Page 52 of Thin Lives

Then again, he couldn’t remember a whole lot as it was.

The paramedic kept talking like he didn’t realize Calisto was just watching him and not responding.

“You seem better this time—not as out of control, anyway,” the man said, shrugging one shoulder as he took another drag off the cigarette. “Then again, you had me pretty worried what with the way you were going on over your wife and whatnot.”

Calisto swallowed hard. “My wife.”

“Yeah, man. I mean, you might as well have begged to be put in her place. She was beaten pretty bad, but came out okay. It looked worse than it was. We’re not supposed to check up on our patients after we drop them off—like a distance thing to keep our head clear for the next call. But I couldn’t help it with you two. I wanted to make sure she was all right, and you were, too. I got an update from the nurse on shift that was watching her room. You never left her side.”

“My wife,” Calisto repeated quietly.

“Emma, right? That’s her name.”

Calisto didn’t respond.

He was already walking toward the hospital.

The taste of fear saturated his tongue, but it wasn’t from the current day’s events surrounding him. No, it was from something else—something he couldn’t remember, but his heart could still feel.

Pure terror.

That’s what it felt like.

He’d almost lost Emma at some point, he realized, and that felt like terror.

Calisto listened as the nurse stood in the doorway of the family waiting room, giving an update on Affonso’s condition. He was still in surgery. He’d lost a great deal of blood. His heart had stopped once on the table, but they brought him back from the brink. The surgery to remove the three bullets from Affonso’s chest and repair the damage to his internal organs had been touch and go for a while, but it looked good from that point forward. It was very likely he would come out of it just fine, as long as they could continue to keep him stable.

Hope lingered at the edges of the nurse’s voice as she relayed the messages to the waiting people. Calisto wasn’t really listening. His mind was somewhere else entirely.

Once the nurse was gone, Calisto resumed his spot in the corner of the room, alone in his thoughts. From the corner of his eye, he watched the people huddled in small groups, chatting amongst themselves. Most were his uncle’s men, others were friends of Affonso who had shown up after news of the shooting began to spread, and in the far corner, directly across from Calisto’s spot, was Emma.

She sat still and silent. The woman hadn’t even looked up when the nurse came in to talk about her husband’s progress and current state. Her gaze was drawn down to her rounded stomach where her hands rested, cradling the swell.

Something heavy grew in Calisto’s heart at the sight of Emma holding her pregnancy swell, all of her attention focused only on her child and not the panic surrounding her. She was still wearing the same clothes from earlier—the ones that had been stained with Affonso’s blood, but someone had taken her to wash her arms and face, thankfully.

Still, Calisto couldn’t stop staring at her.

His wife, the paramedic said.

The man thought, by Calisto’s reaction and behavior toward Emma during a time he couldn’t remember, that she was his wife.

He couldn’t let go of that—his mind wouldn’t let go of it.

Especially not while he stared at her, seeing how carefully and sweetly she ran the tips of her fingers over her swell as if to soothe the moving child within.

Shouldn’t she be more panicked?

Shouldn’t she be worried for her husband?

Calisto wasn’t stupid; he knew the marriage between Affonso and Emma was essentially a sham. But the woman was pregnant, wasn’t she? She’d lost a previous child, too. Obviously some aspect of that marriage was real, no matter how disgusting it felt to consider it.

Suddenly, Emma’s gaze lifted.

Instantly, she found him staring.

Calisto didn’t look away, though he knew he probably should. But the strange stirrings of heat in his stomach didn’t let up as Emma smiled at him—faint and fleeting—as her hands flattened to her rounded stomach and she glanced away.

That stirring grew, heating and flaring to life.