by Anik LaChev

Disclaimer #1: This is fan fiction. Terapia d’urgenza belongs to Rai2. No copyright infringement is intended by borrowing its characters for a little while. No monetary gain whatsoever is being made. All I’m trying is to spread the love for velvet jackets, sort through the cliffhanger debris and prevent further lesbian parking lot trauma.

Disclaimer #2: This is a story about women. In love. With each other. But I guess you already knew that. – If this is not your cup of tea, rest assured that I prefer coffee and that you needn’t read this. If this is illegal where you live, please be careful. – Also, I can’t believe that after ten years of writing fiction online, I still have to apologize for my contents. If fuchsia bras qualify as NSFW in your book, I guess this story might rate as PG-13 upwards.

DARE
an epilogue after the shot

7

 “Any news yet?”

Esther’s anxious question reached Teresa before Esther herself had even arrived at the reception counter. Teresa looked up from the magazine she was leafing through, the telephone perched at arm’s distance. “Esther…”

The ER’s Head Nurse still wore a surgical cap, fresh out of two long hours in the operating halls. “Did she call yet?” This second question came in a lower voice, as if Esther remembered that she didn’t want to draw much attention.

“Nothing yet,” Teresa replied, continuing to turn pages without looking at them.

“I don’t understand what takes them so long!” Esther reached up to push a loose strand of hair out of her face and realized that she was still wearing the surgical cap. She tore it off her head with impatience. “She should be out of there by now.” Between her hands, she bunched up the cap and aimed at the nearest waste basket. “There must have been a bathroom break at least!” The discarded cap sailed to the floor. “Even lawyers need bathroom breaks, or don’t they?”

“And she would have called immediately.” Teresa scanned the lobby. It was a quiet Tuesday morning and while she would usually have welcomed the chance to read a magazine without interruption, Esther pacing in the limited space behind her counter made her wish for some noisy relatives or grumpy delivery man.

“I should have gone with her anyway,” Esther muttered while she bent down and, this time, put the surgical cap in the waste basket.

Teresa crossed her arms over her chest. “You explained to me all of yesterday why you should not be going,” she reminded Esther.

“Yes, but…” Esther shook her head. “But perhaps she needs me…”

Teresa reached out and stopped Esther by grabbing hold of her scrubs. “She needs you to be here and do your job and not give those sleazy lawyers any ammunition.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong,” Esther stated defensively.

“I know that.” Teresa tugged on Esther’s arm so that Esther ended up standing next to her. “And we both know that the other side doesn’t care what Marina did.”

“No, they just want to frame her,” Esther agreed unhappily. “I still think that Luigi’s mother didn’t come up with this on her own.”

“We both know perfectly well who has an interest in trying to mess up Marina’s professional life,” Teresa leaned back against the nearest file cabinet. “Only because I couldn’t find any proof doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.” That Teresa hadn’t been able to trace any of the lawsuit back to Vera was some something that still didn’t sit very well with her. “I mean, it makes perfect sense – she doesn’t have shot at Marina’s private life any longer…” Esther’s sudden glance made her lower her voice a little. “So, with no chance in private life, she’s going after her professionally…”

They had agreed on keeping things quiet and just between them, after nobody had been able to determine how the sender of the papers had known just what day Marina would be back at work to serve her the indictment immediately.

“We don’t know whether it was Vera,” Esther muttered, keeping an eye on two nurses who were crossing the hall.

“We know it, we just can’t prove it,” Teresa added. “Yet…”

“I just want it to go away,” Esther said with a sigh. “It’s not just the job. It’s messing with our private lives, too.”

There was a fraction of a second where Teresa hesitated, not sure whether she wanted to hear any details on that front. Curiosity won out. “But you had that date on Saturday…”

“Some date,” Esther muttered darkly. “We had dinner with the lawyer from the LGBT organization that Giovanna recommended, and then we were looking at the drafts from Marina’s other lawyers for the rest of the evening.”

“All evening long?” Teresa sounded disappointed.

“Until we finally got to open that bottle of wine I bought,” Esther said and Teresa nodded knowingly. Discussing what wine to serve to impress a woman who happened to be the daughter of one of Tuscany’s most traditional wine estates had taken up the Saturday lunch break of Rocco, Esther and Teresa herself. “But we were too tense and too worried to enjoy it, between all those papers, and I had a headache and Marina’s leg was hurting again.”

“Just be glad that you don’t have two boys barging in from soccer training in addition to that,” Teresa quipped, but decided to change the topic when Esther just glared at her. “So… do you think that lawyer friend of Giovanna will be able to make a difference?”

“He says we don’t have the laws here that would allow him to make a difference,” Esther said glumly. “By EU statues, we’d need to have anti-discrimination policies in place… but there’s no chance of appealing to that. He wants to focus on Marina’s professional record and try not to make it about whom she’s dating.” Or trying to date, Esther amended mentally.

Ever since those papers had arrived, there hadn’t been much in the way of romantic overtures, despite both of them assuring the other that they didn’t want to be deterred by this.

But it changed everything.

Marina was tense, all the time, grappling with the concept of being accused of something – having sexually propositioned Luigi’s mother and possibly Luigi himself, and generally being unfit for her job due to her sexuality – that she knew she hadn’t done, and that even the opponent’s side knew she hadn’t done.

“We’re lucky you aren’t a man,” Sandro – the LGBT lawyer friend of Giovanna’s – had said.

“I’m pretty happy about that, too,” Marina had replied coolly. “Even though this has nothing to do with the issue at hand.”

“I mean that if you were a gay man and someone brought up this issue, with all the recent abuse scandals inside the church, the conservative press would go wild in trying to pin this on someone who’s out and proud,” Sandro explained. “And it would play into the popular prejudice of linking being gay to being an abuser. They file it both under ‘sexually abnormal’, and there’s no way of confronting that in a calm and rational manner.”

They had met in a café and at this point, Esther had reached for Marina’s hand underneath the table. For the first time, Marina had pulled her hand away.

Before the meeting, she had still been adamant about not wanting to hide, that in fact keeping more of a distance around Esther now would look like an admission of guilt. And she wouldn’t let anyone tell her whom she could see or couldn’t see. Any medical overseeing had nothing to do with her sexuality, and that was something so basic that any judge had to see it the same way. At least that’s what Esther had tried to tell Marina, until Sandro told them that logic and reason had very little to do with it and that there was no way to prevent Marina from being fired for being gay, no matter whether those accusations were completely unfounded.

“But why?” Esther had asked, flabbergasted. “If it isn’t true?!”

“Because Italy has no law that expressively forbids discrimination against LGBT persons,” Sandro repeated. “Or why do you think we haven’t even made it to a civil union law yet while elsewhere in Europe, we can get married?”

It was personal for Sandro, too. It was personal for Marina, who had never really been forced to hide, with her name and her money giving her a liberty someone in Esther’s position didn’t have. And ironically, it was that name and that money that now made Marina a target – the wayward daughter of an aristocratic vineyard dynasty accused of shocking sexual escapades, that was a row of headlines made for the glossy magazines that Teresa loved to read. Of course, Teresa had immediately protested when Esther had told her about that, saying that she would skip those numbers, and that she would, in fact, remove all copies she would find at her hairdresser.

Esther hadn’t believed that Marina could honestly lose her job because of a bunch of lies. She also hadn’t thought that her own job might be at risk.

She had reached for Marina’s hand again when Sandro had told them that it wouldn’t be that sound, politically speaking, if they appeared in public as a couple at the moment, and if they let their colleagues know that they were together again.

“It’s a bit more complicated…”

“We’re a bit… not yet…”

They had spoken at the same time, interrupting each other, and then they had just wanted the awkward silence to go away, their hands under the table slowly falling apart again.

It wasn’t easy to think about going on a date when there might be a group of paparazzi just waiting to deliver a grainy image of two women dining in the “Shocking!” column on page 13.

There had been no declaration of being back together, even though Esther’s promise that she would stay and Marina holding onto that promise implied something far more serious than that. But there had been no kiss and no try at something more. And yet, Marina admitting that her leg hurt, and Esther simply helping her into the bedroom and taking off the brace and Marina’s pants to check the damaged skin had been of an intimacy that Esther had relished, even though it hadn’t been sexual at all.

“You heard what he said!” Marina had shouted earlier, angered by the things Sandro had told them. “You could lose your job because of me. Don’t tell me you’ll simply risk your job!”

“It isn’t simple,” Esther had replied, searching for the right words and not finding any. “Of course I’m scared of losing my job, in the middle of the crisis, and of not finding a new one because…”

“…because you’re the nurse who dated that depraved doctor!” Marina finished, setting her glass of wine down harshly enough to make a few drops spill over the rim and onto the legal papers scattered on the table.

“Not quite.” Esther waited for a moment. Marina hadn’t even looked at the label of the wine bottle once. “I’d be the nurse who is still dating that doctor.”

Marina didn’t know what to say. She reached for her wine glass again, but her hand was trembling so badly that she didn’t make it. She put her hands into her lap, only to move them up to cover her face.

Esther needed a moment to realize that Marina was wiping at her cheeks because she was crying. “Marina…”

“No.” Marina shook her head even as wiped at her cheeks. “It’s not that simple.” A long moment passed until she met Esther’s gaze across the coffee table and Esther thought that these days, they tended to sit down at opposite ends of tables. “I’m afraid you’ll end up hating me when this lawsuit ends badly,” Marina admitted and Esther wanted to wipe away the anguish in her expression. “We could both lose our jobs because of this. Because of me. And perhaps you wouldn’t blame it on me, not immediately, but what happens after a while, if you can’t find a new job and if you grow tired of people giving us odd looks in the street?”

“It might be difficult,” Esther conceded. She would have protested, but Marina’s fears were not to brush away, they had to be addressed. And she was right, none of them could tell how they would react under pressure, much as Esther wanted to proclaim that she was there to stay. The heavy glass table between them was too big to reach for Marina’s hand across its breadth. “The idea of losing my job is scary. But this is my decision. And it can’t be more scary than losing you once because I was afraid of odd looks, and it can’t be more scary than almost losing your for good because of some crazed woman with a gun.”

“And if it is more scary?” Marina asked in a small voice.

Esther swallowed. “There can’t be anything more scary than…” She didn’t know how to say this. She wasn’t prepared to search for words to explain this and part of her wished that she never would have to clothe these fears with words again. “…than the parking lot at night and not being able to find your phone, and nobody hears me scream for help and my fingers are numb and you don’t react to me and my hands aren’t big enough to push the blood bag into your body.” Esther pressed her lips tightly together. She didn’t want to cry because of this again. She didn’t want to feel it again, ever. “Nothing is more scary than that. Nothing.”

Esther stared at her hands and she had to make a conscious effort to stop herself from rubbing them together as if she still had to clean them of sticky red. She saw Marina come closer only from the corner of her eye, an uneven shadow as Marina had to use both the glass plate of the table and her good knee on the floor to propel herself forward, but then she fell onto the cushions of the couch next to Esther, with a hiss of pain and with moving limbs, and when Esther threw her arms around her, hiding her face against Marina’s neck, Marina hugged her in return.

For long moments, there was nothing but the steady pulse close to Esther’s face, the strength of the arms around her and the warm, fragrant skin against her temple. Then, after a deep breath, and yet another breath, and not loosening her embrace even a fraction, she noted Marina’s fingers against her other temple, following the outline of the faint wound that would turn into a scar – an oddly shaped white line that would fade over time and only stand out in the summer. Esther imagined Marina next to her, sand and salt and sun on their legs and that zigzagged white line along her tanned face and that it wouldn’t matter and that, perhaps, there would be Marina’s fingers against her temple, just like right now.

“But you didn’t lose me,” Marina reminded her softly. “I’m here. And I…” Esther could feel Marina’s breath against her face as she exhaled. “I don’t want to lose you because of this now.” Marina’s voice was so low that Esther might not have heard her across the table.

Esther leaned back a little and brushed at her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, period,” she stated over a sniffle.

Marina gave her a lopsided smile. “So… no losing.” Her fingertips still stroked across Esther’s temple. “And if we have to be careful while this lawsuit is pending…”

“We’ll be careful together.” Esther nodded. “And don’t you give me that look as if I don’t know what I’m getting into.”

Marina shrugged sheepishly, knowing that she had gotten caught. “I’m sorry.”

Esther threaded her fingers through Marina’s. “We both knew this could be difficult.” Marina nodded in acknowledgement, but she didn’t move away. “And there’s things we both can’t know, but we’ll try to get through this anyway. Right?”

“Right.” If Marina’s voice was a little shaky at that, they both decided not to address it.

“So… perhaps Sandro is right.” Esther returned to the practical issues at hand. “Perhaps it would be the best thing to try for a agreement out of court…”

“But that’s like admitting I’m guilty!” Marina protested.

“But a lawsuit could take forever,” Esther reiterated Sandro’s argument. “And even if they have no proof of anything, if this goes to court, they’ll tear you into pieces.” It wouldn’t depend on the truth then, Sandro had told them. It would depend on the judge. “Send your lawyers in beforehand, like Sandro said. If we’re really lucky, the case will get tossed out.”

“I hope so.” Marina sighed. The idea of having to negotiate with lies didn’t appeal to her in the least. “And if we manage that – then we’ll go to the mountains, to my skiing cabin.” She interrupted herself and cast an endearingly shy look at Esther. “That is… if you’d like to come along.”

“I would,” Esther answered immediately and she hoped that it still had sounded like the measured kind of eager, if there was such a thing. Judged by Marina’s smile, she hadn’t really succeeded, but as long as Marina was smiling at her like that, she didn’t really care.

“And if we don’t manage and I have to negotiate with those jerks…” Marina leaned a little closer, her forehead almost touching Esther’s. “Then we could go there as well.”

“We could,” Esther allowed. She didn’t mention that she had wondered about that cabin many times after she had first rejected Marina’s invitation, scared to realize that the strange tension she felt around Marina might have a very real name, and the chance to be answered. She dropped her gaze to her legs, hoping that Marina didn’t catch onto the slight blush in the low light. Something else occurred to her when she looked at Marina’s brace. “I don’t see you skiing with that knee, though.”

Marina’s gaze swept over both their thighs, across Esther’s hands and slowly up to her face. “I don’t see myself skiing, either.”

The blush Esther had tried to conceal intensified, but the abrupt surge of tension between them seemed to hit Marina just as unprepared. She cleared her throat. “Sandro is right, though – if they dig around in my private life, they’ll probably come up with why I left the Regina Elisabetta. My relationship with Vera is public knowledge over there.”

As soon as Marina had spoken, she winced. Mentioning her past with Vera was not how she had wanted to back out of the moment, but Esther was unfazed.

“You weren’t fired there, you left on your own,” Esther reminded her. She didn’t want to voice her suspicion that Vera might have something to do with the current accusations against Marina. “And Vera showing up at the Morandini trying to win you back is also public knowledge. Teresa saw it! It can’t get more public than that.”

Marina would never have thought that the moment that made Teresa feed her to the grapevine at the Morandini might be something that could work in her favor. But Esther wasn’t done yet.

