I see her standing in front of me in the safe room, refusing to move until I said please.
Cat.
If this is it, that is the only thing I want to see.
Her face. Her stubborn mouth. Her dark eyes.
The way she looked at me when she told me to come back.
And I won’t.
I’ll be breaking my promise to her, but at least she’ll be safe.
I hold onto her as long as I can.
Her face swims into view one more time, and her mouth forms my name, though no sound can be heard.
Caterina,I think as my vision goes black.
Chapter Thirty Six
Caterina
The machines breathe for him. That is the worst part.
Not the white walls. Not the sterile smell of the hospital room. Not the bruises along his jaw or the ugly swelling around one eye. Not the tubes and wires and clear bags hanging from metal poles. Not even the bandage wrapped around his side beneath the blanket, hiding the damage that nearly took him from me.
The breathing.
The steady rise and fall of his chest because a machine is making it happen.
I sit beside his bed and stare at him until my eyes burn.
Adrian Donato should not be this still.
Even asleep, he is always aware. A hand within reach of a weapon. A slight shift at any sound. His body resting, maybe, but never completely gone from the room.
Now he is gone from the room.
Not dead.
I shudder. I will not think that word.
But somewhere unreachable, somewhere behind medication and injury and a tube down his throat that I cannot look at for too long without feeling like I am going to come apart.
They almost couldn’t get it in.
That is what the paramedic said while the ambulance was screaming its way to the hospital.
“Not sure if we can intubate. Might have to consider tracheostomy.”
The word terrifies me; the idea that his throat might be so far gone that they can’t get a tube in.
But they managed. They got the tube in, got him breathing, got him to surgery.
They stitched his side back together, but not the way Dr. Alfonsi had done it at Papà’s house. This time it was not neat and simple and handled with a bottle of antiseptic and an old family doctor shaking his head at Adrian’s stubbornness.
This time there were surgeons and an operating room and blood transfusions. More than one, even.
