Order of Doctors

The Order of Doctors is a professional body whose authority gives weight to rules of medical conduct and the possibility of disciplinary sanction. Its name recurs at moments when professional ethics become a pressure on private life: first as the institution a therapist fears being reported to, later as the label on a folder of incriminating messages, and finally against the background of Marco’s independent use of medical knowledge and access.

Professional Authority and Confidentiality

When Daniele Carradori comes to warn Marco that he believes him to be in grave danger, he asks him not to report the visit to the Order of Doctors or the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. Carradori explains that informing Marco means breaking a fundamental rule of his profession, an act that could be severely sanctioned. The Order is thus introduced not through its internal structure or procedures, but through the disciplinary risk that makes Carradori’s disclosure exceptional.

Carradori’s warning rests on what Marina has told him in treatment. When Marco insists that Marina is sincere, Carradori reverses course: he says he was wrong to conclude that Marco was in danger and asks Marco to disregard the visit. Marco refuses to let him leave without explaining himself, threatening to report him to the Order. The exchange makes professional accountability part of the scene’s tension: Carradori has already crossed an ethical boundary to protect a patient’s husband, while Marco can invoke the same institution to press him for the information he has withheld.

A Name on the Evidence

The Order’s name later appears in a different context: among the emails Marco has kept in a folder titled “Order of Doctors.” The folder is part of a wider accumulation of evidence of his relationship with Luisa, alongside hidden letters, credit-card statements, and text exchanges that have not been fully erased. Its innocuous professional label does not make the messages safe; rather, it is one more place where the truth of the affair remains available to Marina’s scrutiny.

This recurrence shifts the Order from an external disciplinary authority to an element in Marco’s private archive. He believes that his relationship with Luisa is the main danger to his family and that he has it under control, but the stored messages expose how poorly that confidence is founded. The institution’s name therefore gathers two forms of professional exposure: Carradori’s fear of being sanctioned for disclosure and Marco’s use of its label to house evidence of a concealed relationship.

Medical Knowledge and Individual Action

Marco’s own medical career gives the professional world a further, darker relevance. During Probus’s cancer treatment, Marco takes on much of the practical burden of care, accompanying his father to chemotherapy and overseeing medication, scans, side effects, and home blood tests. Later, when Probus is suffering and repeatedly asks to be taken away, Marco acts alone: as a physician, he knows that he can hasten the end, and he administers morphine outside the pain-treatment protocol.

Near the end of his life, Marco likewise emphasizes that his final act is his own, undertaken in complete autonomy and mental clarity. He explains that his medical training has allowed him to obtain the substances for his planned death without asking anyone to participate. These episodes do not describe action by the Order itself; they set an individual physician’s knowledge and choices against the professional rules and oversight the institution represents. Across the novel, the Order’s significance lies in this contrast between formal accountability and decisions made in private, where medical expertise may serve care, concealment, or a self-determined end.