The woman raises her head off the pillow but can only hold it up for a few seconds before it flops back down. “Are you a doctor?” she asks in a raspy, air-hungry voice.

“I am from the laboratory. I’m here to collect more blood samples.”

“More blood? Will you leave me any?”

“Yes.” Sonia smiles behind her surgical mask. “More than enough.”

The patient coughs so violently that the test tubes on the mattress rattle. “They still don’t know what I have?”

The nurses outside the room mentioned possible tuberculosis, but Sonia didn’t delve. She’s too preoccupied with making sure she gets out of work on time today, of all days. She touches the woman’s arm. “We have the best doctors here. If they don’t already know, they will soon.” She pauses. “You are Vittoria Fornero?”

The patient nods.

Sonia kneels beside the bed. Out of habit, she spins the hospital bracelet over the woman’s wrist, double-checking the identity. She applies a tourniquet above Vittoria’s elbow, tightly enough for the vein below it to pop to attention. She effortlessly slides a butterfly needle through the skin and into the vein. Blood snakes up the connected tubing. Sonia attaches the other end of it to the first of the test tubes.

“You have children?” Vittoria croaks.

“One.” Sonia suppresses a smile. “Florianna—Flori—she is five.”

“I have two, myself. Twins. Eight years old. One of each.”

“Good for you, the complete set,” Sonia says, but there is little chance she will ever have a boy or another girl. Flori’s father had left her before the end of her first trimester. Sonia is only thirty-one years old and, as her mother keeps telling her, could still have several more children. But she won’t. Flori is joy enough for her.

Vittoria hacks another wet cough. “I wish I could hold mine again.”

“Soon,” Sonia mutters, but her mind has already drifted back to Flori’s dance recital, which will be held later tonight. She must get home in time to finish sewing the tail onto her daughter’s tutu.

Vittoria’s body jerks with another coughing fit. The noise is awful, like an old truck engine struggling to turn over. Sonia notices Vittoria wiping at her eyes. Blood-splattered phlegm has sprayed out from under the oxygen mask and onto her own forehead.

Sonia grabs a tissue from the box on her basket. She leans forward and wipes the mucus away. Vittoria offers her a small smile. Their eyes lock, and Sonia spots fear in the other woman’s eyes.

Suddenly Vittoria convulses with another cough. Sonia feels something wet graze the exposed cheek above her mask, and she jerks her head back.

Dammit! She stumbles back a step, grabs an alcohol wipe—the ones meant for cleaning the equipment—and scrubs roughly at her skin.

Vittoria can’t stop coughing now. The stretcher shakes with each fit.

Sonia reassures herself that her own skin test has long been positive for tuberculosis, meaning she had already been exposed to it and cannot acquire it again. She knows she should still report the incident to her manager and to Employee Health and Safety. But there’s no time. She promised to send her mother a video clip of Flori’s dance, and she still has to charge the camera. So, instead, she scrubs her cheek with another wipe and then sweeps up the tubes and hurries from the room.