“It’s also public knowledge that Luigi’s mother already tried to sue you for malpractice and that you were cleared of any accusations…” She held up a hand when Marina opened her moth to protest. “…even if you think you could have done more for him.”

“I should have,” Marina muttered, and Esther didn’t point out yet again that no hospital board would have allowed the additional tests that would have been necessary to detect Luigi’s aneurism earlier. Even if Marina had tried to, they wouldn’t have let her, not with how their budget looked like and not in a running ER where more urgent cases waited.

But Marina wouldn’t be Marina if she simple accepted the fact without questioning herself, trying to do better even if it was impossible. It was a readiness to assume responsibility that lay at the very core of who Marina was and Esther loved her for it. Only when Marina was threatening to damage herself, she tried to reason with her. Like now, when she knew that Marina felt partly responsible for Luigi’s death, but where it wouldn’t be prudent to bring this personal ethic into the lawsuit.

Prudent had fast become the word of the week. Sandro wouldn’t appear among Marina’s lawyers because it wasn’t prudent to have a homophobic accusation depended by a lawyer of LGBT causes. The fact that Sandro himself had suggested this made it even more nauseating to Esther. It was prudent to use the same lawyers that had already deflected the malpractice suit aimed at Marina. It was prudent to build their case on Marina’s clean professional record and not by trying to argue that it was absurd to link being gay to being psychologically unfit for her work.

“Don’t let them make it about your sexuality,” Sandro had said. “You will lose. Try to make it a non-issue and focus on your career.”

He had suggested that Marina went to the negotiations alone, without Esther. And that, if asked, Marina should not try to hide the fact that they had been dating, but make clear that they had broken up before Luigi died. And that they were not dating at the moment.

It was personal for Esther, too.

And it was absurd. It was absurd to be planning her lunch break so that she would not coincide with Marina in the cafeteria. It was absurd to be taking the last metro home when she had gone over legal papers with Marina over dinner and to not kiss her goodbye even though it was all she had been able to think about throughout said dinner.

And the most absurd thing of all was that despite their not doing anything that would qualify them as a romantic couple, she felt more like Marina’s girlfriend than ever before.

“Apropos dating…” Teresa cut through Esther’s musings, that once more had turned to that mysterious cabin in the mountains and to possibly needing a quick journey up there for a snow bath if she were to make it through another dinner staring at the imprint of Marina’s lips on her wine glass.

“Guess who walked in here earlier with a huge bouquet of flowers.” Teresa looked at Esther expectantly.

“Hm…” Esther canted her head to the side. “Malosti,” she guessed. “Because after the incident in the cafeteria, he probably had to sleep on the couch all weekend.”

“Wrong.” Teresa shook her head, but she was too impatient to let Esther guess any longer. “Giovanna. With a beautiful bouquet.”

Esther looked at the barren counter. “For Grazia?”

“Well, they weren’t for me,” Teresa said with an entirely too casual shrug.

“Jealous?” Esther questioned.

“No, no, of course not.” Teresa rolled her eyes at such an absurd suggestion. “But you know what?” She leaned a little closer to Esther. “That bouquet of hers that I took home on the weekend, and Alfredo asked me where I had gotten it, and I said from a mindful patient? – He came home with flowers yesterday. Granted, it was just tulips in a plastic bag, from the supermarket, but I don’t remember when he last brought flowers and it wasn’t the day after Mother’s Day and he had forgotten again.”

“Hear, hear…” But just as Esther wanted to ask for details, the phone behind the counter started to ring.

8

The dark steps under her feet were slippery with the first, sludgy snow and her elegant heels looked out of place among it. Another gust of wind hit the side of the court building. It didn’t spare the small corner where they had headed out for a brief respite, tearing at the edges of Marina’s coat that was too thin for this weather. The shoulders of the fine wool were already damp with water and Marina felt the cold humidity seep through her whole body even as she wrapped her arms around herself and stepped from one foot onto the other to keep herself warm.

“Doctor – you want one?”

Marina turned around to face the oldest of the three lawyers who were arguing her case, Simone. Or rather, Dr. Battelli. Her father called him Simone. Marina never did. He had immediately agreed to handle her case when she had asked him about the malpractice suit that Luigi’s mother had filed against her, and he had agreed again now when her entire reputation as a medic was at stake. The fact that he also worked for Marina’s parents hadn’t stopped her from asking him, just as it hadn’t stopped him from taking on the cases.

She smiled at him now, surprised how much it meant to be called by her title – a title she had worked hard for and that people inside this building were currently trying to take away from her.

Battelli still held the package of cigarettes out to her. His immaculate three-piece suit seemed to shield him better from the wind and the cold, although Marina suspected that Dr. Battelli would emanate the same kind of poise in a bathrobe.

“I don’t smoke,” she replied at the same time as she reached for a cigarette with clammy fingers.

Battelli drew out a heavy silver lighter. “Neither do I.”

“Thanks.” Marina exhaled, her breath curling into the December air. Above the city, gray clouds hung low over the buildings like anchored ships. She took another draw. With the other hand, she tried to keep the collar of her coat closed. The thin scarf she was wearing didn’t protect her from the wind, but it had been a gift from Esther.

“So there’s at least something of mine going to the courthouse with you,” Esther had stated with defiance when she had handed Marina the slim package. The small sticker that held the heavy bow in place told Marina that Esther had spent far more on this shawl than she should have, but she couldn’t refuse the gift. She had promised that she would wear it to the court appearance.

The heavy silk whispered against her neck in comfort and Marina knew that if she looked down, she would see the rich shades of green that reminded her of the mountains forests in early summer. Esther couldn’t have known that, of course, but it was an experience of colors that Marina wanted to share with her, perhaps this upcoming spring.

Marina blinked at the gray skies. She wished that Esther were here with her after all, despite all the reasons and the pragmatism that had led to Esther being at work right now, and Marina herself being here with Dr. Battelli and two of his colleagues.

“It’s been a gutsy move not to try for an agreement out of court,” Battelli commented while he blew wisps of smoke into the thin air. “But it really gives our motion to have the whole case tossed out much more momentum.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Marina looked at the orange glow of her cigarette and tried to imagine Esther’s arms around her, warm and strong and gentle. The case not getting tossed out was simply not an option. She would go crazy if she had to pretend for much longer that she and Esther weren’t interested in being a couple again. In fact, they did act around each other as if they had been a couple for much longer already. They discussed the case, their worries and work. They had dinner together, more nights than not. She had even given Esther the keys to her car so that Esther could drop by and drive them to work in the mornings, although they made sure not to have lunch together. At least not alone.

Officially, they were not a couple and it wouldn’t be a lie if someone asked Marina about it. Unofficially, Marina wasn’t sure how much of this tantalizing closeness to Esther she could take without losing her mind.

All this could have been over weeks ago, if Marina hadn’t insisted on refusing an out of court agreement. She had already been on her way to the meeting, telling herself that it was the best way to put a quick end to the accusations and to keep Esther out of it. But then she had seen the smug lawyers of the other side walk up and she had canceled the talk at the last moment.

She would not pay anyone off so that they would stop spreading lies. Luigi’s mother hadn’t even been in sight, probably shielded in the noble psychiatric residence that she had been admitted to instead of keeping her in remand while she awaited her trial for shooting Marina. Marina still wondered whether Luigi’s mother would have been able to look her in the eye, or whether she was so far gone that it was simply about a few ambitious lawyers using the broken woman to make some quick cash out of Marina’s estate.

She hadn’t been afraid for herself when she had canceled the negotiations. It had been a knee‑jerk reaction. Her only worry after the fact had been that now Esther might be dragged into the ugly accusations, especially if the case didn’t get rejected at the hearing.

But Esther’s reaction hadn’t been disappointment or fear, much less anger.

“I knew it,” she had simply stated. “And I know this might get ugly, but I’m glad that you didn’t make an agreement. I’m…” She had hesitated a little and Marina had wondered whether it was because of Teresa, who had to hover close by. “I’m proud of you.”

For a moment Marina had been speechless. “You know that this means that we have to be careful for a while longer,” she had then prodded.

“Well, that hearing has to happen eventually, right?” Esther joked, but it sounded more like sigh.

Marina thought of Esther leaving her at her door the night before, her arm threaded through Marina’s own as she helped her up the stairs. Esther’s coat had been unbuttoned, the warmth of her body palpable next to Marina’s in the cold, and through to the haphazardly wrapped shawl, the neckline of Esther’s shirt had offered a teasing glance in the low light of the door lamp.

“I don’t want to hide,” Marina had said. After all, not allowing to be criminalized simply for being gay was what this lawsuit was all about. “But I don’t want us to make ourselves vulnerable.” She didn’t want to put Esther at risk. The safest thing would probably have been to not see Esther at all, only at work and from afar, but that was not an option, not for Marina. And Esther had made it very clear that it wasn’t an option for her, either.

“As long as that doesn’t mean we can’t see each other anymore.” That had been her first words, and once more, Marina had experienced that little jolt, as if her own pulse couldn’t believe that Esther was right at her side and had to stop and stumble and then rush forward faster to keep up with her.

“No…” Relief had washed over Marina. Some days, it was still hard to believe that Esther was with her in all this, helping her. Comforting her. Waiting for her. Of course, they didn’t talk about this. They hadn’t talked about things between them, and what those things were, since that fateful envelope had arrived. They hadn’t even agreed not to talk about it for the time being, it had simply become something they didn’t mention, perhaps because then it would have been even more difficult to ignore those last five minutes in the evenings, when Esther knew she had to get up to leave for the night, and Marina knew that she couldn’t ask her to stay, though it didn’t stop her gaze from caressing Esther’s features. “Just nothing where we would have to lie in court,” Marina had said back then, and she had wondered whether she’d need cold showers in the upcoming weeks.

“Alright…” Esther’s reluctant agreement had made it clear that she was thinking about cold showers, too.

Marina had winced, a gesture Esther couldn’t see over the phone. “And if it takes longer?”

“It won’t take longer,” Esther had decided. “Those accusations are so ridiculous that they have to be rejected. And if they really want to make you go through trial… well, if they will go after us anyway, I’d at least like to have done the things they’ll accuse us of.”

Marina had laughed and they hadn’t spoken of it again, but she knew that she wouldn’t allow Esther being dragged into this.

“If it continues like this, we might end up with a white Christmas,” Battelli commented, nudging Marina out of her thoughts.

Marina pulled the scarf a little higher around her throat. “Probably not.”

Battelli smiled as he extinguished his smoke in the ashtray. “No, probably not.”

Marina tried to picture her cabin in the snow. She would have to change the tires on her car if she invited Esther up there for Christmas.

Perhaps after today, things would already be over. If they managed to have the case tossed out, it would happen in this hearing. Marina’s early confidence had dwindled, though, when Battelli had told her what he and his lawyers had gleaned from the correspondence with the other side, before that meeting which Marina had canceled at the last moment. It was going to be difficult, according to Battelli, since the other side was going much more after Marina’s reputation than angling for a financial agreement. Personal, that’s what Battelli had called it.

Luigi’s mother might have focused her whole anguish and ire on Marina, wanting to see her destroyed professionally, if not physically. It was a logical explanation, more logical than Esther’s – and Rocco’s, and Teresa’s – suspicion that Vera might have tipped off the lawyers. The fact alone that the papers had been delivered to Marina on her very first day back at work suggested that someone knew her schedules or could arrange for access to them. But Marina couldn’t believe that Vera might have a vested interest in damaging her professionally. They had been too close once to be doing such a thing to each other. Also, it wasn’t as if Vera had had a fight with her. She had tried to win Marina back at first, even visiting her in Tyrol, but then she had stopped visiting, most likely having lost interest at finding Marina struggling with herself.

Marina had even called Vera for advice in preparing the hearing, wanting to know her opinion, but Vera had been out of town on a conference, which was nothing unusual. Vera sat on the Pediatric Council for the entire province of Lombardy and frequently had to deal with malpractice claims.

Battelli cleared his throat behind her. “We need to go back in.”

“Fine.” Marina tossed the cold stub of her cigarette into the ashtray and accepted Battelli’s arm when he helped her up the two single stairs. Her crutch leaned next to the entrance and even though she wouldn’t have admitted it, she reached for it with relief.

She hadn’t worn heels in so long that her calves and lower back were hurting, but with how much trouble her leg and her arm had given her during these past few weeks, it didn’t really matter. She had thought it to be a normal part of the recovery process at first, but when the pains hadn’t subsided, she had talked to her physiotherapist. She had even consulted one of the orthopedists from the trauma ward, but nobody had been able to detect a physical reason. Stress, her physiotherapist had said, and too much tension. Something psychosomatic, the orthopedist had subsumed.

There had been many nights with only water to dinner, the bottle of wine remaining uncorked because Marina had to take painkillers. In the end, she accepted Esther’s help in getting off the brace more than one night, and she hadn’t even protested. She had needed all her willpower not to cry out. There was simply no energy left to worry about decorum.

But despite the pains, she had wanted to show up in the courthouse without her crutches.

“I refuse to look vulnerable in front of them,” she had declared.

But in the end, Battelli’s reasoning had trumped her ire. “You’re not going in there with your leg in a cast and in a wheelchair,” he had pointed out calmly. “It’s just crutches…”

“One crutch,” Marina had bargained.

“Fine, one crutch.” Battelli adjusted the knot of his tie. “That, and the knee brace. – And it’s not bad for our case if it is visible what the plaintiff did to you, and that you are not trying to use it as a wager.”

Marina didn’t like those games, but it wasn’t as if anything about her appearance had been left to chance. She wore a skirt. Esther had insisted. Or rather, Giovanna had insisted.

“I know this is stereotyping,” she had said, acknowledging Marina’s discomfort. “And you don’t have to like it. But I’ve seen this play out time and again. Some male judge, a female defendant who’s got more balls than he has, and then he has to prove that his gavel is the bigger one.”

It had been surreal to stand in front of her closet with both Esther and Giovanna, who – Marina had to admit that much – clearly knew what she was talking about. “Appear nonthreatening,” had been her advice. Marina had needed a while to realize why Giovanna accepted all hangers a little awkwardly with her left hand. Her right arm still had limited movement after the incident in the gay bar. She had looked over at Esther in reflex, the forming scar carefully concealed behind a strand of her, and suddenly it hadn’t mattered at all what she was or wasn’t supposed to wear to the hearing.

“Warm colors,” Giovanna had ticked off the list with her fingers. “Skirt, with a moderate length. And heels, but not too high.”

And the scarf Esther had given her, but that had been just between Esther and her. The lipstick was Marina’s own. As were the looks Esther had given her when she had first stepped into the living room in the skirt, the blouse still half unbuttoned, and with her heels leaving her a little closer to Esther’s lips in height.

“Do you think this will work?” Marina had stretched out her arms a little self-consciously.

But Esther hadn’t reacted. “Huh?” Her gaze slowly trailed along Marina’s hips and up to her face.

“Is this nonthreatening enough?” Marina asked, although she was much more interested in what was going through Esther’s head right then.

