a small sun in a chandeliered sky. She looked at camera and it felt like looking at me. The score swelled; my chest hurt.
His fingers slid over mine, then wrapped around them, pulling my hand to the bulge of his pants. “You have soft hands,” he murmured, guiding my hand to the zipper, the metallic teeth parting with a deliberate sound. The music feathered the room; nausea feathered me.
“Please—” I started to protest.
“Keep going. Don’t stop. I want to watch her,” he insisted, tipping his chin toward the screen where my mother’s face flickered and smiled.
With a breath that felt like swallowing a stone, I closed my eyes and reached into his pants. On the speakers, my mother’s voice danced; beside me, his breathing thickened; inside me, something small clenched and shut a door. His erection was hard and hot against my palm as I gripped it hesitantly. My other hand clutched the arm of the chair, nails moons in the fabric.
Minutes dragged by like hours as I stroked him slowly at first, then faster upon his whispered encouragement. His hips began to buck in rhythm with my movements, and beads of sweat formed at his temple. He didn’t look at me. He watched the film.
When he finally finished with a shuddering groan, he let my hand fall away like a tool he was done with. The room smelled like citrus cleaner and something else I didn’t want to name. As the wetness lingered on my fingers, he rewound to his favorite scene and watched again while I sat there shaking.
“Your mother would be so proud of what woman you became,” he said softly, polishing the sentence until it gleamed like a threat in a frame.
“May I go?” I heard myself ask, voice small and sanded down.
He lifted his glass, nonchalant. “Rest. Big weekend.”
I stumbled back to my room through air that felt heavier than the weather. In the hallway mirror I saw a girl I didn’t recognize—lip bitten, eyes blown, knuckles white. I washed my hands until the skin felt new and still didn’t feel clean.
A garment bag hung on my door with a note clipped to it: For Saturday. Wear this and nothing else. —L.F.
Inside waited emerald silk—the dress from the film, or its twin. I touched it and my fingers came away cold.
The walls seemed to lean in. I sat on the floor with the dress pooled in my lap like a captured animal and tried to breathe evenly. In the courtyard, someone laughed; in the ward, a monitor chimed; in my phone, Luisa’s unread message glowed like a lighthouse I kept sailing past.
Forty-eight hours until home, until I had to hug them and lie with my whole face. I opened the window; night had laid a blue hand over the cypresses. Somewhere far off, a dog barked and stopped, as if it had remembered it wasn’t allowed.
I pressed my forehead to the screen and imagined the fig tree in Genoa, the grit of the stone path, the exact weight of Matteo’s palm when he steadied a ladder, the scratch of his laugh in his throat. The life I wanted flickered like a film caught in the gate—frames burning, image trembling.
The emerald dress hung like a costume and a verdict. In two days I’d put it on and become her ghost, then drive back to Genoa and try to be the girl who almost kissed Matteo by the fig tree. But that girl had left the building with my appetite and my sleep. Matteo deserved someone whole, not someone scraped thin and quiet. Not someone who’d touched that man while her mother watched from a screen. Not me.