“Eleanor.”A voice whispers from behind long-flowing curtains, flowing into the room on the waves of a mid-summer’s night breeze.

In the light of day, the plain cottony fabric with tiny embroidered flowers looks cheery and summery.But in the middle of the night, the moon’s rays illuminate them from behind, transforming them into a ghostly imitation of themselves.

A woman lies sleeping peacefully in matching white sheets in a bed parallel to the large French doors, thrown open to catch what little breeze passes through on the stifling night.Her body faces away; a pillow tucked under her head, her body curled in on itself as her long brown hair fans out behind her.

“Eleanor.”The voice beckons again as the curtains flutter a little and then die down. The woman on the bed shifts slightly, as if something in her sleep has disturbed her, but she does not awaken.

Stillness.No sounds are made but suddenly a presence is near.A strong gust of wind pushes the curtains upward into a tizzy but just as quickly they deflate.

Then…a shadow.A small bit of triangle peaking in from a balcony that must have been elegant at one point, but now has cracks where the door encasements meets crumbling stone.

Time ticks forward, the shadow lengthening and spreading along the terrazzo floor.No sounds are made and no form appears to lay claim to the shadow but it creeps across the floor anyway.Eleanor pulls the sheet more tightly around herself.

“Sh…sh…sh.”The voice sooths, low in its timbre but filled with such a languid eroticism that for the woman on the bed it has the opposite effect.It sooths her and yet makes her more aware, the honey-filled tones spreading over her and around her and somehow through her.

The shadow continues on its destined path; sliding up over the bed and over the folds and shapes that make up the occupant.Small indentions appear on the sheet below her ankle, five little imprints where there was none before.They travel slowly forward along her calf as if a lover was trailing a hand appreciatively along his beloved’s lower leg.It is so light and so sure that it could almost be the wind; but it is not.

The indentations trek over knee and along her thigh.One long caress that sooths and stills and leaves little darts of pleasure along the way.They move along her hip, pausing to dip ever so slightly over her pubic bone.The indentures spread out and deepen at her waist, like hands forming to her shape.Her arm is moved slightly upward, a firm pressure moving along the underside of her arm and holding it still.Another pressure moving the hair away from around her neck.

She feels him lean down, feels his breath passing warmly over her neck, feels his lips pressing firmly on the artery pumping blood to her brain.Suddenly, this does not seem right.This does not make sense.

She shoots up in bed, breathing hard. Ready to do battle.Ready to face an intruder.Ready to confront a burglar. But no one is there.She is alone.All is quiet.

She settles back among the pillows feeling as if she has narrowly escaped with her life.But no one is there, and has probably ever been there, so she rolls over and attempts to go back to sleep.But not without staring at the lone pale curtains of her room fluttering back and forth for what seems like a very long time.

The humongous key clicks in the door of her apartment as the lock slides closed.

When she had first seen the old-world key, she had thought it was kind of neat with its skeleton key design.She could imagine someone from days gone past sliding it into the big wooden door to lock an unsuspecting Cinderella into her room.It brings back images of childhood and fairy castles and days with nothing to do but play.Boy, were those days long over.Now she just thinks it's annoying.

She feels like she is living in the middle ages as she looks down to the thick metal resting in her palm.The dang thing wouldn’t even fit on her key ring.She had ended up having to visit half a dozen stores yesterday just to buy some over-priced purse that had a pocket big enough to put the thing in.She zips the key into an inner pocket and brings the strap up over her shoulder.

The purse itself was some big atrocious thing that she would have never been caught dead wearing in downtown Boston.It was black leather for one thing.Secondly, it had all these little zippers and pockets that made her feel schizophrenic.Bostonians were just so much more practical about these things.Sure, with any city you would get the flashy and the uncouth, but in general the Bean town populace never has quite shaken off its Puritan roots.

Even now she feels ridiculous as the purse slaps against her side as she tries to quietly make her way down the stone stairway of her apartment building.She would have taken the elevator, but it just seems wasteful for only two flights of stairs.And the thing is slow and claustrophobic; and just makes her feel like she’s in a gold-plated moving casket.

Casket.The word throws her a bit.Last night…last night in that dream she had felt as if she was buried six feet under.

The feeling of being unable to move her body floods back to her.It had been as if an invisible force had held her confined to the bed.She had wanted to move.She had wanted to wipe those hands away, but she couldn’t.She had fought against something.Something had moved her hair aside, had been about to do…what?

She inadvertently swipes her hands down her skirt to prove that her hands do in fact do what she tells them to do.She tells herself to stop being stupid.It had just been a dream.

The click of her industrious heels echoes through the cavernous space; sending loud clacks with every one of her steps.What a great way to introduce yourself to your neighbors: yes, I’m the loud American that woke you up before the sun had come up with my too high heels that I would rather not wear except that I felt on my first day of work I had to at least try to fit in.

She can already feel them pinching at her feet.The skirt and blouse combination she had picked out to be ‘feminine’ already chafe in their restrictiveness.Thank God it will only be for a little while.The extra pair of shoes are already waiting in her bag.

Her hands slide the large double doors leading out of her building’s foyer and the feel and site of her new city washes over her.Rome.It’s not a dream.She really is here.

The centuries old buildings of Trastavere greet her with their high doors and even higher windows.Different shades of burnt umber, beige, and ochre tell her more than anything that she is definitely in the Mediterranean.She smiles at the sea of wood-paneled shutters shutting off the inhabitants of Rome from the outside world.She smiles even more at the plethora of scooters and motorbikes parked along the sidewalks.The juxtaposition of the old and new should be jarring, but somehow it all fits together in an especial way.

