Part 2

Dias was the eldest assistant at the Clinic of Infectious Diseases; he was the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave. He was known to accompany his patients when they needed special exams, to speed along the bureaucratic process. Unlike the other assistants, he never failed to attend the weekly seminars on pathology, surgery, and radiology, though, reserved as he was, he rarely raised a question or made a point.

His day began with a round of visits with Sister Maria and usually ended after dinner, which was served to the patients at 6 o'clock, when he made his "nightly round", his third visit of the day. On these visits, more informal than the others, he walked through the rooms, telling a story here and listening to one there, consoling or provoking when necessary. He rarely left the Clinic before eight, often after having had coffee with the night nurse and informing her on the latest developments. At times, particularly when a new patient had been admitted and the diagnosis was still open, he spent the night between the patient's room and the nurses' station, awaiting the decisive diagnostic sign. "A good diagnostician," he would say at these times, putting on a celebrative pot of coffee, "is faster than lab data." These were the moments that meant the most to Dias. Little time was left to him to dedicate to other activities, but that was a choice he had made years before and he had long since grown accustomed to his Spartan life. A few childhood friends and an occasional dinner date were all he required in the way of recreation. A more serious lacking in a city like Casteddu was Dias' total disinterest in politics. Intrigue for him was but a nuisance and he had a natural distaste for the art of eloquence, both of which made political meetings seem baroque and tedious. That day, beside the "canary" in the hepatitis ward, Dias had eight new patients to visit. Those young patients, like the son of the police Commissario, had been given a separate ward just to the right of the front waiting room to avoid contagion from the other infectious diseases and had already been spoiled mercilessly by the night nurses. Dias noted a different atmosphere in that room full of children and family members, mothers, in particular, who seemed as intent on unraveling their skeins of cotton as they were on the intricacies of the law.

And they had ample motives for their desperate interest. The children's story was a tragic one: they had Cooley's Disease, a blood affection that was rare elsewhere. Due to the isolation of the island in the middle of the Mediterranean and to the limited contact of its inhabitants with foreigners, along with a certain amount of inbreeding in some small towns of the interior, the disease had spread among the islanders to an extent unheard of in the rest of Europe. Dias knew that out of a million and a half inhabitants, there were more than two thousand children whose blood, just months after birth, was unable to transport sufficient oxygen. Without regular transfusions, some twenty a year, those children could not survive. As a result, blood donation drives were a common occurrence on the island. Even the soldiers stationed at the NATO base not far from Casteddu had grabbed at the chance to improve their public image through vast campaigns, a fact that was to have serious consequences.

So it was that the children's already precarious health was further weakened by the introduction of a rare virus during transfusions. To worsen matters, in June of the preceding year, the Ministerial decree which prescribed the adoption of a series of new tests on donated blood to insure the safety of recipients had, to be sure, been delivered to the transfusion center, but had somehow been mislaid over the summer. And by the time the new measures had taken effect, the damage had been done. The mothers whose children were suspected of having contracted the virus were rightfully incensed and would not find peace until the responsible parties were incriminated.

It was Dias' sad duty to examine each of the youngsters for signs of the virus. When he entered the ward at one o'clock that afternoon, he found the mothers gathered around a tall figure, talking all at once. It was thus that Dias first saw the Commissario and later, even after observing him in more dramatic and tragic circumstances, he was to remember him as he was that first day, with the intent air of a serious and critical listener. The chattering stopped as he entered and the Commissario approached him and introduced himself. "How were the tests?" he asked right away, drawing Dias out of earshot of the children.