“It’s threatening my resolve,” Esther muttered, or perhaps Marina had only imagined it because then Esther cleared her throat and said, “Sure. This will work.”

“Don’t worry,” Battelli said quietly to Marina as they walked down the hallway. They didn’t speak and the rhythmical clang of Marina’s crutch against the floor was the only sound between them. “With this judge, we should be fine.”

It didn’t take away Marina’s unease. She didn’t like to depend on the idea of moral some judge or other might have. And she didn’t like making ploys for certain judges, either. She hadn’t asked him, but she knew that Battelli had taken great care in selecting this day and no other for the hearing. To Marina, it felt like cheating, as if the truth she stood for wasn’t good enough for the court.

“Justice is an illusion, Doctor,” Battelli said softly and Marina had to remember how he had called her Marina twenty years ago when she was a teenager and he worked for her parents already. “You need to pull some strings to make it work.”

Marina grimaced.

Battelli chuckled and looked at his watch. “Hopefully, it’ll be over in an hour and you can get back to living your life normally.”

“And to treating my patients,” Marina added.

Her professional reputation was what mattered more to her in facing these accusations, but as soon as the hearing began, it became apparent that the other side was much more interested in focusing on Marina’s private life and making it sound so sordid that she couldn’t possibly be allowed around children.

“Proof in this case will show that Marina Ranieri is not only guilty of malpractice, but that these incidents of malpractice are caused by an unstable, morally questionable condition…”

Marina tried to take deep breaths as the leading lawyer of the opposing side presented their case. The scarf around her neck wrinkled under the force of her grip. If only Esther could be here with her. She focused on her own breathing, the list of accusations against her making her so nauseous that she was afraid for a moment that she would have to throw up.

Marina studied the woman on the plaintiff’s bench. Luigi’s mother had her gaze downcast and didn’t really seem present. When the judge asked her whether she stood behind the charges her lawyer was listing, she didn’t answer at first and had to be prompted again.

The judge frowned at this, as did Marina who would have bet that Luigi’s mother stood under medication. She looked like a woman who didn’t care about anything anymore.

“Further, we will present new evidence to prove that Marina Ranieri’s inappropriate sexual conduct and her relationship with a subordinate at the workplace have directly contributed to the death of Luigi, the son of our client.” The lawyer sat down and Marina was enraged by his calm, as if he wouldn’t be aware of just having told a bunch of blatant lies.

“I am very sorry for you loss,” the judge addressed Luigi’s mother once more who only after a second raised her head in reaction. “Losing a child is the worst thing that could happen to anyone, and more so if it happens under conditions that we feel could have been changed to prevent death.”

Marina’s heart sank at the words. The judge had a sober, polished edge to his appearance that gave him a near military bearing, from his short-cropped, gray hair to his immaculately upright position in his seat. Perhaps the judge Battelli had been aiming at had been unexpectedly replaced. This one didn’t give Marina much hope.

“This exactly what we will prove,” the lawyer of the other side piped up again. “A pattern of malpractice and inappropriate behavior against patients, partially influenced by sexual relationships with subordinates at her current workplace. Those subordinates themselves have been linked to additional unstable behavior. The most prominent case here would be a nurse named Esther Bruno who has been part of a recent riot in a homosexual nightclub.”

Marina clenched her hands into fists underneath the table. If this hour was over, she would personally throttle that arrogant young prick for badmouthing Esther. And for belittling their relationship as merely an escapade in a supposed row of sexual adventures. Next to her, Battelli stood, closing the two top buttons of his jacket before he spoke. “Your Honor, Dr. Ranieri’s former partner has saved two lives during a recent hate-motivated attack on a gay bar – not a nightclub of any kind –, even though she suffered multiple injuries herself during the attack. The aggressors, by the way, are still being investigated in front of this court.” His tone was amiable, but Marina could see the tension in his shoulders.

“That doesn’t sound morally unstable, but admirable,” observed the judge. “In fact, it sounds like someone I’d like to have dinner with myself,” he added in a lighter tone. “Or any of us, for that matter.”

Marina coughed, completely taken by surprise by the judge’s words.

“Are you all right, Dr. Ranieri?” Marina could have sworn that behind the strict bearing, there was some amusement shining through the judge’s expression.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she managed.

“So… how is this nurse relevant to this case?” The judge looked at the plaintiff’s bench and Marina couldn’t help but think that he looked like a cat who had just stumbled upon a particularly dense mouse to play with.

“It’s completely irrelevant, Your Honor.” That was Battelli again. “Besides there being no doubts as to Ms. Bruno’s admirable conduct in a situation that put herself in immediate danger, my client was not dating her at the time. She wasn’t in a relationship with her any longer even before the plaintiff’s son got first admitted to her care.”

The judge gave Marina an even look. “And are you in a relationship with said nurse at this point, or at any point after the boy got admitted to your department?”

“No,” Marina replied truthfully. But hopefully soon again, she added mentally.

The judge turned towards the plaintiff’s bench again. “Leave the nurse out of this,” he ordered. “Are there any noted prior incidents to incriminate Dr. Ranieri?”

“Yes, Your Honor.” The slick young lawyer of the opposing side jumped to his feet again. “She slept with a colleague at her previous posting, too.”

“I meant incidents of malpractice,” the judge clarified in a ostensibly patient tone. Even the opposing lawyer himself had to wince at it.

“Eh… no,” he had to admit. “But it is a prior incident for unstable sexual behavior…”

“My client’s former partner instigated and also ended that relationship,” Battelli cut in. “After more than three years. We will extend a courtesy here plaintiff hasn’t granted us and keep any names out of this.”

“If three years in your opinion are unstable and…” The judge looked at the files in front of him. “…promiscuous,” he cited. “Then I’m afraid that your definition of unstable is not holding up in front of this court.”

“But it is directly linked to malpractice claims,” the opposing lawyer protested. “The accused left her previous posting since she couldn’t hold up professional conduct. I cite clouded judgment and unprofessional behavior.”

“My client offered to change her posting out of consideration for the other party,” Battelli corrected smoothly. “I fail to see where this would indicate malpractice.”

“I fail to see that, too,” the judge agreed. “Especially if there is no proof other than hearsay and speculation. – Do you have any evidence to show malpractice on Dr. Ranieri’s part unrelated to with whom she was – or wasn’t – in a relationship at the time?”

“We have the examination protocols, the patient file and the ordered tests run on the plaintiff’s son,” the opposing lawyer listed. “And we have the sworn statement of the plaintiff herself that the accused has made improper comments against both her and her son.”

The judge folded his hands in front of him. “Are there any witnesses for this?”

“Plaintiff and accused,” the opposing layer said.

“No reports on prior incidents, from either posting?” The judge questioned impatiently.

“No,” the lawyer had to admit. “But we have expert testimony on unstable sexual identity impairing professional conduct, especially in ethically charged professions.”

“And then the defense would organize an expert testimony to the contrary, and I’d have to justify why I waste taxpayer’s money on a question that depends on personal moral values,” the judge continued. “Are there any prior malpractice claims, the case of the plaintiff’s son excluded, against Dr. Ranieri?”

“Perhaps nobody dared to file a complaint,” the opposing lawyer suggested. “And we have the complete documentation on the case of the plaintiff’s tragically lost son.”

“Opposing counsel is forgetting to mention that a malpractice claim concerning the indeed tragic death of the plaintiff’s son has already been brought forward, resulting in the complete exoneration of my client and her employers.” Battelli didn’t sound smug, but Marina noted the satisfaction in his tone. He had the other side cornered on the central issue. “Also, we can bring forward ample testimony of both colleagues and patients regarding the outstanding professional and ethical record of Dr. Ranieri.”

“You’re wasting my time, and you’re wasting the people’s time,” the judge addressed the opposing counsel sternly. “Also, you’re wasting Dr. Ranieri’s time, who during this past hour could have done a lot more good at her workplace than here.” He closed the open folders in front of him while Marina looked over at Luigi’s mother, who seemed as indifferent as before, looking down at her legs. “Your client has had one shot at revenge already, causing a lasting damage to Dr. Ranieri’s health,” the judge continued to admonish the young lawyer and Marina was reminded of the edge of the brace that was peeking out from under her knee-length skirt. Now she felt cheap for not having bought a skirt that would have hidden it completely. She didn’t want to evoke pity. “I suggest you leave it at that and remind your client that we’ve left the age of personal feuds clouded as justice behind. There are no words for her loss, but this is not the way to deal with it.” He straightened in his seat and addressed the whole room. “Case dismissed.”

Relief washed over Marina, a sensation so intense that she temporarily forgot to breathe. It was over. It was finally over.

She could get up now and walk out of this door. She could take the next cab over to the hospital and have lunch with Esther, holding hands for the whole cafeteria to see. She could leave this building without the weight of the helpless ire that the unfounded accusations had caused. All that would fade away now – the restless, nervous sleep, the sharp tension behind her and the constant, dull ache in her leg.

And the best thing of all was that she was still Dr. Ranieri, pediatrician, with a clean record and a job she loved.

“Ready to get out of here, Doctor?” Through the murmurs in the room, Batelli leaned down to her and offered his arm.

Marina took it, reaching for her crutch with the other hand and pulling herself upright. She smothered a wince when she tried to put some weight on her right leg. The first thing she would do was to get out of these shoes. “Thank you, Dr. Battelli.” She smiled, a little surprised at how easy it was. Despite the feeling of relief, her feet were heavy.

Her other lawyers fell into step behind her. When they passed the plaintiff group in the whole, Marina straightened involuntarily. She tried to catch a glimpse of Luigi’s mother who stood lost in between the animated discussion of her lawyers. She still didn’t look up, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she had to ward off the cold of the high ceiling and marble floors.

Marina couldn’t assuage the feeling of guilt. It might have been nigh impossible to detect that aneurysm on time, but the fact remained that Luigi had died in her care and that the mourning woman across the room would never have that feeling of lightness again that just had been restored to Marina. For a moment, she debated whether she should walk closer, to say something, but Luigi’s mother didn’t look up. Just then, the young lawyer who had spoken for most of the hearing caught sight of her and leveled a glare of such hatred at her that Marina involuntarily pulled the lapels of her jacket closer, finding the soft fabric of her scarf.

“How about the back exit?” That was Battelli again, pushing his frame in between Marina and the angry young man. “There shouldn’t be any press out there and I can have Gazzaniga pick up my car. I’ll give you a lift.” He tossed his car keys at one of his younger colleagues even as he talked.

Marina nodded gratefully, She didn’t want to look as if she was evading anyone, but her leg hurt and she wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. From the car, she could call Esther and tell her the good news. Right now, she needed one hand for the crutch and with the other, she had accepted Battelli’s arm, leading her to the small side exit where they had shared a cigarette earlier.

“These stairs are bad in a weather like this,” Battelli commented while he helped Marina down the set of stone steps. He nodded down at his polished wingtip shoes. “I’ve slipped here once or twice myself. A colleague from the bar association even broke his arm out here once, Ernesto Lombardi… He’s had a bit of bad luck lately, got hospitalized again recently. Something with his head.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marina answered automatically. The few steps down to the curb seemed endless. Certainly Esther would have a set of hospital clogs for her at the Morandini, and then she would finally be able to kick off these heels…

The steps suddenly seemed to come closer, moving around her. There was a distant noise, metal scraping against stone. Marina still reached up to her scarf in reflex before she collapsed onto the wet stairs.

“How long does such a hearing take?” Esther walked across the counter until she stood next to Teresa. “Shouldn’t it be over by now?”

Teresa raised her hands in a defensive gesture. “Look, if you want to trample pathways into my floor again…”

“It’s the hospital’s floor,” Esther corrected. She looked at her wristwatch again.

“But I work here,” Teresa pointed out. She felt protective of her space behind the counter, in between the file cabinets and the phone lines.

“Fine,” Esther agreed, straightening where she stood. “No pacing. – See?” The posture lasted but a second as her shoulders slumped again and she nervously chewed her lip. “Really, should this take so long?”

“You heard her,” Teresa said with all the patience she could muster. “Even I heard her.” It had been a topic of much discussion between them during the past weeks. “Various times,” she added under her breath.

Esther lifted her head. “What was that?”

“Nothing.” Teresa sighed. “But do you remember how she told us just yesterday that it might be a couple of hours?”

“Or a couple of months,” Esther muttered unhappily.

Teresa barely avoided to roll her eyes. “Huh?”

“If this doesn’t get tossed out…” Esther gave Teresa a helpless look. “How long will we have to stay apart if this goes to court?”

“You won’t,” Teresa stated practically. Her counter wouldn’t survive a couple of months with a nervous Esther on the prowl. Also, she didn’t see neither Marina nor Esther upholding this charade for as much as another week. “They will toss it out, you’ll see.”

Esther wasn’t convinced. “If Vera is behind it, she bought the best lawyers.”

“Sometimes, even the best lawyers can’t bend the truth.” Teresa shook her head. “Not even in this country.”

Esther was about to ask since when Teresa read the politics section of the newspaper and didn’t skip right ahead to the gossip pages, but a soft buzz against her hip interrupted her. “That’s got to be her.” She fumbled for her cell phone, her pulse speeding up when she saw ‘Marina’ blink across the screen. “It’s her!” Esther needed two tries to hit the right button, causing Teresa to smile fondly.

“Marina!” Esther didn’t care who in the hall might hear her. “How did it go?”

“Eh… Ms. Bruno?” A male voice at the other end of the line inquired. “This is Simone Battelli, Marina’s lawyer.”

“Did they lock her up?” It was the first thing that occurred to Esther’s frightened mind. Prisoners were only allowed a call to their lawyer, if she remembered correctly from TV.

“What?” Battelli needed a moment to understand her question. “No, nothing like that.” He laughed. “The case got tossed out, she has been fully exonerated.”

“Oh thank God.” Esther slumped against the counter on unsteady legs. “But what…”

“She overdid it a little, I think.” Esther could hear traffic noises across the line and a very familiar mumble of “I’m fine!” in the background. “She probably overstrained her leg,” Battelli explained. “In between the heels and the weather, she fell on the stairs on the way out.”

Esther gripped the phone with both hands. “Is she alright?”

“A little pale around the nose, but fine otherwise.” Battelli seemed to be in a very good mood after the outcome of the hearing, but Esther didn’t share his unfazed attitude at the news of Marina having suffered a fall. “I offered her a lift home,” Battelli continued. “But she wanted to drive to the hospital. It’s probably better to check out her leg, and she also hurt her arm while falling.” He must have heard how Esther sucked in a breath because he hastened to add “She’s fine, though. – Smiling, in fact. Just so you know.” Marina muttered something in the background that Battelli couldn’t hear and Battelli chuckled. “We should be there in a few minutes, depending on the traffic.”

“How did it go? How? How?!!” Esther hadn’t even disconnected yet when Teresa all but assaulted her. “What’s that with locking up? Did they put her in jail?”

“No.” Esther shook her head. Slowly, the good news were getting through to her. She smiled broadly. “The case got tossed out.”