Her mind filters back to the conversation she had with her mother’s friend Giovanni and how he had convinced her to come here.

“You know she’s not getting any better.”His fatherly voice had echoed over the International line.

When he had called it had only been a couple of months since her mother’s mysterious disappearance and subsequent just as mysterious reappearance.She had still been reeling from the entire upheaval of her life into what came to be known as The Phone Call that changed her life.

She had been finishing up her residency at Stanford University, but the minute she had been notified that her mom had been missing for two days, she had flown out to Boston.The worry, the waiting had been excruciating.Her mother’s employee identification picture, one that her mother hated because she thought it gave her a double chin, had been flashed on the news so many times that the image was permanently imprinted onto her brain.And then a day later…her mother, the wildly successful Chief of Surgery at Boston General, and the person that had inspired her to pursue surgery in the first place, a person she looked up to, had been found unconscious in the middle of Boston Commons.

She had had no recollection of who she was or how she had even gotten there.Eleanor had only seen her later at the hospital when she had been hooked up to countless IV’s and machines.Within days her mother had woken up, the tubes removed, and been allowed to go home, but one thing had never changed: her mother never got better.

“You know you can bring her here.I have a colleague who has been doing some really wonderful things with…”And there he pauses, still unable to quite say what is exactly wrong with her mom, his friend.He finishes vaguely, “Cases like hers.”

Cases like hers?Who has cases like hers?Who disappears one night a brilliant surgeon and wonderful mom, only to be found days later in what can only be described as late-stage Alzheimer’s?

“You know you just want to take care of her.”She had mildly teased.

Her mother and Giovanni had always had an interesting relationship.The story goes that they had met in medical school.They might have had a thing for each other, or they may have just been friends, neither one would ever say.All she knew that was upon graduation, Giovanni had gone back to Italy to be groomed to take his place in the long line of Marino men who ran one of the cities most respected hospitals and her mother had gone on to marry her father, had Eleanor, and subsequently lost him to the jungles of Vietnam.

By then Giovanni had married a local banker’s daughter and had a daughter of his own on the way, but he had always been there for her mother.Every couple of years he would come to the states for a medical conference or a special event in their lives.He had been there the day her mother had been awarded Chief of Surgery.He had been there for Eleanor’s graduation from medical school.Eleanor had always wondered if the timing and geography had been better, what might have been between the two of them.But now…now the point was moot because her mother might never get better.

Which is how she found herself a month later walking down a street in a foreign city on her way to a new job as a surgical resident in a hospital that she had never thought to see, let alone work for.

She didn’t sleep well last night, but somehow she is not tired.Well actually, she had slept pretty well; it just hadn't been in the right time zone.She had tried staying up the entire first day to force herself to the new time schedule, but that hadn't worked out too well when she had fallen asleep at four o’clock in the afternoon.

It has been two days since her and her mother had permanently left the good 'ole USA for their new home, and it has been non-stop settling in ever since.That’s probably what accounted for her waking up in the middle of the night.Nothing had disturbed her.Why had she imagined that someone had been in her room?It was ridiculous.They would have had to have climbed up three stories without a sound, somehow disappeared before she opened her eyes, and gotten down without her hearing anything.Ridiculous.

She was just too stressed out.She was in a weird place; starting a new job in a new city in a new country.It was bound to catch up with her sooner or later.

The sky has lightened considerably since she awoke in the moonlight and cursed her internal clock for not letting her adjust to the time change faster.She had tried unpacking a bit, but had worried about waking up her neighbors.She had tried reading a book, in hopes that the quiet past-time would put her back into a dream state, but no such luck had come her way.

Instead, she had made herself some coffee and waited for the sky to show at least show some semblance of rising to greet her.She had taken a shower, ironed her clothes, and put on make-up in a leisurely fashion she was sure would seem like a fond memory by the end of the week.But with all of that, she still can only see a pale burnt peach color every time she walks past an east-west cross-street.The rest of the time she is walking in shadows.

The whole world is in fact one big shadow.Shadow…shadows….shadow. Why does that word reverberate through her mind?Something about darkness and curtains and moons passes across her stream of consciousness, but then it is gone.

Okay, she seriously needs to find herself an espresso.Jet lag was not an allowable excuse for a malpractice claim.Maybe she should just call it a day and let her body adjust for one more day.Her new boss wouldn’t mind.He was more an old family friend than a boss anyway, but she couldn’t take advantage of that.Plus, she was already awake.And on her way to the hospital.

But as she comes out of the last towering birch tree and steps onto one of Rome’s many ancient stone bridges, the first of the sun’s rays burst forth behind Tiber Island.She has to shield her eyes as she walks forth to put her hands along the stone railing.The river is one giant sheet of pure sunlight, reflecting the glowing sky back at her.

She really doesn’t have to be at the hospital for a few hours yet.It’s so early that the trams haven’t even started running.The responsibilities of her new job, her mother, and the reason that they have come clear across an ocean crowd in on her, making it hard to breath.

She idly passes her hand over the scratchy stone.To her left lies time to get familiar with her new job, tour the facility, learn the lay of the land, so to speak.To her right lies a small interlude in a life piled with responsibility.

The hand shielding her face drops to join its brethren on the hard surface of the bridge.She closes her eyes and turns to face the sun.It is still early enough to appreciate the slight warmth as it tickles her skin.Later she will probably hide in the shade to deflect the full effects of its warming properties, but for now…for now. She imagines turning to look behind her, but the darkness repels her.The darkness will claim her later.For now she walks into the light.