Chapter 8: The Doctor's Visit
Dr.
Anselm had been the Moretti family physician for twenty-two years.
He was a small, precise man with wire-rimmed glasses and the manner of someone who had learned, long ago, that the Moretti household rewarded directness and punished anything that resembled evasion.
He arrived the following morning in a car that the blizzard had clearly tested, stamped snow from his boots in the foyer, and asked immediately to see Giovanni.
Lorenzo met him there.
Nora waited in the corridor outside room 4B — Lorenzo had asked her to stay close, and she had not asked why.
She heard the examination through the closed door.
Quiet instructions.
The sound of the physician's bag.
A long silence.
Then Dr.
Anselm's voice, low and careful.
"How long has he been receiving this dosage?"
Lorenzo's answer was too quiet to hear.
Then: "Lorenzo.
This is not the dosage I prescribed."
Nora went still in the corridor.
"The records show the correct prescription being filled," Dr.
Anselm continued, louder now, as though he had stopped caring whether sound carried.
"But what I'm seeing in his system is consistent with a much higher sedative load.
For an extended period." A pause.
"This level of sedation, maintained over months or years, would significantly suppress motor function.
Cognitive presentation.
It would make a man appear far more incapacitated than he actually is."
The door opened.
Lorenzo stood in the frame.
He looked at Nora.
"Come in," he said.
She entered.
Dr.
Anselm was standing beside Giovanni's wheelchair, his expression the careful neutral of a man controlling something large.
Giovanni was looking at the doctor with eyes that were — Nora noticed immediately — clearer than she had ever seen them.
Sharper.
"Miss Nora," Dr.
Anselm said.
He had apparently been told her name.
"Can you tell me what Mr.
Moretti has been eating and drinking since you took over his care?"
"Proper meals.
Hot food from the kitchen.
Water, tea.
I stopped giving him the supplement powder that was in his room — it smelled wrong to me, and he seemed to resist it.
I thought it was just a preference."
Dr.
Anselm and Lorenzo exchanged a look.
"The supplement powder," Lorenzo said.
"Where is it?"
"I kept it.
I didn't throw it away — I put it in the back of the cupboard in the east wing bathroom because I didn't know if I was supposed to discard it."
Twenty minutes later, Marco had the container.
Another twenty minutes after that, Lorenzo's phone rang with the preliminary result from a contact at a private laboratory in the city.
He listened.
Said three words.
Ended the call.
"The powder was adulterated," he told Nora and Dr.
Anselm.
"Additional sedative compound, mixed into the base.
Enough to keep him compliant.
Manageable." His jaw was tight.
"It's been going on for at least two years."
Dr.
Anselm removed his glasses and cleaned them with the slow deliberateness of a man choosing his next words carefully.
"Giovanni," he said, turning to the wheelchair.
"I want to try something.
I want you to squeeze my hand — as hard as you can."
Giovanni looked at the doctor.
Then he raised his right hand from the armrest — raised it, not just shifted it — and gripped Dr.
Anselm's hand.
The doctor's expression changed.
"Good," he said quietly.
"That is very good."
He looked at Lorenzo.
"With the sedative load reduced — which has apparently been happening naturally over the past three months as his diet improved — and with proper physiotherapy, I believe your father may recover significantly more function than anyone has been told to expect." He paused.
"Someone made sure those expectations stayed low."
"Mrs.
Gable," Nora said.
Both men looked at her.
"She controlled everything in this house.
The staff, the schedules, the supplies.
The supplement powder was always on the tray when I arrived.
She was the one who prepared it." Nora looked at Giovanni.
"She needed him to stay the way he was.
Quiet.
Still.
Unable to report anything."
Giovanni's eyes were on her face.
He lifted his hand again — slowly, with visible effort — and pointed.
At the desk in the corner of the room.
Lorenzo crossed to it.
Pulled open the top drawer.
Inside, beneath a layer of old correspondence, was a small notebook.
Leather-covered, the pages filled with careful, cramped handwriting — the handwriting of a man who had been practicing, in secret, for a very long time.
Lorenzo opened it to the first page.
At the top, in letters that had been written and rewritten until they were steady, was a single line:
*She is the only one who told me the truth.*
Below it, in the same careful hand, was a list of names.
Dates.
Specific incidents.
Every sl*p.
Every cold meal.
Every mocking comment from Mrs.
Gable and the others.
And at the bottom of the first page, underlined twice:
*Brody Callahan.
Find him.
He left her with nothing.*
Lorenzo looked up from the notebook.
He looked at his father.
Giovanni held his gaze.
Then, with enormous deliberate effort, he moved his right hand to the arm of the wheelchair and tapped it — once, twice, three times.
The same rhythm Nora had felt a hundred times in the dark.
*I know.
I know.
I know.*
"He's been waiting," Nora said softly.
"He's been waiting for you to come."
Lorenzo closed the notebook.
He held it in both hands for a moment.
"How long?" he asked his father.
Giovanni raised two fingers.
May you like
Two years.
The room was very quiet.