“Yes!” Teresa shouted triumphantly and threw her arms around Esther, wrapping her in a close hug. Perhaps it was because Esther didn’t reach immediately, but Teresa seemed to be slightly embarrassed by her own enthusiasm and took a step backwards. “I mean, that’s great.”

“Yes.” Esther nodded, still surprised by Teresa’s effusiveness. Teresa wasn’t someone who touched people easily, unlike Gandini, who naturally tended to end up with a hand on a shoulder or an arm or around a waist all the time. And since Teresa knew about Esther and Marina, she had kept a physical distance around Esther that Esther herself, until now, hadn’t even been conscious of.

“And, what else?” Teresa asked impatiently. “Why did you ask whether she was alright?”

“It wasn’t her, it was Battelli, the lawyer – he says she fell on the stairs on her way out. She hurt her leg, perhaps her arm.” Esther frowned. “Perhaps it was those shoes, darn it. I should have told her… She’ll be here in a minute. We need to check her leg.”

“I’ll send for a wheelchair.” Teresa was reaching for her phone already.

“She’ll hate that,” Esther warned her.

Teresa grinned. “Yes.” Clearly, Marina being exonerated meant to Teresa that Marina, hurt leg or not, could take a jibe again.

It made Esther smile. Things were indeed getting back to normal.

“Esther…” Palumbo came running into the hall, his white lab coat open. Next to Esther, Teresa straightened. “I need some help with woman in Curtain 4. The convulsions are back.”

“Damn,” Esther cursed under her breath, but she was already running. “Wasn’t Valentina with her?”

“She went to grab a bite,” Palumbo explained. “She’s been on duty since last night.”

“And they have three new nurses’ contracts frozen upstairs,” Esther commented while she was trying to keep up with him. “No matter how I try to fix the shifts…” Not to mention that right now, she wanted to drop everything and wait for Marina. “Damn.”

“You tell me,” Palumbo agreed and when he turned to look and Esther, she wondered whether his hair actually looked like that after a stressful shift, or whether he spend half an hour every morning putting it artfully in that just-so-disheveled look that made Teresa mix up patient files and stand straighter behind her counter. “If it weren’t for my daughter, I’d go back. Palumbo admitted. “This past weekend, a colleague from Barcelona called me – they have four open positions at his clinic, two in surgery… Nearly twice the pay and much better hours.”

“Private clinic?” Esther inquired while she was already slipping into a pair of gloves.

“Nope.” Palumbo shook his head.

Esther sighed. “Some people really have all the luck…” Her own share of luck for the day seemed to have been used up by Marina’s case getting tossed out and there was apparently no sliver left that would have enabled her to be at the door when Marina arrived.

“I’m sorry, she got called to a patient with Palumbo,” was the first thing Teresa said when she helped Marina – with the assistance of Battelli – into the waiting wheelchair. “Congratulations.”

Marina, who was indeed a little pale around the nose, gave Teresa a mistrusting look. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she questioned as Teresa began to push her down the hall.

“You bet, Dr. Ranieri,” Teresa said, but when she saw how awkwardly Marina cradled her left arm against her chest, she didn’t make any further jokes.

“At least you didn’t break anything,” was the first thing Gandini said once Marina had been taken to wait, and then to X-rays, and then to wait some more. “But that arm will hurt for a while.” Gandini held an X-ray up against the light and squinted at it.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Marina grumbled. “And my leg?”

“Just as you suspected, inflammation due to strain.” Gandini looked at the heels that sat on the floor next to the stretcher where Marina lay with her leg propped up. “How did you even manage to walk on these shoes?”

Marina grimaced when Gandini touched the tissue around her knee. “If you had seen the arrogant prick who led the lawsuit, you’d have walked on them, too.”

Gandini paused for a moment. “But you won.”

“Yes.” Despite the aches and the dizziness, Marina smiled.

“Congratulations.” Gandini looked up from where she was still examining Marina’s knee. “I’m so glad that this whole nightmare is over. – I can’t begin to imagine how relieved you must be!”

“Very,” Marina confessed. “And as soon as I’m done with this drip and things stop moving in circles around my head, I’ll be celebrating.” She glanced past the bag of transparent liquid that was slowly making its way into her bloodstream. “I just wish I were in better shape.”

“You’re in no shape to party,” Gandini observed while she slathered a dark, odd smelling salve onto Marina’s swollen knee. “But you… Ooh.” She raised her head to meet Marina’s gaze and then shook her head. “Oh dear.” She focused on her work again. “The ER head nurse will be in a horribly tense mood for another week, I fear.”

“Another week?” Marina protested.

“You need rest.” Gandini’s tone broke no argument. “A few days on the couch with no strain. And by no strain, I mean none. – The only thing on your schedule are anti-inflammatory meds, and rest. And thank God you hurt your left arm again, so you can still use the right one to maneuver yourself through your apartment with a crutch. If not, I’d order you to stay here for the next two days.”

“You wouldn’t,” Marina said, but faced with Gandini’s determined expression, she was not so sure.

“You bet I would,” Gandini muttered. “And you’re in no shape to argue. You can’t even lift your head without getting green around the gills.”

“That’s not fair,” Marina protested. She didn’t raise her head too far, though, because Gandini was right.

“Heaven knows what you’ve done to your blood sugar.” Gandini gave Marina a stern look. “If you were my girlfriend, I’d ban you to the couch with a tray of cookies.”

The room still kept spinning around Marina’s head. “I wonder whether Esther can bake cookies…”

“You keep thinking about that, and let that drip do its work.” With that, Gandini stood and padded Marina’s unhurt thigh. “And I’ll try to find Esther and give her a fair warning. If she sees you like this…”

By the time the next visitor stopped by the small, unadorned treatment room that was mainly used to draw blood and store supplies, Marina was feeling a lot better. She moved to sit up when the knock on the door sounded, but the door was being opened at the same time, leaving her no time to upright herself, limited in her movements by the drip that still hadn’t finished its run.

“Dr. Ranieri – are you alright?” Marta from Pediatrics edged into the room, looking oddly shy behind a bouquet of flowers that bore the logo of the store across the street. “We heard you won your litigation, but had an accident afterwards – so these were meant to congratulate, but I guess they also count as a ‘get well soon’.”

“Thank you.” Marina was honestly surprised. And a little disappointed, since she had expected Esther, but really, that wasn’t Martha’s fault. “Who is ‘we’?” She wondered aloud, not sure she wanted to know who else in the hospital knew of the accusations that had been made against her.

“The team from Pediatrics.” Again, Marta seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “We know you’re with the ER, but the work with you during these past few weeks was really nice, and no matter how that litigation would have gone, we just wanted you to know that we want you to stay…”

“That’s…” Marina blinked. In between the day she had had and the unexpected show of kindness, she was about to cry. “Thank you, Marta. I’ve enjoyed these past few weeks as well, even though I’ve been kind of impaired.” She gestured at her leg while Marta, now more in her element, set down the flowers – in all practicality, she had already included a glass jar that served as a vase – on the small medical cabinet. “Really, you should be careful – if you keep treating me like this, I’ll apply for Luisi’s post when he retires in spring.”

Marta looked up at her joke, but wasn’t laughing. “You’re considering it?” Her hopeful tone told Marina that this question had apparently been the subject of a talk or two among the nurses.

It was an idea that honestly hadn’t occurred to Marina. She had always taken for granted that she’d return to her ER post, next to Esther. But at the moment, there was no way to know how long her leg would take to recover fully. And if she and Esther continued as a couple, something Marina was very much hoping for, it might be smart not to be in the exact same department, if only to avoid claims like the ugly lawsuit Esther almost had gotten drawn into. And then there was the fact that Marina had really enjoyed these past few weeks, at a somewhat slower pace, with a chance to decide things on her own. “Perhaps,” Marina allowed, nodding slowly. She’d talk to Esther about it.

“We’d be behind you,” Marta added and for a moment, she stood in the middle of the room, fiddling with her hands. “Anyway… get well soon.”

“Thanks, Marta,” Marina repeated, but Marta was already on her way out.

Marina leaned back against the wall behind her. “Department Head of Pediatrics…” That didn’t sound bad at all. She had the qualifications, in fact, she had defended them today in front of a court. She might be a bit young for the post, but since it was just a department inside a larger structure, it wasn’t that far off. Marco Pedrazzini, who was the head of Obstetrics, was even younger than she was.

Marina toyed with the wrinkled ends of her scarf. If only Esther would get a minute of break and would come to see her. Marina would have gone searching for Esther herself, but the drip and the absence of her crutch – she suspected that Gandini had had it removed on purpose – made that impossible. Marina glowered at the drip for good measure. She turned her left wrist in reflex, to check the time on her watch, and winced at the motion. Moving her left arm was a bad idea. Even more so since it sported no watch. Her watch, just like her phone and her entire handbag, were in Teresa’s hands, who had offered to guard the things for her when Marina had been wheeled into X-rays.

Just when Marina wondered whether right at this moment, her entire agenda was being downloaded into Teresa’s network, hurried steps came closer on the corridor outside. Marina sat up straighter, bur before she could worry about how she might look like, the door got thrown open without preamble and a disheveled Esther, a surgical cap still askew on her head, stormed into room.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier, I was in surgery…” She was still out of breath.

“I’m sorry for worrying you…” Marina spoke at the same time and she tried to make the drip in the background look as casual as possible.

They stared at each other for a second, their smiles a little awkward as they realized that there was nothing holding them apart any longer. It seemed to make them shy around the space between them, until Esther walked closer, checking the drip and then bandage around Marina’s knee. “What happened?”

Marina smiled at the sensation of Esther’s hands against her legs. “They tried to argue that I was sexually deprived and couldn’t be allowed around children, but the judge told them off. Soundly.”

“Not that.” Esther shook her head, her hands still on Marina’s leg, where the seam of her skirt had been doubled and moved up to treat her. “You fell?”

“It was just those stupid, slippery stairs, and in between the shoes and the crutch…” Marina saw how Esther’s eyes darted to the drip and back. “And I was a little dizzy,” she amended.

“Dizzy?” Esther questioned sharply.

Marina shrugged, her expression sheepish. “I didn’t eat all day…”

“I should have known.” Esther sighed, half with aggravation and half with relief. She sat down on the edge of the stretcher, mindful of Marina’s leg. “You really prefer this to a sandwich?” she asked, her fingers stroking lightly across the back of Marina’s right hand, where the drip was anchored.

“Well, I heard it’s all the rage and it saves you from having to brush your teeth…” Marina tried to joke, but then she simply leaned forward, a little closer to Esther. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said softly. Esther’s fingers were still touching her own. “In between the stress, and my leg, and the painkillers… it was a little too much, that’s all.”

“Well, if it’s just that…” Esther’s fingers seemingly on their own, intertwined themselves with Marina’s. “I’ll get you a sandwich.” It was so much easier to focus on the simple things at hand, like food or a drip or bandage, and not on the things that made her stomach flipflop and the walls of the room circle around her, like the intent expression of Marina’s eyes, or the sight of her legs in that skirt, or the scent of her hair and the fact that she hadn’t kissed her in months.

“I think Gandini already called the cafeteria to send something up.” Marina’s gaze dropped to their linked fingers. “And… can I have a hug first?”

Esther released a shaky breath. “Of course.” She was careful not to jar the drip as she wrapped her arms around Marina, feeling the fine wool of the suit jacket and the silk of the scarf she had given to Marina against her arms. “Of course.”

“It’s over,” Marina whispered, her forehead against Esther’s own. “It’s finally over.” She reached up and pulled the surgical cap from Esther’s head, relieved that their closeness hid her wince at the motion.

“It’s over,” Esther repeated, as if she still couldn’t believe it herself, and Marina felt her nod more than she saw it.

Marina had really only wanted to hug Esther. Her senses were still shaky around her, needing time to allow themselves to relax once more into this contact. But as the realization sank in, slowly, that the whole nightmare of the lawsuit was finally over, other, less rational realizations joined in. Esther’s hands against her back. The rush of her own pulse. Esther’s eyes, closing, and the quick rhythm of their uneven breathing.

Marina didn’t have her hands to balance, or her arms to pull Esther closer. All she could do was tilt her head and catch Esther’s lips with her own. A bit to the side, awkwardly, and with a tremble, but that got quickly brushed aside when Esther cupped her face between her hands and returned the kiss, with exquisite care, as if she was listening after every breath they exchanged.

The suit jacket was too warm all of a sudden, but there was nothing Marina could do. Her head fell back, relaxing fully into Esther’s hold, and with the fingers of her good hand, she held onto Esther’s scrubs, as if she could prevent the kiss from ending, or as if Esther even wanted to end it.

Marina didn’t know at what point Esther’s breathing had become harsher, or their kisses deeper, she only knew that her body was pressed impossibly close to Esther’s, cradled against her, and that she would die if this contact lessened as much as a fraction. She wasn’t conscious of anything else, until a loud clang made them jump apart.

In the door stood Teresa, having dropped a tray with a sandwich and a bottle of juice to be able to cover her eyes with her hands. “For God’s sake, girls…” Teresa peeped through two fingers. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” She lowered her hands and leveled an accusing glare at Marina. “You’re still on a drip!”

“I know,” Marina murmured, while she gingerly adjusted the cord that had gotten jarred over Teresa’s unexpected entrance. “You could have knocked, though.”

“I did!” Teresa protested. “Two times!”

“Uh…” Esther blushed furiously.

“I guess we didn’t hear that,” Marina commented guilelessly. Esther looked adorable this way, her ponytail undone, her cheeks bright red and her breathing still coming quicker than normal. Marina bit her lip.

Something must have reflected in her gaze, because Teresa hastened to back up to the door. “I’ll just leave…”

It was curious to see that Teresa was blushing, too, but with her hand already on the doorknob, curiosity won out. “So…was Dr. Corradi there? In court?”

“No.” Marina cleared her throat and moved a few wild strands of hair out of her vision. “And I think it can’t have been her…”

“The lawyers weren’t good enough,” Teresa guessed immediately.

Marina nodded in surprise. “Exactly.” That had been her own thoughts, as well.

Teresa didn’t look too convinced though. “Perhaps she had to resort to lesser lawyers with such a shady claim…” She looked and Marina expectantly. “And now?”

“Now I have to wait for this drip to finish its work.” Marina held up her right hand. “And then Gandini ordered me to go home and rest. No work until the end of the week. I put too much strain on my leg and got a tissue inflammation… and I guess the stress these past few weeks hasn’t helped either.”

Also Esther was listening attentively now. These were all questions she probably should have asked earlier, but she had never gotten around to it, and when Marina had looked at her like that, well, there had been more important things at hand. “You managed to get another inflammation around the ligament rupture?”

“Nothing a bit of rest won’t cure,” Marina was quick to say. “Gandini is still following up a blood test to make sure, and they’re checking whether it’s really only a bruise on my left arm, but other than, that, I’m good to go. In a couple of hours, that is.”

“That could be worse,” Teresa admitted. “Well, at least you’ve got something to eat and to drink now. And I could send up some magazines…”

“I can do that,” Esther volunteered.

