The second memory was more pleasant, although it, too, started out badly. Summer 1988. Some guy from one of the rougher areas of Vallauris attacks me on the soccer field after I score a goal from a free kick. He snaps my left arm and pushes me down, and I end up having to stay in the hospital under observation for two days because he knocked me unconscious. I remembered Maxime and Fanny coming to visit. They’re the first to write on my cast. Maxime simply scrawls Marseille FC forever! and Back of the net! because, at that point in our lives, nothing was more important than soccer. When it is Fanny’s turn, she takes a little more time. I can picture the scene now. It’s the end of the school year—maybe summer vacation has started already. The summer of The Big Blue. I can picture her, framed against the light, leaning over my bed, the sun streaming through her blond hair. She writes out a line of dialogue from the movie that the three of us saw two weeks earlier, Johana’s response to Jacques Mayol at the end of the film when he says, “I’ve got to go and see.” The moment when the audience realizes that he is going to dive and never come back up again:

See what? There’s nothing to see, Jacques. It’s dark down there. It’s cold! You’ll be alone. And I’m here! I’m real! I exist!

I might be over forty, but that line breaks my heart every time I think about it. More so today than it ever did.

3.

The hospital was a maze made up of a jumble of ill-assorted buildings. I somehow managed to find my way through the conflicting signage. Extensions had grown up over the decades around the main hospital building, which had been constructed in 1930 of dressed stone. Each extension offered a glimpse of what the best and worst architecture had produced over half a century: dark brick cubes, concrete blocks erected on piles, cubes with steel cladding, green spaces…

The cardiology department was in the newest addition, an ovoid building whose façade was a clever mix of glass and bamboo. I strode through the bright lobby to the front desk.

“How can I help, monsieur?”

With her bleached-blond hair, her frayed denim skirt, her extra-extra-small T-shirt, and her leopard-print tights, the receptionist looked like a Debbie Harry clone.

“I’d like to see the head of cardiology, Dr. Fanny Brahimi.”

Blondie picked up the phone. “Who should I say is asking for her?”

“Thomas Degalais. Tell her it’s an emergency.”