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Sofia
Iwake up to fluorescent lights above me and the scent of disinfectant filling my nose. For a moment, I’m completely disoriented; my last memory is of spooning fruit onto a china plate in the banquet room of the hotel.
Then I open my eyes fully, and I realize where I am.
I’m in a hospital, lying in a hospital bed. I feel something tug at my arm, and when I look over, I can see there’s an IV in my arm, some other machine hooked up to me monitoring my heart rate with small, steady beeps that speed up as the memories start to flood back in. An explosion—glass shattering and smoke filling the room, chairs overturned, and guests screaming.
Luca’s body on top of mine, bleeding from his mouth and nose. And more blood on his side—
I gasp, pushing myself up as much as I can. My first, overwhelming fear is that he’s dead. I don’t even take the time to examine why or to wonder why I would care after everything that’s happened.
My husband might be dead.Inexplicably, the thought fills me with sadness, maybe not deep enough to be called grief, but something aching and hollow in my chest.
If I’m a widow, Don Rossi will kill me.
I’m glad that wasn’t my first thought, but it’s definitely my second. If Luca is dead, there’s no one left to protect me. It’s not the only reason I hope he’s alive, but it’s definitely one of them.
And I can’t help but wonder why he threw himself over me at all. If I’d died in the explosion, it would have solved two problems for him—he wouldn’t have had an unwanted wife any longer. He also wouldn’t have had to feel responsible forlettingme be killed by Rossi. It would have just been an unfortunate casualty of—whatever the fuck happened at the hotel.
There’s a knock at the door, and an older blonde nurse walks in, a slight smile on her face. “Oh, Mrs. Romano. Good to see that you’re up!”
Mrs. Romano.It’s the first time I’ve heard someone refer to me like that, and for a brief second, I have the urge to sayno, I’m Ms. Ferretti, you must have the wrong room.And then I remember that IamMrs. Romano, Luca’s wife—in every single way.
The memory of our wedding night sends a flush through me that makes me feel uncomfortable. Everything about that night felt wrong and confusing—and then the betrayal of finding out that I didn’t have to at all and Luca cutting my thigh as a last resort instead of a first.
I can’t even feel the sting of the cut now, but reflexively I want to reach down and touch it. I don’t, though; instead, I look up at the nurse as she approaches my bedside.
“How are you feeling?” she asks pleasantly, checking the clipboard at the foot of my bed. “You’re lucky, Mrs. Romano. Your injuries were minor. Some bruising and a light concussion, but that will resolve itself fairly quickly. There’s no internal bleeding, and the damage to your inner ears seems to be minor as well. You have some scratches and cuts, but it’s all pretty superficial.” She smiles at me. “You were very lucky.”
The way she says it makes my stomach clench. Something in her voice implies that others weren’t as lucky. “What about my husband?” I ask, my voice a hoarse croak.
“Mr. Romano’s injuries were more severe—but he’s alive,” the nurse adds quickly at the end, seeing my face.
“What do you mean,more severe?”
“He had a deep laceration to his side, and we found some shards of glass in there. He also had a perforated eardrum, but it will heal within a couple of weeks, and he should be able to go home soon. He’s sedated right now, after the procedure to remove the glass and stitch up the laceration on his side.”
“Can I go see him?” The question even surprises me—I’m not sure why Iwantto see him. Maybe it’s because I feel guilty that the relief washing over me upon hearing that he’s alive is at least sixty percent because I now know that I’m safe—or at least as safe as I can be. My husband is still alive.
The other forty percent is because he had a split second to make a decision, and he chose to protect me.
I don’t know why, but I’d like to. And as angry as I still am over the events of our wedding night—I’d like to at least be able to thank him.
“I can walk you down to his room,” the nurse says after a moment’s thought. “But you can’t go in just yet. And not for long—you need to rest as well.”
“Alright,” I agree quickly. “Not long. I just want to see him.”
The nurse beams at me, no doubt thinking that I’m a new bride in love with and missing her husband. It doesn’t hurt to let her believe that, and I don’t bother saying anything to make her think otherwise as she helps me get out of the hospital bed, undoing the connections to the monitor and showing me how to wheel my IV stand along.
I hate all of this. Even the penthouse is preferable to being in here, with tubes coming out of my arm and a hospital gown on. I feel sick and weak, and it reminds me too much of the last time I was in a hospital with my mother, in the months before she died. I try hard not to think about that, not to remember the way she went from a beautiful, vibrant woman to a shell of herself, her glossy blonde hair gone, her perfect skin dry and cracked, her once healthy and strong body frail and skeletal. I didn’t even recognize her by the end, and a part of me was glad that my father wasn’t there to see her like that. That his last memory of her was the woman he’d married, that he’d often hinted he’d risked a great deal for, because he loved her so much.
At least part of that was simply because she was Russian; I know that. But there was always a hint of something else, some reason that he should never have married her but did anyway.
She was glad that he hadn’t been there to see it, either. She’d said as much to me, not long before she’d died. And then she’d given me her necklace and told me that she hoped she’d see him again soon.
But there had been something in her eyes that had told me she didn’t really believe that. That whatever she’d tried to believe all her life, growing up in the Orthodox churches of her home, had been leached away by the illness like everything else.
I don’t believe it either. Just like I don’t believe in fairytales anymore. If there’s a heaven or a hell, it’s the one we make here and nothing more.