“Without tearing out that drip?” Teresa raised an eyebrow at her. “But oh, what I actually wanted to tell you… there’s some shift mix-up between Valentina and Susanna, but there’s also a big envelope from the board of directors waiting for your signature…”

“A contract for an additional nurse?” Esther asked hopefully.

“I think so.” Teresa shrugged. “Mind you, it’s still closed… of course… but the weight and the size are right.”

“I’ll get to that immediately.” Esther placed a hand on Marina’s shoulder and she couldn’t resist to smooth her fingers across the somewhat wrinkled scarf. “And I still have a meeting later… but I’ll be back as soon as possible and then…” She checked her watch. “I’ll drive you home once you’re done here. I just need to run a quick errand beforehand, I have your car loaded with wood for my father; I promised to help him with mounting new shelves – he’s redoing my room as a hobby room for himself.”

Marina gestured at her drip. “I’m not going anywhere for a while yet. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Only when Teresa and Esther had left, she remembered that she had wanted to ask for her phone and her agenda. Marina leaned back against the wall. Her knee hurt angrily where Esther had leaned against it, but Marina wouldn’t change anything about the past few minutes. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel Esther’s lips against her own.

Marina wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she woke again. At some point, a nurse who had sadly not been Esther had removed the needle from her hand and wheeled the drip away. On the small counter across from her stretcher sat a couple of magazines. She hadn’t noticed anyone entering to place them there.

Gandini had checked on her once more before leaving, or at least Marina thought so. The pain medication had left her dozing on and off, smiling at images of Esther not moving back in with her father. If he really intended to turn Esther’s room into a room to tinker with tools or model railways or nativity set figurines, it meant that Esther could not go back there. It also meant that Cesare Bruno, albeit grudgingly, was accepting that his daughter was an adult who was supposed to live on her own. Or with one slightly impaired, but tenacious pediatrician.

And when Esther’s sublet owner came back from Honduras, perhaps she could stay with Marina for a while. Just while she was looking for a new place, of course. Or perhaps, they might even be looking for a new place together…

“Hey…”

Marina blinked her eyes open when she felt a hand stroking a few loose strands of hair out of her face.

“Wha…” She must have dozed off. In front of her, crouched down to meet her eyes, stood Esther. She had already changed out of her scrubs and wore an open coat and two bags over her arm. One of them, Marina recognized as her own.

“My things…” she murmured.

“Don’t worry, Teresa had them stashed away under the counter.” Esther smiled, touching the point of her index finger to Marina’s nose. “Ready to head home, sleepyhead?”

“I’m sorry.” Marina tried to sit up and winced when she momentarily forgot that balancing herself on her left arm was not a good idea at the moment. “I guess I was tired…” Her mouth tasted like sleep and she was sure that her hair was sticking out in all the wrong directions.

“In between the stress and the medication, it would be strange if you weren’t sleepy,” Esther observed, while she helped Marina to upright herself. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

Esther smelled as if she had just stepped out of a shower and Marina could have sworn that her hair still was a little damp at the nape of her neck. Despite her drowsy state, Marina tried to sit up straighter.

“Thanks,” she remembered to say as she swung her left leg across the side of the stretcher and managed to make the other one follow suit with just a little help from Esther. Her leg felt lighter without the weight from the brace – as long as the inflammation was acute, she was not supposed to wear it – and it didn’t even hurt much at the moment, though Marina knew that it was due to the painkillers she had been given.

She shook her head at the wheelchair Esther was moving towards her. “That’s not necessary.” She tried to stand. “See, I can waaal…”

Esther caught Marina just in time before her leg could give out fully. “You sit,” she ordered sternly.

Marina thought that she shouldn’t find that bossy tone quite so sexy. Least of all when it resulted in her being wheeled out of the hospital like an old woman. She hadn’t even combed her hair.

Thankfully, at least Teresa was nowhere to be seen and when Marina’s gaze fell upon the brightly lit clock in the reception hall, she understood why. “It’s already past eight?” She frowned. “Just how much ibuprofen did they put into that drip?!” But no matter how much it had been, she still noticed her arm when Esther wheeled her out into the street and she reflexively pulled up her shoulders against the cold.

“I brought you a jacket,” Esther said while she opened the car door.

Marina smiled, more at the fact that Esther noticed her small gestures than at the oversized blue fleece jacket Esther fished from the passenger seat. “I’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure Esther – after all, twenty minutes of city traffic wouldn’t give her a cold – but the garment that Esther held out to her smelled like Esther, like her laundry detergent and her apartment, and Marina would have put it around her shoulders even if she had been wearing her winter coat.

With her right arm and Esther’s help, she managed to heave herself into the passenger’s seat.

“Your car really hasn’t been made for patient transports,” Esther muttered somewhere close to her shoulder, making Marina laugh.

“I didn’t buy it to transport patients.” After the hours on the hospital stretcher, the back of the car seat felt like a friendly hug and Marina let herself slump against it. The car smelled like fresh wood and like Esther and as Marian relaxed into it, the tiredness returned with a vengeance. She didn’t protest when Esther pulled a light blanket over her legs – her shins were bare, and she still wore the skirt from the court performance. “Mhmm.” She didn’t even find it odd that there was suddenly a blanket in her car that she had never seen before.

“Ready to go?” Esther questioned, and Marina had to turn her head a little to look at her. Of course, with the length of Esther’s legs, she had moved the car seat backwards, granting her much more space than Marina’s normal settings would have.

“I’m sorry.” Marina suppressed a yawn. “I know we’ve both waited for this to be over, to be through with the court at last… and now I’m falling asleep.”

“That’s alright.” Esther started the motor and adjusted the back mirror. “Just go ahead and sleep for a while. With the sludge on the streets, we might need half an hour anyway.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to Marina’s temple. “I’ll wake you.”

“Thank you…” Marina’s eyes were dark in the low light of the car. “You changed,” she noted drowsily, her eyes already closing. “You didn’t wear that shirt earlier…” Her fingertips remembered the thin shirt Esther had worn under her scrubs earlier. It hadn’t been the smooth woolen jersey that she was sporting now.

Esther laughed. “I was carrying wood up to my father’s apartment, remember?”

“Your father’s apartment…” Marina smiled. Her father’s, and not Esther’s.

“Do you mind if I put on some music?” Esther reached for the car radio.

“No, s’okay…”Marina was asleep even before the car had left the hospital areal.

“Marina… Marina?” The voice next to her ear was gentle.

“Huh?” Marina straightened in the car seat. Her body ached as if it had been cramped into the car seat for hours.

“Wake up, we’re there.” Esther smiled at her in the darkness and her face was close enough that Marina could have reached out to touch it with a mere tip of her finger.

Only at second thought did she realize that the street shouldn’t be so dark. She wondered whether somebody had smashed the streetlamp across the street, or whether in this city, even the streetlamps could go on a strike, but at the same time, she recognized the smell. It was a smell of wood, but not of polished boards to build shelves, but of wild pines and fir trees. It was a smell she had known since she could remember.

“Wha…” Marina struggled to sit up in her seat, but she trailed off when she looked out of the front window and saw the familiar structure in the shine of two lone headlights.

“My cabin?” she asked incredulously.

She turned to look at Esther, and Esther could have cried at the surprise and happiness that lay in that look. It was the most relaxed she had seen Marina in weeks, if not months, and it was well worth the long nighttime drive in the small car and the hours of hectic preparation earlier.

“I figured if you had to rest for a few days, you could also do it up here,” Esther said quietly.

“But you’re staying with me?” Marina’s first, hopeful question made Esther smile broadly.

“Of course I am.” She leaned over to brush another strand of tousled hair out of Marina’s face. “If you want me to. – Since you always promised to take me here and never did, well, I figured I had to take matters into my own hands.”

“But how did you even know the way?” Marina asked, and then she remembered something else. “But I don’t have the key with me, it’s in my apartment!”

“All taken care of.” Esther held up a small set up keys that Marina recognized.

“But how…?” she asked, but then she answered her own question. “Teresa.”

“That was just to find out about the place,” Esther said. “And to print the route from the internet. And then it just took me a trip to your place and some quick packing.” She hesitated a little. “I hope you don’t mind I took your key and went there… it only occurred to me this afternoon.”

“I don’t mind.” Marina opened the car door, breathing in the crisp air that tasted of clear winter skies full of stars and long walks in the frosty woods. “At all.” With her good hand, she reached for Esther’s face, gently caressing her cheek. “Thank you.”

Esther’s smile was an answering caress. She placed her hand atop Marina’s. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

Getting Marina inside turned out to be a little more difficult than both of them had imagined, though. Esther had brought the crutches – it wasn’t as if Marina’s vintage beetle had storage space for a wheelchair, and Marina’s look at the mention of yet another wheelchair wasn’t the most delighted, either – but Marina could only use one of them. The gravel crunched unevenly beneath its tip and even though the few steps up to the small house weren’t very steep, they cost Marina. The cold air tore at her tired and aching body and all she could think of was a warm mug of tea and a bed to sleep.

This was not how she had imagined to show her little hideaway to Esther, and she had imagined it plenty of times.

And to Esther, everything seemed to be normal. She carried packed bags and food into the cabin, locked up the car, found the light in the small kitchen and had hung up her coat in the wardrobe before Marina had even reached the door. Esther had offered to help her walk, but of course Marina had refused. It was enough that she felt decades older at the moment, she didn’t need to act like it, too.

She closed the door behind herself with relief and hoped that Esther wouldn’t notice her leaning against the wall to catch her breath for a moment. Marina didn’t know what time it was, but the painkillers were wearing off.

“Your definition of ‘cabin’ is a little aristocratic, isn’t?” Esther called from the kitchen.

Marina hauled herself two steps more ahead, finding Esther with her hands on her hips, staring at a small edition of the fancy espresso machine that occupied most of the counter in Marina’s Milan kitchen.

“That’s not the definition of ‘cabin’, it’s the definition of ‘coffee’,” Marina replied and despite her state of exhaustion, the give-and-take with Esther made her smile. And even though it wasn’t the way she might have envisioned it to be, it was still a secret dream come true to see Esther standing in the middle of her cabin – fine, so it was a little more ample than a cabin – and stashing away groceries into the kitchen cupboards.

“But your definition of ‘cabin’ is a little aristocratic, too.” Esther bent down to clear away the last of the bags and Marina knew that she had to be beyond exhausted when she barely remembered to enjoy the view while she could. “A kitchen, a living-room, two floors… The cabins I know from my study group travels were more along the lines of one big room, bare wood, the cows in one corner and everyone bringing their sleeping bag.” She stood and turned around to look at Marina. “Also, they didn’t have an access way for the car.”

“Wait until you see the private ski lift access,” Marina said.

Esther’s eyes widened. “You have a private ski lift access?!”

“No, of course not.” Marina laughed.“There’s no ski lift on this side of the valley, thank God.” She winked at Esther. “See, it’s not that aristocratic after all.” She tried to shift her weight, but the formal skirt she wore didn’t really give her space to move. At the last moment, she balanced herself against the fridge, unfortunately with her left arm. She sucked in a breath and waited for the nausea to subside. “Bad… idea…”

“Marina—” Esther was immediately at her side, catching her weight. “Are you alright?”

“Mhmm…” Marina still kept her eyes closed, relishing the warmth of Esther’s arms. “Just hurts a little…”

“Of course, it’s past midnight!” Esther stepped back to look at her watch. “You need to take your medication!” She shook her head, angry at herself for not having caught onto this earlier. “I didn’t want to wake you during the drive…”

Marina smiled wanly. “And the surprise worked much better this way.” She held onto Esther’s shoulders. “Could you get me a glass out of the cupboard?”

“Sure…” Esther looked back and forth between the cupboard and Marina, who was decidedly wobbly on her feet now. “But perhaps we should get you upstairs into bed first.”

It didn’t sound the least bit sensually charged. Marina was somewhat peeved at the complete lack of interest in Esther’s tone. Even though it was more than obvious that she wouldn’t be able to do anything tonight, it still would have been nice to know that Esther was at least conscious of the ambiguity of her comment.

“The bedroom is upstairs?” Esther continued, unaware of Marina’s disappointment.

“Yes, it’s…” Marina hesitated, but then she gave in. “Perhaps I’ll just sleep on the couch down here.”

“What?” Now Esther seemed to be disappointed.

“It’s a pull-out bed, it’s not that bad,” Marina hastened to explain. She met Esther’s disarmingly befuddled gaze. “I don’t think I can walk up the stairs.”

“Ohh…” Esther finally understood the problem. She eyed the steep staircase. “I could try to carry you.”

Marina smiled tiredly. “It’s enough if one of us runs around bandaged.” Perhaps Esther had had a few plans on her own, and perhaps she had imagined being here with Marina, too. Perhaps even more than once.

But if that was the case, Esther didn’t show it. “Alright, then the sofa bed,” she agreed with practicality. “Where are the sheets?” she asked when she was already steering Marina into the living room.

She had only looked briefly through the door earlier, taking note of the large, cozy fireplace. The whole room emanated warm comfort, though. The colors were warm and subdued – soft browns and reds, in the rugs in front of the fireplace and the polished wood of the couch table. There was a filigree shelf filled with books, with an old radio sitting to the side.

“It was my grandmother’s, during the war,” Marina explained softly, having followed Esther’s gaze with her own.

Only belatedly Esther realized that there was no TV, not even a DVR set. “I like it,” she said and something about the way she said it made Marina smile.

Esther didn’t see it, though, because she was already eyeing the mechanism of the couch. “You sit down here,” she decided, leading Marina over to a striped armchair. “No, just on the armrest.”

She managed to help Marina perch on the armrest without making her arm hurt, even though she was holding onto her shoulder. For a moment, Marina was baffled. Sometimes, she forgot that Esther spent much of her working hours moving people who were twice Marina’ size. She watched Esther set up the bed in quick movements, organizing sheets and comforters and fluffing pillows. It gave her an odd sense of peace, a happiness and tranquility that didn’t even need words.

“There you go, all set.” Before Marina knew it, Esther had drawn her to her feet and sat her down again at the foot of the bed. “I’ll go get your medication.”

When Esther returned with a glass of water and a box of pills, Marina had tried – without much success – to take off her skirt, but she hadn’t gotten much further than lowering the zipper in the back.

“Wait, I’ll help you with that.” Esther placed the glass of water and the medication on the couch table and put Marina’s arms around her neck to help her stretch out and lie down. “I’ll just need you to lift your hips for a second.” Her tone was friendly and calm and Marina wondered whether this was how Esther talked to the patients she had to turn and lift and wash.

“Ready?” Esther questioned, her hands on Marina’s hips.

“Sure,” Marina said, but she turned her head away when Esther, in one even movement, pulled the skirt down her legs.

“I’ll change the bandage on your knee tomorrow,” Esther said and she didn’t seem to find the situation strange at all. “I brought the draining paste for it, too.”

Marina grimaced at the memory of the foul-smelling ointment. She had to think about how she hadn’t even taken a shower since she had returned from the court building. Aloud, she said, “Thanks.” When Esther turned around to look at her again, Marina quickly drew the blanket over her legs. “Well, at least you’ll get some uninterrupted sleep tonight,” she tried to joke. “The bedroom is on the right – and you have a wonderful view at the stars from the bed.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me down here?” Esther asked uncertainly.

