I’m lost. Completely and wholly fucking lost.
“The patient is on gonadotropin?”
“She was.” The male nurse shifts his eyes to the head doctor, who asked the question. “I’m uncertain if she still is.”
The doctor nods before appearing like a shadow at my side. “She needs immediate surgery. Best-case scenario is that we’re looking at an ectopic pregnancy or pregnancies, but I’m afraid it could be OHSS.”
“OHSS?”
“Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. It’s a severe condition where the ovaries swell and cause fluid buildup in the abdomen and lungs. If it isn’t caught early, it can also cause blood clots and kidney failure.”
My fury collapses under the weight of my fear. “She could die?”
My fists curl so fast my knuckles crack when the male nurse mumbles under his breath. “All because you care more about an heir for yourlegacy”—he air quotes his last word—“than a living, breathing person. I only gave Valentina information on the clinic so she could help her mother, not for her to get trampled by a plan too stupid to be logical.”
He looks like he wants to spit at my feet. I might let him if he’ll take some of his attitude and apply it to saving Valentina’s life. Even with nurses and doctors probing and prodding her, she hasn’t moved an inch.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.” He glances past my shoulder to someone entering the ER from the main entrance. “Both of you. If you had just let the clinic remove her eggs and inseminate them the right way, all of this could have been avoided.”
Hate so black it singes the earth between my feet roars through me when I crank my neck back. Valeria is barely a foot inside the ER waiting room. Her face is ashen and marked with tears.
Her unvoiced remorse does little to cool my fury when she mouths,I’m sorry, two seconds before she races back through the double doors faster than a bullet leaving a gun.
My head screams at me to take off after her and rip her to shreds,but a question too fragile not to fracture my psyche concretes my feet to the floor. “There’s little chance we can do anything for Valentina’s baby, but if you could choose, who should we save?”
Not even confirmation that my child is also Valentina’s sees me hesitating. “Valentina,” I say, my voice rough with emotions. “Save Valentina.Always.”
The doctor nods before he reenters the cubicle, where the male nurse is frozen in shocked silence. He didn’t anticipate my reply, and the instant Valentina is safe and conscious, I’ll find out why. “We’ll do everything we can,SignorCaruso.”
He waits for me to nod before he wheels Valentina behind the flapping plastic doors of the operating room.
35
GIOVANNI
Every time a nurse passes the waiting room, my heart rate spikes as fast as my chin jerks up, and I brace for news that never comes. Time stretches cruelly and endlessly as I bob my leg like a crack addict overdue for a fix.
I don’t even know how I got to the waiting room. One minute, I was in the ER. The next, I was seated on a hard plastic chair with my elbows on my knees, and my head in my hands.
Anger burns in my chest, but underneath the rage is a fear so potent it’s the equivalent of acid in my veins. I’m fucking terrified. What if the doors open and good news doesn’t walk through them? I won’t survive the agony my father has endured over the past thirteen months.
Not hearing Valentina’s laugh again or feeling the movements of her curves under my hand when she quivers in ecstasywillkill me.
If she’s no longer in this world, I won’t be either. There are no rewrites for my story. No part two. I’m the fucking penguin with his perfect fucking pebble.
It’s only given out once.
Finally, the doctor who wheeled Valentina away hours agoappears. His expression is calm, but his eyes are stormy. I reach him in less than a heartbeat, and my brothers rise with me like a force ready to fight the injustices of the world.
“She’s stable.” His confession releases the pressure valve in my chest. “We controlled the bleeding by removing one of her fallopian tubes and are managing the complications of OHSS with medication.”
“Where is she?” Concetta asks, reminding me that she’s here.
I’m not avoiding her on purpose. I’m just too caught up in my worst nightmare to drag anyone else into the mess. I thought I handled pressure well. Tonight has proved me a liar.
The doctor glances at Concetta and smiles. “She’s in recovery.”
My throat burns when Dante reminds me it wasn’t solely Valentina’s life on the line tonight. “And the pregnancy?”
