Doctor Berman came into his room to find Nathan flexing the fingers of his left hand like a pianist preparing to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5. He stood at the end of the bed watching him for a few moments, and then he said, ‘It’s almost back to how it was before you burned it, isn’t it?’ Nathan clenched his fingers into a fist, and then splayed them open again. ‘Yes, it is,’ he admitted. ‘The tendons still feel kind of tightish, but that’s all.’ There was a very long pause, but then Doctor Berman cleared his throat and said, ‘You want to tell me what’s going on here?’ ‘I’m not sure I understand you. Nothing’s going on, except a little light physiotherapy.’ ‘I’m a doctor, Professor. I deal with people every day who have agonizing and permanently disfiguring burns. To do that, I have to be a psychiatrist and a counselor as well as a surgeon.’ ‘OK.’ ‘When you were brought in here, you had full-thickness burns to your hand and you were suffering intense pain.
