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for treatment.
    We had stopped at a small market after the tour ended to pick up a few things for the long flight home the next day. After a few minutes I realized she hadn’t moved. She stood by a fruit bin. One hand was placed on the left back side of her head. “Pain,” she said. I asked if it was like one of her migraines. “No, that’s over here,” and she tapped the back right side of her head. “This is different.” After a few moments the pain lessened, and we slowly walked the several blocks back to the hotel. She felt better after resting and then went to the bathroom to pack her toiletries. She came out, grabbed the left side of her head again, and muttered, “Oh God.” The pupils in both eyes vanished behind her eyelids, and she slowly folded into my arms. In the ambulance I showed one of the attendants her insurance card, but she just looked at me sternly and said, “No, free, free.”
    I finally heard the call of “Robertson,” not my name but hers. A man in a white coat saw me respond and quickly came to guide me to a small office behind the desk, as if I couldn’t navigate by myself. Three youngish women were there, two in white physician garb and the other in a nurse’s uniform. One had tears in her eyes. Between the three struggling to find the right words in English, I heard “brain aneurysm,” “wasn’t expected to make it through the night,” and “do you want to say goodbye?”
    Contemporary American pop tunes were playing in the ER. The staff went about their business, giving injections, inserting tubes, and cleaning the gray-brown seepage from the brain of the man in the bed next to hers. Many sets of eyes were on me as I looked at her. She was comatose, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths, a ventilator in her throat. I said goodbye for her daughters, two grandchildren, and myself. A beautiful woman, inside and out. I left through the ambulance doors, nodding to those taking a smoke break, and walked back to the hotel in utter disbelief at what had taken place over the four hours since she had collapsed in our hotel room.
    I returned at six the following morning. There was an odd but different collection of souls in the waiting room from the previous evening. Now the televisions were showing Italian news. I alternated between pacing and sitting for three hours before “Robertson” was called out again. She had died moments earlier. I repeated the goodbyes and collected myself as best I could, sitting at a small desk that had the computer with the charts of the several people in the ER visible on the screen. Nurses and physicians patted my shoulders. Their touches and anguished looks were heartfelt. My final act in the hospital was to sign the form for organ and cornea transplants. Another gathering of medical staff stood outside smoking when I left. We traded single arm waves in the air.
    The U.S. embassy was several miles from the hospital, a walk that went quickly. Italian soldiers were stationed in front of the embassy, sinister automatic weapons slung over their shoulders as if a terrorist movie scene were about to be filmed. I stated my business to one, went through the security check, and walked up the stairs to the second story, where a few of us gathered to report lost passports and other problems. I filled out the Report of Death in a Foreign Country form. The Italian man who assisted me anticipated my questions, probably from handling such reports too many times. I surrendered her passport and printed the contact information for her daughters. He asked if I wanted to use the embassy phone to call anyone back home, or if I needed additional funds to fly home. I didn’t. He gave me a sheet with the names of several funeral homes in Rome that had experience—and staff fluent in English—in handling the deaths of Americans.
    I arranged for her to be cremated and the ashes