Page 142 of Falling for Mr. October

Theo, who likes to keep busy in a crisis, hurries outside to help.

For a moment, there’s nothing. Just the usual hustle and bustle of the ER, and a feeling of aching emptiness fills me. Everything is falling apart, and it’s happening so quickly, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Then Miles wraps his arms around me. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here, Bianca. You can fall apart if you need to.”

And I cry and cry into my brother’s shoulder there in the lobby of the hospital where I used to work. Because I know that even if Nonna Francesca is mostly okay, this may be the incident that sends her home.

Which means Giovanni may be leaving with her.

I know he said we’d be together no matter what, that we’d try long distance, but I know in my heart it won’t be the same as having him here with me.

I don’t know who called her, but Emily arrives at the hospital only twenty minutes or so after we do. She takes one look at us sitting in a row and lowers into the empty seat next to Theo.

“You don’t have to be here,” I tell her, tears in my voice.

“I do,” she says firmly, and she reaches across my big brother to hand me a book.

I half expect it to be some kind of treatise on grief and loss, but no, it’s an adventure to occupy my mind. Because of course, Emily knows best when it comes to books.

“I didn’t know how long you’d have to wait,” she says quietly.

“As long as it takes.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that. That’s how long I’ll be here too.”

I notice Miles watching her, a quizzical line between his eyebrows.

She’s surprised him somehow, but not me. Emily is the kind of friend who’d keep you company anywhere. She would have shown up if I was stuck in the waiting room of hell.

After another half hour, my grandmother arrives with Isabella, who’s pale and apologetic.

“She wouldn’t rest until we came,” Isabella says.

Nonna Rose sighs wearily. “I’m right here. You can speak to me, not for me.”

And so all of us wait together. We wait, and we hope.

I hope so hard it hurts, thinking of those seedlings we planted and arranged all throughout the house.

Let them live. Please, let them live.

CHAPTER FORTY

GIOVANNI

“You’ll want to come home, of course,” Enzo says. “We already have that home helper lined up from before you left, Nonna, and Giovanni, Nico, and Lucy and me can alternate staying with you.”

Nonna and I are in an ER treatment room, on a FaceTime call with my brothers and Aria, who’s rubbing her eyes because it’s an indecent hour in Greece. The doctor left a short while ago, after telling us Nonna had a “lucky break”—literally. She broke her fall with her hands, and now one of her wrists has a nonsurgical fracture. The doctor gave her a splint, and in a few days, they’ll take X-rays and decide whether she needs a full-on cast. Either way, she’ll need several weeks of physical therapy.

It could have been so much worse, so much fucking worse. A voice in the back of my head keeps berating me for not being there.

I let my nonno down by not having prevented this. By not watching out for her when I was needed.

“Yeah, of course,” Nico replies. “We’ll make up a calendar.”

I remind myself that this is not unexpected. I knew Nonna would want to go home eventually, and I’d have to separate my time between the two places that have my heart.

Bianca will understand why I have to go, and we’ll make it work. Already, I’ve switched to a credit card that accumulates airline miles, although the thought of seeing her mostly on screens for the immediate future is a jarring one.