Jon Tracy - The Rome Prophecy

The poor girl is petrified.

She’ll come back and do it when she’s had time to gather her thoughts and think the whole crazy thing through a little more.

She gives Suzie a smile and moves away to open the door. ‘Don’t worry, no one will hurt you. I’ll come back tomorrow and make sure you’re all right.’

Suzie doesn’t reply.

She’s already pulled the bed sheet above her head and curled herself into a tight ball.

There is whispering in the womb.

Hushed voices.

Confidential tones.

But I hear them.

I lie curled up, pretending to be asleep, but I hear all their secrets and their laughter.

Mother and the special one – the favoured one – are together. They are out of sight, hidden in the darkness, but their sentences fly like birds and nest in my ears.

It is easy for me to picture them there.

Easy but painful.

They sit side by side and Mother has her arm fondly around her. She strokes my sister’s hair and tells her how beautiful she is.

The most beautiful of all of us.

She tells her how clever she is.

By far the cleverest among us.

And She tells her how like Her she is.

And how She likes her the most.

The others want me to run away.

Escape.

They say they know how and can set me free.

They tell me they have done it before – in Phrygia, in Crete, in Anatolia, in Etruria, Hellas and Rome.

They can do it again.

But I know Mother will stop them. She will stop them and She will stop me.

And deep inside I feel that I don’t want to escape.

I want to belong.

I want to be the one to sit beneath Mother’s outstretched arm and be cherished and confided in.

I strain to listen.

I wait patiently for the word birds to nest again in my ears. They are coming now, their beaks heavy with secrets carried from centuries long ago.

They drop them gently and I pick through them.

Precious stories about the kings of Rome, the Seven Hills of the Eternal City, the Prophecies.

And more.

The Tenth Book.

The secrets of the Tenth Book.

These are the scraps I am left as the voices fade in the darkness of the womb.

Now there is only silence, darkness and one thing else.

The silent screaming of my mind.

Monday morning isn’t Louisa Verdetti’s favourite time of the week. Especially, if she’s already worked Saturday and Sunday.

To make matters worse, the first part of her least favourite day is being spent with the man who tops her list of least favourite people.

Hospital administrator Sylvio Valducci is mid-fifties. He has white hair and is one of those bosses who one minute manages from a distance of six miles and the next from six inches. He’s the kind that conveniently ignores you when you’re in the middle of a crisis but is all over you about the cost of paper clips when it’s annual budget time. He and Louisa only have one thing in common – a mutual loathing of each other.

Valducci doesn’t knock on her office door or even manage a good morning as he bursts in. ‘I’m told you have something of a cause celebre.’ He tosses a manila file on her desk and enjoys watching it slide. ‘I’d very much like to hear about it. In person. From you. I prefer it that way – it’s much better than getting it second-hand from the animals who gather around the water cooler.’

Louisa takes off her glasses. She slowly spins her desk chair and vows not to lose her temper. ‘I’m not sure I would call it a cause celebre, but the patient is certainly interesting.’ She opens the file he dropped and sees inside a copy of medical notes she’s made. ‘As it says in here: our admission is an Italian woman, identity so far unknown, mid to late twenties, well nourished.’

‘This I know.’ He pats his mouth to stifle a fake yawn and settles into a seat opposite her.

‘And as you are also apparently aware, she’s exhibiting as DID. Dissociative identity-’

‘I know what DID is,’ he snaps. ‘Or to be more specific, what it isn’t.’ He shows his teeth, in what he mistakenly believes is an enigmatic smile. ‘Better doctors than you have made fools of themselves with this little acronym.’ He melodramatically puts his hand to his forehead. ‘And my, isn’t it strange that patients with DID are so often involved in criminal activity? Crimes they conveniently blame on one of their many other personalities. Stranger still if you ask me that none of those other personalities turn up at the police station and confess, or rat on the offending alter, as you so ridiculously call them.’

Louisa tries to ignore his goading. ‘Our patient is presenting classic symptoms. She’s writing and drawing in different personalities. Speaking in multiple voices and tones, as though she were different people of different ages. Her mood swings are extreme – from timid to violent.’

He waves a hand dismissively. ‘Fakery! This is all rubbish and you know it. Have you run diagnostic tests for borderline personality disorder?’

‘Of course we’ve run tests – and we’re running more. You don’t need to tell me how to do my job. We’ve taken more blood and urine samples than an Olympic doping committee, and before you ask, no, there is no chance of amphetamine-induced psychoses, if that’s what you’re fishing for.’

He’s amused by her anger.

Pleased that he has roused it so fully.

‘There’s nothing wrong with fishing, Louisa. When you have but a small crack in the ice of the mind, fishing is the best thing you can do.’

She is bursting to tell him not to be so stupid and so pompous.

He stands and folds his arms autocratically. ‘And while we’re angling away, we should make sure we also run endocrine function tests to rule out hyperadrenalism, pernicious anaemia and thyroid disorders.’ He takes her silence as a sign of his intellectual victory. ‘Given the delusionary symptoms, don’t dismiss the possibility of schizophrenia. It’s tricky to diagnose-’

Louisa’s out of her chair before he can finish. ‘ Schizophrenia? She’s no more schizophrenic than you or I. With all respect, can I remind you that I am a qualified neuropsychiatrist? At least credit me with some expert judgement.’

Snapping point. He just loves it when he gets people here. ‘Not in this country.’ He wags a finger at her, ‘Your qualification is an American one, and as you know, we don’t follow the outdated bible of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders quite as slavishly as your American mentors do.’

Louisa shakes her head at him. Boss or no boss, he’s a sentence away from getting a slapped face. She worked damned hard to get qualified, and even in Rome, ten years at Johns Hopkins should stand for something.

The administrator picks his file up off her desk. ‘Blood tests, urine tests, tox tests: I want more doing – and all of them completed – before you even mention DID again. Do I make myself clear?’

If looks could kill, he’d be no more than a plasma stain up Louisa’s office wall. ‘Perfectly.’

‘These beds are expensive. If she’s fit, I want her out on the street and off my budget as quick as possible. Let the police work out what to do with her.’

Before Louisa can explode, her door bangs shut and he’s gone.

Valentina Morassi’s start to the day isn’t going much better than Louisa’s.

She planned to take this week off as holiday, but the incident in Cosmedin has scuppered any hopes of spending much time with Tom.

She forces herself to leave him naked in bed, sleeping off the wonderfully numbing effects of another night of excessive sex and the great bottle of Barolo they shared after getting home from a local restaurant.