Marina shook her head. “No need for both of us to miss the stars,” she stated easily, even though she instinctively leaned forward to reach for Esther again.

“I’ll get you a pajama, at least,” Esther decided. “You’re still in that blouse from the court. And you’re still wearing that scarf…”

Marina touched her fingers to the green silk. “It’s my lucky scarf now.” That got a smile from Esther, and Marina smiled along, at least until Esther had left the room.

But when Esther returned, a neatly folded pajama over her arm, Marina had already fallen asleep. The empty water glass stood on the couch table. Esther tiptoed closer. At least Marina had taken her medication. Her features had already relaxed into sleep and Esther was careful not to jar her when she gently removed the scarf and opened another button on the blouse. She didn’t want to wake Marina up again. The pajama, she left on the couch table.

Marina didn’t even stir when Esther drew the blanket up to her shoulders. She didn’t move, either, when half an hour later, bare feet walked down the stairs and a slender figure in an oversized t-shirt drew back the blanket and settled in next to her, a hand searching for her hand underneath the covers before Esther fell asleep beside her.

9

Warmth.

Marina relaxed into the comfort that surrounded her, feeling at ease and at home. Only after a minute did her sleepy mind register that this was the first time in months she was waking up to a sensation other than some kind of ache.

Slowly, her consciousness expanded beyond her own body and she took in the softness of the sheets against her bare legs and the gentle hold of an arm thrown across her waist. Marina held her breath, afraid that the touch would disappear if she moved. But the warmth remained close and solid and Marina blinked her eyes open.

The clear light that fell through the windows and the glass door alerted her to the fact that she was in the mountains, even before her mind recognized the familiar shapes of the room, although she had to struggle to remember why she was sleeping here and not in the bedroom.

Slowly, Marina turned her head to the left, finding herself with the long missed sight of Esther, curled against her side on the pullout bed, with her features relaxed in sleep. She looked younger like this, Marina thought with a burst of protective tenderness. The fine lines around her eyes were less pronounced away from the stress of shifts and calls. Her breaths came in even bouts against Marina’s shoulder. The drive must have exhausted her; she was still fast asleep.

Marina smiled in wonder.

Judged by the light, it was still early morning and after a moment, Marina realized why she had woken: she needed a bathroom. And she needed a shower. And she hadn’t gotten a chance to brush her teeth since she had prepared for court yesterday morning. Marina reached up to her head. Her hair was probably sticking out in all directions, too. Her gaze fell onto her arm. She was still wearing the same blouse, now wrinkled with sleep.

She had no memory of taking off her skirt, but her legs were bare against the blanket. She didn’t even remember telling Esther goodnight.

With a last look at Esther’s sleeping face, Marina edged towards the side of the bed. She was careful not to move the covers much. Her crutch was nowhere in sight. It still had to be in the kitchen, last night Esther had helped her into bed. At the thought of the kitchen Marina’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten anything except her medication since yesterday afternoon, and her last proper meal had been sometime the day before that.

As she stood, balancing herself on the back of the couch, she realized that medication sounded like a good idea, too. A very good idea, Marina corrected herself as she limped across the room on wobbly legs. She tried to breathe rhythmically against the pain and didn’t see the edge of the rug in front of the fireplace.

“Ouc…” Marina bit her lip as she grasped at thin air for hold. Nausea shot up her spine when she had to use her bad leg to remain upright.

She felt eyes on her even before Esther spoke.

“Marina…”

Esther’s voice was gravelly with sleep, but now was not a time where Marina could pause to enjoy that. She stood, caught in the middle of her room, helpless to hinder Esther’s gaze upon her naked legs and she had to think that she was still wearing yesterday’s underwear, too.

“Keep on sleeping,” Marina said, and she managed to sound calm. “I’m just going… for my meds.”

“I’ll help you.” Immediately, Esther was at her side, with a friendly and alert smile as if she hadn’t just been jarred awake. “Just give me your arm…”

Marina tried to move away. “I can do that on my own.” She could smell her own sweat and the salve that stuck to her knee underneath the bandage.

“You’re hurting with every step,” Esther pointed out. She reached for Marina’s arm again. “Here, let me do tha…”

“I’m not your patient!” Marina bit out angrily.

Esther didn’t back away. “But I…”

“Not now. No!” Marina limped away brusquely. She had to hold onto the doorframe for help, crying with pain and embarrassment.

She didn’t look back until she had closed the bathroom door behind her.

Underneath the hot water, the pain finally subsided. Marina leaned against the wall of the shower stall with her eyes closed, letting the spray wash away the grime and the fear of the past days until the room had steamed up and her skin was rosy with heat.

Her arm hurt when she reached up to pad her hair dry and then later when she thoroughly brushed her teeth, but it was the familiar ache of a bruise, nothing more. Through the fogged up mirror, Marina could see a purple shade form along her upper arm, a souvenir from her fall.

Still, she felt as good as new. Even her leg seemed to hurt a little less, although she hadn’t taken her medication yet. Marina wrapped a towel around herself. She hadn’t taken any clothes with her in her haste. Esther had probably taken everything upstairs, anyway.

Quietly, Marina exited the bathroom. She hoped that Esther had gone back to sleep a little longer. She wanted to pick up her medication in the kitchen and to make a breakfast coffee to carry over to the bedside for Esther, but then she saw Esther through the open living room door.

She hadn’t gone back to sleep. She sat with her back to the door, hugging something in a rich green against her chest. Marina needed a second before she recognized the scarf Esther had given her.

“Esther…”

Only now Marina noticed that Esther’s shoulders were moving. She was crying.

“Esther–” Marina tried to cross the room as quickly as possible.

Esther turned around to look at her. “It’s finally over, we’re here…” Her eyes were reddened. “And you…” She shook her head, interrupting herself over a sob. “And no, you’re not my patient. – Do you think I drive all my patients to their holiday homes after shift?”

Marina could have kicked herself. “No, I…”

“You need help.” Esther said plainly. “I can see from here that every step hurts you.” She gave Marina a helpless look. “Why do you push me away?”

“I don’t push you away,” Marina protested. “I just wanted to take a shower and I can do that on my own!”

“You can,” Esther acknowledged. “But what is so bad about letting me help you to the door? – Why are you so stubborn about this?” She moved to the side, making room for Marina. “Do you think I’ll love you less only because sometimes you need help, too?”

“No, but…” Marina had finally reached the bed and sat down on the edge, at a little distance to Esther. “Look at you,” she said, but she was looking at her own hands. “You’re perfectly rational and friendly and pleasant even though I say stupid things…” She looked up at Esther, only to focus on her hands again. “And even though I’m in yesterday’s clothes and didn’t shower in over a day and had no chance to brush my teeth or wash my hair…”

Only when Esther didn’t answer, she looked up. The befuddled look Esther wore was so endearing that Marina was about to forget their entire conversation.

“And you think I’ll love you less because of that?” Esther finally asked, disbelief coloring her voice.

“It’s not exactly my best look,” Marina mumbled.

Esther nodded slowly. “So you’re going to leave me when we get dentures and need orthopedic shoes and start wearing funny hats and arguing with the bus conductor?”

Marina laughed and she was surprised herself by the mirth bubbling up from within her. “No,” she declared. She reached for Esther’s hands that were still holding onto the green scarf. “I’ll get you a new hat every birthday,” she promised. “And nightstand glasses for those dentures.”

“All right then,” Esther agreed. “So you won’t freak out if I get your medication now and put a new bandage your knee?”

“No,” Marina stated demurely. She reached up to caress Esther’s temple, where the scar was beginning to fade into the skin. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. I didn’t mean to…”

“I know.” Esther held onto Marina’s hands for a moment longer before she stood. “I’ll get your pills,” she announced and before Marina had even counted up to ten she stood in the door again, easily bracing a space that had cost Marina at least a minute to cross.

“Here’s your medication.” Esther put a collection of white pills in different shapes onto the nightstand and placed a glass of water next to it. You have to take all of them,” she reminded Marina and she leaned into to kiss her forehead before she straightened again. “And I’ll take a shower, too,” she decided. She winked at Marina. “I can’t be running around here in pajamas with my hair sticking out in all directions. – What would my girlfriend think of me?”

Thinking wasn’t perhaps the most appropriate word to describe the way Marina looked after Esther who walked to the door. Her gaze followed the subtle sway of hips and the way Esther’s oversized shirt rode up a little with every step, letting the lower edge of her underwear show.

“You’re not even supposed to think about that,” Esther admonished her gently from the doorway.

Marina’s cheeks were flushed. “You’re no fun.” She pretended to pout.

Esther was still laughing as she disappeared from sight. “At this rate, I don’t know who’s going to cook you breakfast coffee.”

When Esther returned, it wasn’t with coffee, but with a set of bandages. Her hair was done up from the shower, but she had put on that same shirt again that ended tantalizingly high along the top of her thighs.

Marina sat up a little straighter on the bed when Esther walked closer and folded back the edge of the towel she was wearing to access her knee. Esther had carried the bags with all their clothes upstairs last night. Marina didn’t even know what Esther had packed.

“That smell is nasty,” she protested when Esther opened the plastic container with the draining paste.

Esther was preparing the dressing. “My father had a colleague who brewed herbal liquor in his backyard that smelled just like this,” she commented while she unrolled the tip of another bandage.

“Ugh.” Marina didn’t want to inhale this in any form, whether liquid or aerial.

Esther laughed. “You don’t want to know how it tasted.”

“Your father let you drink that?” Marina asked.

“No, but I tried it anyway.” Esther moved to relax Marina’s knee in her hold. “See, the swelling is already going down.” She brushed her fingers across the marred skin.

Marina sucked in a breath.

“Does it hurt?” Esther asked, looking up from her task.

Marina bit her lip. “No…”

Startled, Esther looked down at her fingers that continued to draw tiny circles along Marina’s leg, as if they were acting on their own volition. Marina’s skin was achingly soft and still warm from the shower…

“Not fair!” Marina protested. “If I’m not allowed to think about this, you don’t get to do it, either!”

“Sometimes, thinking is really overrated,” Esther muttered and Marina had only a fraction of a moment to see Esther’s eyes turn darker, then her lips were already against her own, drinking her in.

Marina had the distinct sensation of melting into these lips and into the gentle fingers combing through her hair, over and over with the same reverent necessity. Her pulse was beating wildly against the thin barrier of her skin, woken abruptly and leaving nerves on end in its wake.

Her last, feverish thought was that like this, she wouldn’t even last a minute.

Backing away wasn’t an option, though. When Esther suddenly pulled back, Marina was late to realize that the small sound of protest at the unexpected separation had been torn from her own throat.

“I don’t… want to hurt you.” Esther managed to get out between unsteady breaths. She cradled Marina’s face between her hands, perhaps to hold her at bay or because Esther didn’t trust herself at this moment. “We should stop…”

That was Esther’s voice, and Marina heard it, but the look in Esther’s eyes told her that she wanted to do anything but stop.

“Don’t leave me hanging now.” Marina was shocked at the amount of pleading in her tone, but it didn’t matter. Not with Esther.

“But your leg…” Despite her try for reason, her fingers were already winding themselves into Marina’s hair again and Marina could feel the tremble in the caress.

“It will hurt for a while longer anyway.” Marina shook her head. “I don’t want that to matter now.”

“We’ll be careful.” Esther’s hands moved along Marina’s shoulders and down her arms, mindful of the bruises

“Very careful,” Marina agreed, but all she could focus on were the goose bumps raised in the wake of Esther’s touch. She didn’t even remember that there was a bruise somewhere as her gaze followed Esther’s fingers that wandered up the length of the towel she had wrapped around her.

The small, tucked-in corner holding it on place would have needed only a tiny pull, but when Marina pulled back her shoulders, all it took was a brush of a fingertip and the thick fabric fell away, leaving Marina exposed to Esther’s eyes. The smile had disappeared from them, replaced by an expression that was bordering on feral.

For a moment, it seemed as if she was going to say something, but then a shaky exhalation was all that escaped Esther’s lips.

She didn’t need to speak. All she could have said was in the way she looked at Marina.

I thought I would never see you like this again.

I thought I would never be able to touch you again.

Wordlessly, Marina reached out to pull Esther closer again. She couldn’t let herself sink into the pillows in a smooth movement, though, since she to balance herself on her good arm to make sure she didn’t jar her leg. It was far from elegant, but Esther smiled as she moved to the side, mindful of the wounded knee that would have to wait a little longer to be dressed.

It was not really what Marina had imagined when it came to the old fantasy of bringing Esther here, into her place in the mountains. She had always thought of the lit fireplace, a set of drinks next to the rugs, and the gentle shadows of late evening.

She hadn’t thought of this – naked need and bright daylight falling in through terrace door window. Esther had to have opened the blinds last night and now was really not the time to think about that. The street just led to two houses even further up the hill. Neighbors walking by the house might catch a glimpse of them in passing. But it didn’t matter.

They were like this morning, or the first of all mornings – of things to come, light and together and with no pretense. It was in Esther’s smile and in the way she unceremoniously pulled off her t-shirt before she let herself fall forward.

Esther’s back and shoulders seemed to flex under the sunlight, breathless shades that left Marina equally breathless. She reached up with a hand – the good one – to draw the ribbon away that held Esther’s hair together. It tumbled down, brushing against Marina’s neck and chest. She could hear Esther smile close to her ear and then her lips were moving down Marina’s throat until she reached the line of pale skin between her breasts.

One of Marina’s hands curled itself into the sheets as Esther inhaled against her skin, accompanied by a moan. Her hands moved along Marina’s side with more urgency, making Marina wind her arms around Esther’s neck. She couldn’t move anywhere else. Not now. Not ever.

Esther’s arms wrapped around her middle, much stronger than they looked, and Marina forgot about her leg as she arched into the warm body against her own.

“Careful…” Esther spoke at the same time Marina winced.

“Ouc…” Marina bit her lip, but then she had to laugh, giddy with the sight of Esther’s face close to her own, and with the feel of that coveted skin touching hers again. Finally.

“Are you alright?” Esther asked and she waited for the minuscule nod before her lips moved up Marina’s throat again.

“Not stopping… now…” Marina managed to say, and then she didn’t manage to do anything other but close her eyes when first Esther tongue and then her teeth grazed against her earlobe. Rough breathing filled her ears and suddenly, she was back in the vineyard playing hide and seek, the blood loud in her ears from running and from the excitement of not having been caught yet. She felt the sun on her bare arms, the whistle of the grape leaves above her. Sand covered her shoes and if she crouched down, she could see the slope of the hill below, and the outline of the vines winding up the next hill after that. As a child, she had believed the hills to be endless, stretching out under the sun like an endless adventure through which they chased each other, exploring with scuffed shoes and the sun tanning their faces.

And now this felt just as infinite, like a careless day of summer, with the sun painting stripes along their moving bodies. Behind every caress, there was another kiss already waiting, and each breath seemed to wait for a counterpart from the other.

