2 The Dante Connection Read Free Page B

best forgotten.
    He leaned in even closer, his nose almost touching mine. “Use your logic and your Mozart thingie to help Francine. Please, Jenny. Do this for me.”
    I breathed deeply. Twice. “I’ll do it for Francine.”
    His face relaxed. “Thank you.”
    “Can we maybe move this along?” Paul asked from the open sliding doors. Francine coughed again and even I cringed at the painful sound. I walked to the gurney and the orderly started pushing it towards the clinic. I was walking on the one side, Vinnie on the other, concern pulling at his face.
    Once Francine’s coughing stopped, she turned frantic eyes on me. “Please don’t leave me. Not once. Please.”
    “I will only promise to go in with you and stay with you until you feel safe.” This might result in me staying days in the hospital, but I was not going to promise anything more than this. “Okay?”
    She swallowed with difficulty, nodded once and her body went completely slack. I followed the gurney through the doors and briefly had to call up Mozart. I could feel my heart beating in my suprasternal notch, that little hollow above the breastbone. As I followed the gurney down a brightly lit corridor, I wondered how it was possible that my promise had calmed Francine, but utterly terrified me.
    Only Colin’s footsteps directly behind me and the unfinished first movement of the symphony in my head were keeping the blackness at bay. I could only hope Colin and Vinnie would not desert me again.

 
    Chapter TWO
     
     
     
    “So, why are you scared of hospitals?”
    I took my eyes off the silent television screen in Francine’s private room and made sure Colin saw the disdain on my face. “I’m not scared. I merely experience a very strong repulsion towards such institutions.”
    “Jenny, you can colour it with whichever fancy words you want, it is still a phobia.”
    I slumped in the luxury lounge chair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Oh, come on, I’m dying of boredom here. Francine’s sleeping peacefully from all those drugs they pumped into her, you are ignoring me, undoubtedly doing something interesting in your head, and I’m left watching a muted news show.”
    “I was not in my head. I was also watching the show. It’s much more interesting without the sound. Look at the president’s bodyguard, the one to the left.” I pointed to the screen. Neutrality and objectivity did not exist in the media, but this news programme came the closest in its reportage of current events and especially the political arena. “Can you see how he is shifting from one foot to the other? And there. He’s just pulled his ear again.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “He’s bored.”
    Colin laughed, but quickly quieted after a glance at the sleeping Francine. It had taken two hours of probing and testing, but Paul and another doctor, a woman in her early fifties, had determined that nothing was broken or severely damaged. When the older doctor had whispered a question about why Francine had been used as a punching bag, Paul had cut her off with a glare. That had made me wonder how many unregistered patients he was treating in this clinic.
    The hospital looked more like an upscale hotel than a medical facility. Each patient had their own private room. The examination room I had been forced to go into with Francine was nothing like the rooms I had spent days in as a child. At least here I had been able to focus on the tasteful art on the walls and the soft classical music filling the elegant rooms. It wasn’t the usual clinical white walls and rooms filled with medical equipment.
    An hour ago, they had pushed Francine into her room and she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Vinnie had left about twenty minutes ago to shower and change. His clothes were stained with Francine’s blood. I had been focussing on the muted television to order my thoughts before I confronted Colin. For the last few months I had thought I would never see him again. I