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to a nurse who was waiting with a wheelchair. It was a relief to pass Rose over to someone else, to walk behind the nurse as she pushed the chair and admire the way she swayed her hips as she walked at a pace, her long, shining hair tied with a white, satin ribbon. This was another style of walking, entirely free of pain, of attachment to kin, of compromise. The heels of the nurse’s grey suede shoes sounded like an egg cracking as she made her way down the marble corridors. Stopping outside a door with the words Mr Gómez written in gold letters across a panel of polished wood, she knocked and waited.
    Her nails were painted a deep glossy red.
    We had travelled a long way from home. To be here at last in this curved corridor with its amber veins threading through the walls felt like a pilgrimage of sorts, a last chance. For years, an increasing number of medical professionals in the UK had been groping in the dark for a diagnosis, puzzled, lost, humbled, resigned. This had to be the final journey and I think my mother knew that, too. A male voice shouted something in Spanish. The nurse pushed the heavy door open and then beckoned to me to wheel Rose into the room, as if to say, She is all yours .
    Dr Gómez. The orthopaedic consultant I had researched so thoroughly for months on end. He looked like he was in his early sixties,his hair was mostly silver but with a startling pure white streak running across the left side of his head. He wore a pinstripe suit, his hands were tanned, his eyes blue and alert.
    â€˜Thank you, Nurse Sunshine,’ he said to the nurse, as if it were normal for an eminent doctor who specialized in musculoskeletal conditions to name his staff after the weather. She was still holding the door open, as if her thoughts had wandered off to roam on the Sierra Nevada.
    He raised his voice and repeated in Spanish, ‘Gracias, Enfermera Luz del Sol.’
    This time she shut the door. I could hear the cracking sound of her heels on the floor, first at an even pace and then suddenly faster. She had started to run. The echo of her heels remained in my mind long after she had left the room.
    Dr Gómez spoke English with an American accent.
    â€˜Please. How can I help you?’
    Rose looked baffled. ‘Well, that is exactly what I want you to tell me .’
    When Dr Gómez smiled, his two front teeth were entirely covered with gold. They reminded me of the teeth on a human male skull we studied in the first year of my anthropology degree, the task being to guess his diet. The teeth were full of cavities so it was likely he had chewed on tough grain. On further scrutiny of the skull, I discovered that a small square of linen had been stuffed into the larger cavity. It had been soaked in cedar oil to ease the pain and stop infection.
    Dr Gómez’s tone was vaguely friendly and vaguely formal. ‘I have been looking at your notes, Mrs Papastergiadis. You were a librarian for some years?’
    â€˜Yes. I retired early because of my health.’
    â€˜Did you want to stop working?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜So you did not retire because of your health?’
    â€˜It was a combination of circumstances.’
    â€˜I see.’ He looked neither bored nor interested.
    â€˜My duties were to catalogue, index and classify the books,’ she said.
    He nodded and turned his gaze to his computer screen. While we waited for his attention, I looked around the consulting room. It was sparsely furnished. A basin. A bed on wheels that could be lowered or raised, a silver lamp placed near it.
    A cabinet filled with leather-bound books stood behind his desk. And then I saw something looking at me. Its eyes were bright and curious. A small grey stuffed monkey was crouching in a glass box on a shelf halfway up the wall. Its eyes were fixed on its human brothers and sisters in an eternal frozen stare.
    â€˜Mrs Papastergiadis, I see that your first name is