Marina could feel a fine line of sweat forming against the nape of Esther’s neck. Her lips found the line of Esther’s brow, her closed eyes, her temple and the fine lines of the scar that now surrounded it. It was part of Esther now, part of their shared history.

Esther’s fingers dug into the skin of Marina’s back and as she moved, a small draft of air ghosted like a touch across Marina’s breasts. She tried to curl closer around Esther in reaction, trying to draw her into her own body, wrapping her good leg around her hips and then she didn’t even care about the other one anymore, the rush of the moment dimming out the pain, and the need to be closer, and yet closer still. She was moving towards Esther, and towards the light and the air and always the next hill of vines, and then, quite possibly, the mountain came down in one blinding avalanche.

Marina, gasping for air, wouldn’t have noticed if rocks had rolled past their house, or even right through this room. Lights were exploding behind her eyelids. Somewhere there was the airborne thought that it had been far too long since the last time, and how did they even manage the reserve they had shown these past few months?

Insane, Marina thought giddily, mindlessly at home in the tangle of warmth and breath and long limbs and just being. Together.

When she blinked her eyes open, it was still there. The sun, and Esther’s smiling face close to her own, and the sense of being exactly where she was supposed to be. Marina marveled at the serenity of the moment, of the complete lack of any insecurity in Esther’s gaze. She hadn’t realized that it had been there before, when they had first been together, but she saw that it was gone now.

Marina stroked a few strands of sweat-matted hair away from Esther’s face, wondering whether Esther was seeing something similar in her own gaze right now. She leaned in to kiss her and even though she didn’t want to, her eyes closed on their own volition, but she still kept seeing Esther.

The kiss was slow and sweet, like first snow, dimming out all other sensation, But when Esther moved, her body still warm with exhaustion, until Marina’s good leg fell in between hers, the moment tilted on its axis and then thundered down the mountain sides and Marina wound her arms around Esther’s hips as tightly as possible. She didn’t let go, even as Esther’s movements became rough and uncontrolled and her voice louder. She didn’t let go, and she didn’t care one bit about how much her arm hurt.

The sun stood high by the time they had breakfast – Marina had insisted that she was able to make the coffee, even though she did it exclusively with her right hand – on the rugs in front of the empty fireplace, with Marina cushioned in Esther’s arms and her leg propped up on two pillows.

“We need to try that with an actual fire tonight,” Esther decided, her fingers avoiding Marina who was trying to catch a piece of pineapple from her grasp with her lips.

“I’m not sure I can get that done with one arm…” Marina reached for another bite of fruit.

Esther chuckled and put her chin onto Marina’s shoulder. “What makes you think I can’t light a fire?” She managed to save another piece of pineapple for herself, but then gave in and let Marina take it away.

Marina gave Esther a lazy look from underneath her lashes. “You don’t really want me to comment on that one, do you?”

“On my girl scout years?” Esther asked, ignoring the double entendre.

Marina sat up a little straighter to be able to turn her head and get a better look at Esther. “You were a girl scout?”

Esther laughed. “There’s much you don’t know about me yet, Dr. Ranieri.”

And Marina thought that this was good. Because she was planning to find out new things about one Esther Bruno for a very long time to come.

10

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Department Head…” Rocco entered the office with a smile and a bag in his hand.

“It’s much too early to call me anything like that.” Marina shook her head, but she didn’t have the heart to glower at him, much less when delicious smells wafted up from the paper bag he placed on the corner of her desk. “What’s this?”

“Orders from your personal health supervisor.” Rocco gestured at the bag. “You’re back on normal schedule as of today and undisclosed sources among the hospital claim that you will most likely forget to have lunch.”

“I was about to eat something,” Marina defended herself. She would have remembered to eat eventually. Or at least she hoped so. It was much easier to remember when Esther stopped by to have lunch with her, but Esther was on an advanced training seminar for hospital management for three days and to make it worse, it took place all the way down in Rome.

Rocco nodded patiently. “She said you would say that.” He pushed the bag a little closer to Marina. “Eat.”

Marina had to laugh. “I should have known.”

“But did you get the application done?” Rocco asked. “You look like you’ve worked on it all night.”

“I look like I sleep miserably without her, which is true,” Marina said and only the slight flicker of discomfort in Rocco’s gaze reminded her that she and Rocco were at an odd point, especially when Esther was not around. They didn’t know each other well enough to call themselves friends, even though Marina was well aware that he had done many things for both her and Esther that made him a friend in every sense of the word. Still, he was Esther’s confidante, and the hospital hierarchy didn’t make the situation any easier. “But yes, I finished the application. I personally left it at Danieli’s office this morning. And Marta and every other nurse here on the station has already asked me about it, too.”

“It’s got to work out.” Rocco leaned against the edge of Marina’s desk for a moment. “They want someone with in-house experience, the whole staff wants you to take over and you are definitely qualified.”

“Rinaldi is just as qualified,” Marina reminded him. Dr. Rinaldi was also ten years older, male, and did honorary work with the Catholic youth service on the side. He had also spent the past eight years working in this department.

“Rinaldi has no backbone and a lawsuit for tax corruption on his hands.” Rocco wasn’t that easily deterred. “You’re the only viable candidate.”

“A lawsuit for tax corruption is a requirement instead of prohibitive at this level.” Marina tried to joke the tension away even though deep down, she knew that she was the only serious contender from within the hospital. And Marta, just like Rocco, treated her appointment as a given already.

While Marta worked with her on a daily basis, Rocco most likely had his information more from Esther and Teresa. Marina had been reluctant to tell them about her plans, but had eventually caved in.

“Teresa would find out even if I didn’t tell her,” Esther had reasoned. “And it’ll work more in our favor if she hears it from me.”

Marina had been so happily hung up on the “our favor” that she had agreed.

Of course, Marta had probably not sat around twiddling her thumbs during this last month leading up Marina finally handing in her application for the position of Department Head of Pediatrics at the Morandini.

Actually, Marta’s flowers had started all of this.

“You even brought my flowers!”

When Marina, during their weekend in the mountains – had it really been four weeks ago already? – had finally been able to climb the stairs to the bedroom, she had been surprised to find the bouquet Marta had given her on the small table across the room.

“It was bringing them along, or giving them to Teresa, and you know she’d want to know who gave them to you…” Esther pulled down the comforter on the bed that was dusty with the past months of absence. “Actually, who did give them to you?”

She tried to sound very casual and Marina smothered a smile. “They’re not from Vera.” Esther’s shoulders slumped a little in relief. “And I think the only plant Very would still give me would be a cactus. Or thistles.”

“A venus flytrap would fit her, too,” Esther muttered while she smoothed out the pillows.

“They’re from Marta.” Marina leaned against the foot of the bed and simply watched Esther move, unaware of the fond smile playing about her lips.

Esther looked up from the pillows with a frown. “Marta from Pediatrics?”

“Married with three children and I’ve seen the photos she carries of each of them. Various times,” Marina said by way of an answer. “…still jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” Esther huffed while she went to search for their pajamas. “But why would Marta give you flowers?”

“To congratulate me on the outcome of the trial.” Marina’s gaze wandered across Esther’s back, the curve of her hips and traveled down the length of her legs. “And to wish me a speedy recovery – what can I say, my staff cares about me.”

“Your staff?” Esther asked archly. “As far as I know, you’re still part of the ER unit.”

“The flowers were from the whole Pediatrics staff,” Marina pointed out. She held up Esther, who was walking past her in search of another pajama or a toothbrush or something else that could wait right now, by her sleeve and pulled her close until they both ended up sitting on the bed. “What would you think if I applied for Department Head of Pediatrics?”

Esther frowned, but the sudden mirth in her expression slowly gave way to acknowledgment. She nodded, weighing the question and its possible answers. “I’d think you’d be a very good choice,” she stated after a while. “A little young, perhaps, but you have the experience and your ER turn gives you leadership credits…”

“But…?” Marina prompted when Esther trailed off.

“Nothing.” Esther shrugged, but then she relented. “It’s just… Don’t you want to work with me anymore?”

Marina could feel Esther shift on the bed beside her and she reached for one of Esther’s hands. “I want to do more than work with you.” Outside the largo window front, behind their backs, a few first stars were coming into view. “And that’s another reason why perhaps it would be good idea if I switched departments. Nobody could accuse us of mixing personal and professional lives then.”

“But I like working with you,” Esther said plainly.

“I like working with you, too.” Marina sighed. “And I like being able to be here with you, without having to expect comments and odd looks come Monday because the head nurse is spending the weekend with Dr. Ranieri and keeps favoring her over the other doctors…”

“Actually, this head nurse is favoring Dr. Ranieri,” Esther pointed out. Her fingers were drawing small patterns across the back of Marina’s hand. “Above all others, in fact…”

Marina cleared her throat. “You know what I mean and—” It was difficult to remember the topic of their conversation all of a sudden. “Esther…” Now that her body had a recent – very recent – reminder of just how unfathomable it was that they had waited all these months, every graze of a fingertip did nothing but add to her resolve that she would never make it through another wait like this. How could she have forgotten, under that layer of distance and physical aches, what being with Esther felt like?

“I know what you mean,” Esther said and for a moment, Marina was startled at Esther’s ability to read her thoughts. The actual subject of their conversation had escaped her already.

“People would talk no matter what we would do, even if we don’t do anything,” Esther continued unhappily. “And that’s the only reason it would be better for us to work in separate departments. But it’s a loss for the hospital. Because I think we’re a good team.”

“We are,” Marina agreed. Esther fingertips had stilled their motions and allowed for a momentary return of rational thought. If they continued to work side by side, it was only a matter of time until somebody else would try to use it against them. Perhaps not in as dirty a lawsuit as they had barely managed to escape, but it was a risk she didn’t want to know anywhere near Esther, or herself. In that order. “Remember when we uncovered the grandmother with the Munchausen by proxy syndrome? I would never have figured it out without you.”

“All I did was run into her at the vending machine and catching a glimpse at the medication in her purse,” Esther said modestly. “We just got lucky.”

“We did get lucky,” Marina agreed, melting away yet another little bit at the simple fact that Esther was exactly who she was, packing a foreign bouquet of flowers despite being jealous and refusing to boast about a job she had done above and beyond the call of duty.

“And you were so nasty to me…” Esther shook her head, caught up in her own memories. “You thought I had mixed up the medication—”

“I know, I blamed everything on you.” Marina smiled apologetically. Esther’s hands were warm against her own. “After you dressed me down for being late to work, I wasn’t exactly objective.”

“I was so embarrassed when I realized I took you for the new nurse!” Esther blushed at the mere memory. “Of course you were mad at me afterwards.”

“Uhm, actually…” Marina looked down at her knees, the right one still with a bandage underneath her pants. “Actually I just enjoyed pushing your buttons,” she confessed. “And with the way you just showed up out of nowhere and berated me for being late — you’re very attractive when you’re a little angered, you know?” It was something she should be able to admit easily after all this time, and it made no sense at all that her ears were burning with her admission as if she were a teenager again and had just confessed her attraction to her French tutor.

“I think it’s a good idea if you apply for the Pediatrics job,” Esther said in a strained tone. “Because otherwise, I’m going to give people in the ER unit way too much to talk about.”

“You really think it’s a good idea?” Marina asked, but it was kind of difficult to focus as Esther, with one unerring hand, undid the first of the few buttons that were closed along her shirt. She recalled their pajamas – the same one Esther had been looking for earlier – still being somewhere down in the living room where the fireplace was waiting to be lit.

“Yes,” Esther breathed as the second button gave way and opened under her fingers. “And right now, I have an even better idea…”

“Oh no, stop smiling like this,” Rocco cut into Marina’s fond musings. “I don’t need to know that much, really.”

To Marina’s surprise, now it was Rocco who sported a touch of red to his ears.

“No staring off into space,” Rocco added. “Do that when I’m gone. – Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten again: you’re supposed to eat. – Put food in your mouth, you know?”

“Yes…” Marina cleared her throat and reached for the paper bag and she hoped that there was no flush showing up her neck and face at Rocco’s final remark. Oh, it didn’t necessarily have to be food…

“Oh dear.” Rocco groaned, hiding his face behind his hands. “You’re hopeless. Both of you. – Really, why does she even pretend she’s looking for another place? She’s practically living with you already!”

“She still has two months of the sublet,” Marina tried to say with as much dignity as she could muster while she was grinning broadly. “Besides, that’s entirely her decision.”

“I’d be inclined to believe you if you weren’t smiling quite so broadly.” Rocco gave Marina a wry look. “So, when is she going to be back?”

“Nine thirty tonight,” Marina replied immediately. “Eight more hours.” She didn’t even have to look at her watch.

Rocco just rolled his eyes. “She’s so moving in with you. You can’t even stay apart for three days!”

“Actually, if we weren’t working in the same department any longer…” Marina opened the paper bag and reached for the first of two sandwiches. Even a neatly polished apple came included.

“That wouldn’t make much of a difference.” Rocco shrugged and got up from where he was still leaning against Marina’s desk. Seeing that Marina was actually going to have lunch, his work here was done. “There’s gossip running wild about the sleeping arrangements of Gandini and Malosti, and they don’t have any plans to move in together, as far as Teresa knows. And don’t let me get into Laura and Dr. P., or should that be Laura and Valerio…?”

“Point taken,” Marina agreed between two bites. In case Esther really was considering to leave the rest of her things at Marina’s place, too, she’d simply have to be careful not to show up with one of Esther’s shirts to work. But even if she did… if they were officially living together, it wouldn’t be very interesting gossip. Speaking of which, she’d have to have a word with Gandini about gossip.

“But you know, with Esther driving you two to work in your car…” Whatever else Rocco had planned to say remained unspoken as a knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” Marina called after a moment. It had to be someone from another department since Marta and everyone in Pediatrics never waited for an answer.

“Marina, good to see you.” Danieli stood in the door, a set of envelopes under his arm. “Do you have a few minutes?”

“I was on my way out, anyway,” Rocco hurried to say, but he turned around to Marina once more before leaving, holding his thumbs up. Danieli, at his back, couldn’t see him. “Dr. Department Head!” Rocco mouthed cheerfully. He winked at Marina for good measure before he turned around. “Professor,” he addressed Danieli formally in parting. “Please make sure she finishes her lunch!”

The door closed quietly behind him – Rocco knew when to make a discrete exit – and Marina, still chewing, gestured at the chair in front of her table. “Please, have a seat…”

“I read your application this morning…” Danieli sat down, straightening his white coat. “So you want to leave the ER unit permanently?”

“I’ve thought about this for several weeks.” Marina leaned forward, responding to the question under Danieli’s alert gaze. “And yes, it is an opportunity I don’t want to miss.”

“I’m a little surprised you would want this,” Danieli admitted. He raised his hand in a shrug. “You have a very good record in the ER, you have talent for surgery…”

“But my focus is still Pediatrics,” Marina pointed out. “And you know as well as I do that word is still out on whether my arm and my leg will fully recover, and that I would need to be at a 110% for ER surgery.” It was a private fear that Marina hesitated to voice even to Esther: that she might not fully recover. She would miss the speed of the ER and the chance to do more surgery, but she had to be careful. “Also, since I am seeing Esther again, we thought it might be prudent not to work in the same department.”

