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“I can’t,” Fiore began.
“I’m not,” Enzo replied.
Fiore hesitated, then nodded his assent.
Enzo unbuttoned him. Rather than pull his breeches down, however, he merely folded the waist-band over and drew his shirttail out of it and held it up above his ribs to reveal the crests of his hip-bones.
“Tell me how this pains you,” said Enzo.
Nothing good ever started that way. Still, the gentle tone and tender gaze bespoke a desire to do no harm, and so Fiore nodded again.
Enzo took two fingertips and tapped them against Fiore’s belly, just above his left hip-bone.
Fiore winced. It didn’t feel good, certainly, but it hurt no worse than the rest of him.
Enzo tapped again, this time just beneath his navel.
It didn’t feel much better than the first.
Enzo tapped a third time, above his right hip-bone.
Fiore doubled over with a bitten-off scream.
Enzo caught him by the shoulders again. “I thought so.”
“Thought what?” Fiore gasped.
“Appendicitis.”
This answered nothing.
Fiore expected Enzo to sit down beside him. Perhaps hold him again. Yet Enzo remained standing.
“You need a chirurgeon,” said Enzo.
Panic chased the pain from Fiore’s body. “No I don’t.”
“Yes,” said Enzo. “You do.”
“I’m fine,” Fiore lied.
“You’re dying.”
Fiore jerked his head up to meet those masked eyes. Enzo met his glance unerringly.
“Let me send for a chirurgeon,” Enzo said, his dark gaze softened by something Fiore couldn’t quite recognize. “Please.”
“Chirurgeons need to be paid.” Fiore’s protest sounded weak to his own ears.
“The cost is nothing to me.”
Fiore had known as much already.
“Something inside of you has festered,” Enzo continued. “It must come out, or you will die. No one less than a chirurgeon may do it. Please let me send for one. Do not force me to let you perish when you could be saved.”
If he weren’t so sick, Fiore could have run.
As matters stood, he found himself nodding his assent.
