“Rosa acquired her chest infection from her father,” Montaldo explains. “We have added gentamicin, a third antibiotic, to her treatment regimen. She only began to cough yesterday. Just hours after her father died. But now Rosa is the most critically ill of all the patients.”

Alana looks back over to the mother. There’s such defeat in her slouched shoulders that she has trouble taking her eyes off the woman, even as Montaldo moves on to the next room.

Inside, a boy lies on his back with arms outstretched in an almost biblical pose. He is also connected to a ventilator, and even more lines and tubes crisscross his body than Rosa’s. A nurse adjusts the intravenous infusion pump on one side of him. On the other side, the boy’s mother strokes his hair while his father paces up and down in the narrow gap beside the bed.

“This is Angelo. Eight years old.” Montaldo turns to Nico. “He is the reason I consulted you, Dr. Oliva.”

“The sputum cultures?” Nico asks.

“Yes. The preliminary bacterial culture results are concerning, most concerning. It’s Yersinia, of course, but so far it is resistant to all the antibiotics we have tested.”

“Not another one,” Alana murmurs.

Montaldo’s jaw drops. “There are other cases of antibiotic resistance?”

“At least one other, at the Ospedale San Martino,” Nico says. “A patient of mine.”

“How does a new strain of bacteria develop antibiotic resistance so rapidly?”

“We aren’t certain,” Alana admits. “It must have a particular affinity for developing resistance through genetic mutation or by ‘borrowing’ DNA from other resistant bacteria inside the hospital.”

“Perhaps,” Montaldo says, unsatisfied, before turning to Nico. “How did you treat your patient with antibiotic resistance, Dr. Oliva?”

“We could not, Lina. She died.”

Montaldo turns from the window without comment. She starts toward the next room but is stopped by the screech of an alarm. Her head jerks toward the nursing station, and she calls out, “Quale stanza?”

“Il primo!” someone shouts back to her.

Montaldo rushes back to the first room and bursts through the door. Alana and Nico follow. The nurse is already leaning over Rosa’s stretcher, her two palms interlocked as she rapidly pumps the girl’s chest up and down in piston-like compressions. The overhead monitor wails its alarm, while its warning lights flash like a strobe.

Other suited staff members storm into the room. Alana recedes back against the glass wall, aware she has nothing to contribute to the little girl’s resuscitation. She glances over at the mother, who sits bolt-upright, still clutching her daughter’s hand. One of the staff speaks soothingly to the woman as she tries to free her grip to gain access to the girl’s arm. But the mother refuses to relinquish hold of her daughter. She just keeps muttering, “Rosa, Rosa, Rosa . . .”

Nico says a few words to the nurse, who moves away. He kneels down beside the mother’s stool and, without saying a word, lowers an arm gently over her shoulder. Still clinging to her daughter’s hand, the woman turns and buries her hooded face into Nico’s neck, breaking into a heavy sob.