As soon as Marina saw the relief on Danieli’s face, she was annoyed. He hadn’t asked her to change departments, but he obviously thought that dating Esther was enough of a reason. She wondered whether he would react the same way if Gandini asked for a transfer to Trauma, citing her dating Malosti as a reason. But Marina already knew neither Gandini nor Danieli would ever see this as a problem.

“Yes, about that…” Danieli shifted in his seat. “No doubt you are the most able contender so far, easily among the top three. – Of course, there’d still be the interviews with the board of directors and the management—” His eyes weren’t moving from her face. “Are you sure you want to put yourself through this?”

“Why not?” Marina shrugged, uncertain whether this had been a joke. “I’m getting used to paperwork.”

“No, it’s not about that.” Danieli crossed his hands underneath his chin. It was a pose he assumed quite often, but Marina had never before taken notice of that fact. “I wouldn’t be fair to you if I tried to promote you to Department Head. – They’d only be waiting for a chance to go after you.”

“Going after me?” Marina was caught completely off guard. “What – with a gun, again?” she asked sarcastically.

“It’s not that funny, Marina.” Danieli sighed and when he ran a hand through his hair, it ended up tousled. “You know that being gay is still an issue in this country, and more so in our profession.”

“And only because we’re behind in EU legislation, I can’t apply for Department Head?” Marina’s tone was cool.

“This is not about your abilities as a doctor,” Danieli hurried to say. “You know how much I value them. – And you,” he added, but the break in between had been a little too long. “But being considered for a Department Head position is another caliber. – For God’s sake, Marina, you haven’t even hit forty yet!”

“Are you saying I’m too young?” Marina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You appointed Pedrazzini to head Obstetrics, and he is even younger than I am. And what, in a decade you’d tell me that I am too old? Or still too gay?”

“In a decade, the laws and the society in this country will hopefully have changed a bit more,” Danieli said and for a moment, Marina thought that he looked just as frustrated with the situation as she was. Frustrated, and a little pathetic in his neatly ironed coat.

“No, Sergio.” Marina used his first name on purpose, making clear that this was not just about professional opinions. This was also about his ethics, in and out of that white coat, and about his willingness to stand by his staff, something he prided himself in. “If capable individuals aren’t promoted to key positions because of their sexual orientation, then nothing will change. Nothing.” She tried to find the man whom she had almost considered a friend behind his stiff pose. “Will you reject my application? Find some formal flaw to toss it out?!”

“No, of course not,” Danieli looked tired faced with her challenging tone. “I wouldn’t do something like that, and you know it.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “All I’m saying is that I’d prefer if you withdrew your application. At least this time.”

“I don’t see why,” Marina stated coolly. “I’m qualified. Hell, the staff of this very Department asked me to apply for the position in the first place!”

“Of course you’re qualified, damn it!” Danieli squirmed with discomfort. “Your application is sound, and you know it. You’d automatically get into the last round. – But then the hospital board would eat you alive.”

“Is there a rule saying ‘no promotions for lesbians’ somewhere in the manual?” Marina asked archly and she hoped that her voice wasn’t as shaky as she felt. “They must have missed something then because Esther got promoted to head nurse even though she was seeing me at the time.”

“A head nurse is not a Department Head,” Danieli retorted and despite her previous anger, this was the first thing that made Marina want to get up and shake that smug chief surgeon attitude out of him.

“Nurses run this place,” she said, not trusting herself to add anything that wouldn’t have had to do with the assumed size of his genitals.

“But I can appoint a head nurse without having to throw her in front of the board of directors!” Danieli retorted angrily. “Damn your stubbornness, Marina, I’m trying to protect you here! You can gain nothing from this application, nothing, do you hear me? They would never appoint you! – Do have any idea how many of the people on the board are in the Catholic League or involved with MOIGE? – All you can do is ruin your merits and your good name. – This is Pediatrics, they won’t take this lightly.”

“’This’?” Marina asked sharply. “What do you mean by ‘this’? That I’m gay?”

“You know I have nothing against this,” Danieli said over an aggravated sigh. “And you know I have always defended you, but this is…”

“Why does it make a difference with whom I share my life if I do good work?” Marina cut in.

“It doesn’t.” Danieli raised his hands in defense. “Marina, please! – You know how these people get when it comes to children, and to what ideals and life models are transmitted to our children.”

“Well, I hadn’t really planned on making out with Esther on this office desk in front of my patients,” Marina said icily. She gestured at the tabletop between them. It hadn’t escaped her that Danieli had spoken of ‘our children’. “Would it really be more morally sound if I took a different man home with me every evening? Would that stop me from being promoted?”

Danieli grimaced at Marina’s bluntness. “You just got out of this unfortunate claim a little more than a month ago—”

“I was fully cleared,” Marina pointed out immediately. “Twice.”

“They don’t care if you got cleared,” Danieli said with exhaustion in his voice. “They only remember that there was something sexual and inappropriate discussed.”

“And what do you remember?” Marina asked bitterly.

“I remember a great pediatric surgeon in the ER unit whom I don’t want to lose by throwing her in front of a pack of wolves.” Danieli’s eyes were on her again, alert and kind, and the latter hurt the most. “I know it’s the system, and I know it’s wrong, but we’re not changing it here and now. They’re a pack of old men. Once they are gone, things will get easier. – For all of us.”

“It’s not all men,” Marina said with quiet obstination. “As far as I remember, Dr. Vera Corradi is still a woman, and she made it to Head of Pediatric Council.” She didn’t add that Vera had also been sleeping with women, causing a scandal included.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t count on any help from her,” Danieli murmured while he looked down his shirtfront and readjusted the tie that was showing in between his coat lapels.

Marina sat up straighter. “What?!”

Danieli looked up. “Nothing, just rumors…” His fingers were still playing with the knot of his tie. “Have you heard from her lately?”

“No.” It wasn’t unusual, though. Vera had a very busy schedule. “We aren’t exactly best friends, but we’ve always respected each other as colleagues.”

“Perhaps she changed her opinion,” Danieli mused, but he corrected himself when he saw the hurt on Marina’s face.”Oh, never mind, it’s all just rumors. You know how hospitals are.”

“So you’re saying you wouldn’t want me leading Pediatrics?” Marina returned to the conversation at hand.

“I’m trying to protect you, Marina,” Danieli repeated in a pleading tone. “You’re welcome to switch to Pediatrics fulltime, if you want to. I could give you a permanent position here. Of course your job in the ER is still waiting to you if you want it. I’m confident you’ll be fit for surgery again in no time.” Once more his gaze rested on her face, with a trace of benevolence Marina has always found comforting, but today, it was nothing but patronizing to her. “You’re a valuable part of this hospital, in whatever position.”

“Thanks,” Marina felt obliged to say, but despite the sentiment she could hear behind Danieli’s words, she felt used.

“Think about it, alright?” Danieli got up from his chair. He placed a hand on her shoulder before he turned to leave. “I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Alright,” Marina agreed thinly, but as she watched him leave, she felt that she had gotten hurt already.

It was a sensation that didn’t vanish throughout her shift and that seemed to hug her with the same clammy, cold air of the fog that descended onto Milan in the evening. It seemed to reach for Marina, who moved quickly among the throng of people waving in and out of the railway station. She still had to walk carefully and she caught herself checking for the nearest hold every other step, but she was finally able to leave the house without the crutches again. Her knee was still bandaged and she had a cane if she had to hurry around at work, discretely leaning next to the door, but the despite the slight limp she was still sporting, Marina felt on eye level with the bustling crowd again.

The foggy cold crept under her coat and into her bones as she waited on the platform. It was windy, last wrappers from the New Year’s Eve fireworks brushing by on the ground. Out on the tracks, a thin film of snow was raining down.

It was the first snow they had since the last day in the mountains, when Esther had taken her up to the cabin to celebrate the end of the lawsuit. There had been thick, white flakes dancing past the window in the evening and when they had woken in the morning, it had been to blue skies and brilliant white.

“Come on, we need to see this!” Esther had been bouncing on her feet.

Marina, still fighting with every step she had to take, had been less enthusiastic, but Esther had managed to get her into a coat and gloves and one of Esther’s knitted bonnets.

“I’ll freeze,” Marina had stated grumpily when Esther dragged her out of the door and into the snow. “You’ll have to put me into the microwave on defrost later!”

Esther, whirling up snow with her feet, crossed the space between them in three steps. The winter air was already coloring her cheeks. Her breath came in tiny, visible puffs as she leaned closer. “I won’t need a microwave for that,” she declared.

Marina was about to protest, but the positively smoldering look Esther was giving her was made her forget whatever remark she had wanted to make. “…not fair!” she pointed out, but Esther was already running back into the snow. Marina lost a few moments admiring the shape of Esther’s hips and legs in her jeans as she bent down to pick up handfuls of snow. Too late she realized what was going on.

A ball of fluffy, white wetness nearly kicked the bonnet off her head.

“Catch me if you can!” Esther yelled, but she was laughing so hard that she didn’t manage to run.

“Oh, you just wait…” Marina’s grumpy mood was instantly forgotten as she reached for snow on the hedges and the fence, at hip level. Her first snowball hit the car when as Esther ducked out of sight, but then she got her squarely between the shoulder blades and she would have loved to be able to bottle this moment: Esther’s delighted squeal, her laughter, the crisp air against their skin and the colorful silhouette of Esther against the blinding planes of white around her.

“We have to come here more often,” a breathless Esther declared, her jacket covered in snow.

“Hand-eye coordination. Elemental for surgery,” Marina had claimed when Esther protested the onslaught of snowballs, but the next thing she had known was a handful of snow right across her face.

And yet Marina couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot as Esther leaned against the fence next to her. “Definitely,” she agreed. “Much more often.”

“The air, the space…” Esther looked up and stretched out her arms. “It’s incredible.”

“Just like the company,” Marina said quietly, but maybe Esther hadn’t heard her since she was busy wiping the snow caps off the fence, one by one. “Found a new game?” Marina called out.

“Oh yes.” Esther laughed as she tried to kick the next snow cap off with a foot. “The kids will love it up here!”

Perhaps it had been a joke, or perhaps Marina had misunderstood the words, but they hit her like the proverbial brick wall. She stood rooted to the spot, stunned until another snowball hit her against the side of her face because she had forgotten to move.

“Told you I’d get you back.” Esther said triumphantly, pumping a fist in the air.

Marina envisioned one, or two or three small versions of Esther, all of them bombarding her with snowballs. Her grin was so broad that it threatened to split her face. “Just you wait…” She moved to scrape the last bits of snow in her reach together.

The snow in Milan was thin and wet, turning into dirty sludge as soon as it hit the ground. Next week, perhaps, they could go back up to the cabin, if the streets weren’t iced over. In the end, they hadn’t managed to go since that first, blissful extended weekend. In fact, Marina was still missing a shirt that they hadn’t managed to find again.

She pulled up her shoulders against the cold and hoped that there wouldn’t be too much delay.

The lights of the incoming train caught the snowflakes in their feeble dance and Marina stood straighter. She gave the bouquet of flowers one last look before she began to search for Esther’s figure among the people who spilled out of the train doors.

Shadows in thick coats hurried past her, but she recognized Esther immediately, a tall, slender silhouette stepping out of the fog. Her hips moved with every step and Marina had to look down for a second at the high-heeled boots Esther wore. Her hair was undone underneath one of her bonnets, falling over her shoulders and into her face. She waved and picked up her pace when she recognized Marina and Marina wished she were able to run and sweep Esther off her feet and whirl her around.

“Marina…” Esther was a bit taller than usual on her heels and Marina had to tilt her head back a little to look into her eyes. “God, it’s so good to see you.”

Unceremoniously, Marina pressed the flowers into Esther’s hands because she needed both of her own hands to cup Esther’s face between them, draw her closer and kiss her right there on the platform.

Long seconds passed before delighted laughter bubbled up. “Here?” Esther asked, her face still close to Marina’s.

“Anywhere,” Marina answered and she loved Esther for not drawing back. She ignored a whistle to their right as she leaned in to kiss Esther again. Thoroughly. “This place needs to change, and it will only change if we stop trying to be as invisible as possible.”

Now that Esther’s arms were around her, shielding her and keeping the fog at bay, her earlier conversation with Danieli finally caught up with her and she was surprised that she found herself close to tears.

“Hey…” Esther sought to look at Marina who had buried her face against Esther’s neck. The shawl she wore was woolen and scratchy and had far too many colors for anything Marina would ever wear, but it smelled of Esther, and their jackets hanging next to each other in the wardrobe and snowball fights and dreams of things yet to come. “Marina… what happened?”

Marina looked up at her and despite the tears in her eyes, she was smiling. “Let’s just go home.”

And until they had reached the apartment – Marina’s once more – Esther had learned all about the conversation with Danieli. She had cursed in the right places, made disparaging remarks about the size of his genitals and kept Marina’s hand in her own until they had closed the apartment door behind them. Then she simply hugged her for long minutes.

“Do you have anything around for dinner?” she asked, her lips still close to Marina’s ear. “I brought us a wine from Rome, too.”

“Let me guess – no Del Colle?” Marina tried to joke and she was surprised how much just being with Esther did to calm her.

“No, tonight we’re cheating on the posh Tuscan names,” Esther called down the hallway. Marina could hear the soft sounds of clothes being dropped onto the floor in the bathroom. “But we could always call Eduardo’s to go with it.”

“I’ll order, if you want to take a shower meanwhile…” The bliss of domestic tranquility wrapped Marina in its gentle hold and when she and Esther were finally sitting on the couch, empty dessert plates set to the side and enjoying a last glass of wine, Danieli’s remarks hurt a lot less already.

“You know what?” Esther swung her legs onto the couch and leaned her head against Marina’s shoulder. “After this workshop, I’m qualified to apply for a position as head nurse anywhere in the EU.” She twirled the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. “We could always try our luck somewhere else. Palumbo mentioned a few weeks ago that one of the clinics in Barcelona he worked for was looking for doctors – better pay and fewer hours. And in my workshop there were two nurses from Madrid…”

Marina moved back to be able to look Esther in the eye. “You would move to Spain for a job?” she asked with surprise. “What about your father? Our jobs? …and our cabin?”

“…and what about our lives?” Esther added quietly. “Do you think the legal situation will change here anytime soon?”

“They have homophobes in Spain, too,” Marina pointed out.

“And mountains,” Esther added. “And gay marriage.”

Marina nodded slowly. “We could look it up,” she suggested. “Just to see whether there’s an open position somewhere.” She glanced at Esther across the rim of her wine glass. “Two positions. With mountains close by.”

“Just to have a look,” Esther repeated. She moved a little closer and settled down into Marina’s arm. “To us,” she murmured, touching her wine glass to Marina’s.

“To us,” Marina echoed and she leaned in to bury her nose against Esther’s hair, breathing in deeply and hearing Esther’s soft chuckle in reply.

This, she realized, was home.

Anywhere.