Veronika decides to die   ::   Coelho Paulo

Why not use her as a guinea pig, to see if he could eliminate the Vitriol from her organism?

And so Dr. Igor had conceived his plan.

Using a drug known as Fenotal, he had managed to simulate the effects of heart attacks. For a week she had received injections of the drug, and she must have been very frightened, because she had time to think about death and to review her own life. In that way, according to Dr. Igor’s thesis (the final chapter of his work would be entitled “An Awareness of Death Encourages Us to Live More Intensely”) the girl had gone on to eliminate Vitriol completely from her organism, and would quite possibly never repeat her attempt at suicide.

He was supposed to see her today and tell her that, thanks to the injections, he had achieved a total reversal of her heart condition. Veronika’s escape saved him the unpleasant experience of lying to her yet again.

What Dr. Igor had not counted on was the infectious nature of his cure for Vitriol poisoning. A lot of people in Villete had been frightened by their awareness of that slow, irreparable death. They must all have been thinking about what they were missing, forced to reevaluate their own lives.

Mari had come to him asking to be discharged. Other patients were asking for their cases to be reviewed. The position of the ambassador’s son was more worrisome, though, because he had simply disappeared, probably helping Veronika to escape.

Perhaps they’re still together, he thought.

At any rate the ambassador’s son knew where Villete was, if he wanted to come back. Dr. Igor was too excited by the results to pay much attention to minor details.

For a few moments he was assailed by another doubt: Sooner or later Veronika would realize that she wasn’t going to die of a heart attack. She would probably go to a specialist who would tell her that her heart was perfectly normal. She would decide that the doctor who had taken care of her in Villete was a complete incompetent; but then, all those who dare to research into forbidden subjects require both a certain amount of courage and a good dose of incomprehension.

But what about the many days that she would have to live with the fear of imminent death?

Dr. Igor pondered the arguments long and hard and decided that it didn’t really matter. She would consider each day a miracle—which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.

He noticed that the sun’s rays were growing stronger; at that hour the inmates would be having breakfast. Soon his waiting room would be full, the usual problems would arise, and it was best to start taking notes at once for his thesis.

Meticulously he began to write up his experiment with Veronika; he would leave the reports on the building’s lack of security until later.

St. Bernadette’s Day, 1998