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“He’s a Points man. You don’t argue with them,” another person muttered.
“They’re all thugs.”
Didn’t they know I could hear what they were saying? About my husband?
Because, yeah, I remembered that.
I remembered saying ‘I do,’ and hearing him say it in return. I remembered walking down the aisle and seeing the white peonies and baby’s breath that Lena, Finn’s adopted mother, had strewn along the pews in heavy garlands. I even remembered the feel of those silky flowers brushing against my hands as Aidan Sr., Lena’s husband, passed me my bouquet.
We’d been in St. Patrick’s and now, we were here.
Trouble was, I just wasn’t sure what had happened between walking down the aisle and this moment.
I dozed off, which might have seemed impossible considering how the rude medical team were attending to me, but I was tired.
Bone deep tired.
I awoke to the sounds of Finn’s luscious voice rasping, “You’ve done everything you can?”
“Of course!”
The affronted tone had my lips twitching. Finn did that to people. He was a bit of an asshole, but I loved him anyway. Yeah, I did. I loved him in spite of his being a dick. Which made me either too stupid to live, or just someone who let hope run their lives, not realism.
“You’d better have,” someone else growled, “I made it a point to find out where your family lives.”
“Oh God! I-I promise. She doesn’t even need it,” came the panicked squeak. “It’s just her spleen. She might have some digestive issues as a worst-case scenario but otherwise, many people live comfortably without them.”
“Like tonsils?” Finn asked, his tone doubtful.
“Yes,” the other person seemed to clutch at Finn’s question. “Exactly like tonsils.”
“What else?”
Finn’s demand had the woman—my doctor?—audibly gulping. “She was incredibly fortunate that the bullet didn’t hit her stomach or damage her pancreas. We performed open surgery and as a result, she will have scarring. As it stands, she has some faint damage to her ribs that will take a few weeks to heal.”
“Why has she been out of it for so long?” That wasn’t Finn. I didn’t know who it was, but he sounded like he took my lack of consciousness as a personal affront.
“For several reasons. Her lung collapsed and then we had to deal with two nasty infections at the incision site.”
“But she’ll be okay now?”
She sucked down a sharp breath at the man’s question—I didn’t know who he was just that he wasn’t Finn—and seemed to brace herself. “While you can live without your spleen, it does put her at risk for infections. Before she leaves, we’ll vaccinate her against several viruses and bacteria. There are annual vaccinations she will have to have now to ensure she’s protected. The spleen helps filter blood but it’s a vital part of the immune system.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Finn asked, and his voice was dulled, like he was trying to contain his emotions and succeeding.
The doctor hesitated. “We don’t need to think about those things just yet. She’ll be in the hospital for a few more weeks so we can keep an eye on her. Usually, after a splenectomy—the removal of the spleen—we send patients home after a week, and they’re to return if certain symptoms develop, but because of the other issues, we’ll need to monitor her.”
“I want to know,” Finn growled, this time sounding like he was rapidly losing patience.
Finn was like that, I thought fondly. Impatient and cautious, wanting to know all the risks before he stepped into any fight.
“Some patients can develop a certain kind of infection called OPSI. It can occur years after surgery,” the other woman explained, her voice soaring to a high pitch that had me wondering what my husband was doing to her to make her sound like that. “It has a high fatality rate.”
Finn released a muttered expletive and I heard his shoes tap against the floor as he began to pace.
“It should be me, Aidan,” he ground out. “I should be the one dealing with this shit.”
Oh, it was Aidan Sr. The head of the Five Points, and a man who was like a father to Finn.
