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“What is it? What’s wrong with him?” I ask. I don’t want to distract him, but I can’t stop the words from spilling out. Doctor Morelli doesn’t answer for a moment. He checks Elio’s blood pressure, then his temperature, then curses. His reply, when it comes, is in rapid Italian.
“What’s he saying?” I ask Curse, who’s moved out of the way for the doctor. As Curse listens long enough to translate I vow that as soon as things settle down I am learning fucking Italian.
“He’s only just recovered from the bullet wound, and his body wasn’t ready for the ribs and kidney. He’s got a secondary kidney infection now.”
Curse says it evenly, nearly robotically. There isn’t a trace of resentment in his face or voice, despite the fact that these are all injuries Elio’s gotten for me.
“Is he going to be alright?” I ask, my voice rising higher and higher.
Morelli speaks rapidly again as he tightens a tourniquet around Elio’s arm and starts tapping firmly at his inner elbow. He eases a needle into a vein, then barks a command at Enzo who’s waiting by the door. Enzo disappears.
“He needs IV antibiotics,” Curse says. “Enzo’s going to get the IV stand from the med room.” While waiting for Enzo to return, Doctor Morelli holds the bag of liquid aloft after connecting the tube to Elio’s arm.
“But is he going to be alright?” I ask again, more forcefully than I think I’ve ever spoken in my entire life. I nearly shout it, and I don’t mean to, but I can’t seem to help it. I feel like I might die if somebody doesn’t answer me right fucking now.
“Sepsis with multi-organ failure is a possibility,” Curse says flatly. He doesn’t get loud like I did, but nonetheless the calm delivery of his words hits me like a blow.
I blink away tears and tear my gaze from Curse, looking down at Elio. Elio seems to have slipped back into a deeper sleep. His eyes are closed now, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He probably can’t hear me, but I talk to him anyway, forcing myself not to sound as petrified as I am.
“Elio,” I say sharply through my tears. I’m going to start sobbing soon. I can feel it, pressure in my throat and eyes and lungs. But I have to say this. I have to get this out. “Elio Titone, I want you to listen to me. Listen closely. Because I have a proposition for you.”
I sniff against the tumble of tears threatening to spill. “It’s a deal. A good one, too. Alright?”
I rub my hands in quivering circles across his hot chest, not sure if I’m trying to comfort him with my touch or comfort myself with the solid bulk of him beneath my fingers.
“These are the terms,” I choke out. “And there’s no negotiating. You have to hold up your end of the bargain.” My hands curl into fists against his skin. “You have to live, Elio. You have to get through this. Survive, and I’ll stop fighting you. Stop denying you. Live, and-”
There’s no going back now. But I don’t hesitate one bit.
“-I will marry you.”
Chapter 26
Deirdre
The next few days pass in a stressful blur. Elio sleeps a lot as the powerful antibiotics and IV fluids work their way through his battered system. Doctor Morelli stays at the house 24/7, and is joined by Lucia, who it turns out is a trained nurse. She tells me she studied it at the University of Toronto, and I remember seeing her U of T sweater at the dress shop. That fitting feels so long ago now. Like it happened to somebody else.
I try to learn everything I can from Doctor Morelli and Lucia. Lucia has the right temperament for a nurse, I think. She’s the slightly more reserved and softer-spoken, sweeter twin, but she’s also extremely competent and she’s thankfully patient enough to teach me. Soon, I know how to interpret all the numbers and screens on the machine that Doctor Morelli has brought up to Elio’s room, and I can switch out the bags of IV fluids with ease.
It makes me feel a little less useless while Elio’s so damaged in that bed. If I don’t have something I can do to help him, I think I might go crazy.
I skip my classes, not able to bear the thought of leaving Elio here like this. What if something happens to him, and I’m not here? What if he needs me? All thoughts of running from this man have suddenly been replaced with how I can best stand by him now. The reversal should be enough to give me whiplash, but I’m too busy taking care of him. Fortunately, it seems like nobody except Elio actually cares if I go to school or not, and while he’s incapacitated, no one tries to make me.
I don’t even think his men notice me at all, to be honest, except in the context that I’m almost always hovering somewhere in Elio’s room. They’re too distracted, too on edge, too worried about their boss. The number of soldiers in the house has doubled, and sometimes I hear Vincenzo Titone’s gruff, loud voice booming from downstairs. Elio’s condition has turned this house into a hornet’s nest of stressful, buzzing activity.
But I tune it all out. It’s calmer here, at the centre of the storm with Elio. When we’re alone, I wipe his face with cool cloths, brush his hair back from his forehead, and talk to him. I remind him of our deal – that he has to live for me to marry him – and I try not to think about the fact we had another deal, once. One that I’d never quite agreed to. The deal that I was supposed to marry him in exchange for my father’s safety.
Marry me, he’d said. Or I’ll tell Darragh exactly where your fucking father is.
I try not to wonder what it means that I was fighting so hard against the marriage when it would save my father. But now, I’m grasping at it with both hands, hoping that it might somehow save Elio.
And hell, maybe it does. Maybe it helps, just a little bit. Because on the morning of the fourth day, Elio opens his eyes, looks at me exhausted, but lucid, and says the first words I’ve heard him speak in days.
“You’re here.”
He’s too tired to sound actually surprised, but I gather that he is. He stares at me almost uncomprehending. Like he thought I’d vanished, somehow, while his eyes were closed. I lean forward in the chair I’m sitting in at his bedside, running my fingers over his forehead, his cheek, so that he can feel me.
“Of course I’m here,” I whisper. I can feel tears biting at me, but I don’t let them fall. “Who else was going to make sure you held up your end of the bargain?”
