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“I will. Thank you. Maria, tell Carmine to find her emergency contact. I need to know who’s going to make decisions.”
I tug hard on his sleeve and look up at him.
“You.”
I don’t know if he understood me. I think he did because he nods. I love Andrea dearly, but I trust Gabriele to make medical decisions. Somehow, I think he has way more experience with this than Andrea does. She’s my emergency contact, but I want Gabriele.
It’s so much easier to breathe now. The paramedics are doing things as they load me into the ambulance, and Gabriele’s trying to stay out of the way. He’s a giant, and the space is cramped. But he’s with me. I’m not panicking anymore. Maybe that’s all it was. A panic attack. I’ve had those before. Just not anything like this one.
“Who’re you?”
I look over at Gabriele as he jogs alongside the stretcher into the emergency room.
“I’m her boyfriend.”
“You’re going to need to wait out here if you’re not family or her proxy.”
“All right.”
“No!”
I try to scream, and I won’t let go as Gabriele tries to pry my fingers from his shirt, which I’m clutching even hard then before. Apparently, the oxygen has revived me enough to find more strength than I expected.
“I’m staying with her.”
I watch as someone in scrubs tries to disagree. Gabriele takes my hand as he straightens from leaning over me, pushing his shoulders back. I dart my gaze to the other guy, who nods.
“Shhh,piccolina. I’m staying.”
The next hour is almost as much of a blur as what happened at Paola’s house. They’re admitting me for observations overnight, and Gabriele’s staying out of the way as they get me settled into my room. He promised not to leave. Once it’s blessedly quiet again, he pulls a chair closer to the bed.
“That’s the worst panic attack I’ve had over that.”
“I don’t understand what ‘that’ is. I didn’t have time to see what you were handing me. I have your phone, but I’m not showing you whatever you pulled up.”
“You can look at it.”
I hold my finger out to unlock it. Once I have, he sits down again. I watch as he reads the newspaper article. He scrolls back up and reads it a second time.
“Was this why you became an attorney?”
“Yes. I haven’t talked about this in years. I haven’t seen that photo in years. That isn’t me. That was my sister, Delaney, when she was nineteen, and I was fifteen. She died the night whoever it was took that photo. She died, and I lived.”
Gabriele remains quiet, holding my hand in his while his other strokes the inside of my forearm. It’s so incredibly soothing.
“She started doing drugs when she was thirteen. It started with pot and moved on from there. It was recreational. She never did it at home. She didn’t need them to make it to the next day. But she partied a lot more than my parents realized. It started when our mom got sick. That’s how she coped. I spent a lot of time with air fresheners and doing laundry to cover for her. When our mom died, she went completely out of control. She would go out and not tell my dad or me where she was going. Sometimes, she’d be gone for thirty hours. Just short of a missing person’s report. She got arrested for possession, but she got off both times because our attorney found technicalities. She was guilty as sin, though.”
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. I’m choosing to talk about this, so I have control. I use the techniques I drilled into myself during years of therapy.
“She was a minor, so most of her legal issues were sealed. My dad didn’t know what to do. He was trying to muddle through his own grief, raise me, and tame my sister. Delaney made it through high school and even got into a good college. She got great test scores and kept her grades up. She partied hard on Friday nights and all-day Saturdays, usually until the middle of the afternoon Sunday. She’d come home, shower, and do as much of her homework for the week as she could. That way she could get high during the week on pot. She saved the coke for weekends.”
I point to my phone, which Gabriele’s still holding.
“I was so angry at her that day. So beyond pissed. I absolutely hated her. It was my birthday, and she stole money our grandparents sent us. It was supposed to go into my college fund. Instead, it went up her nose. It wasn’t just that year’s birthday money. When I checked my savings account, she’d cleared it out. There was fifty thousand dollars in it that our parents and both sets of grandparents had been paying into since I was born. They’d done the same for her. She was using hers for her freshman year. She was stealing from me to pay for her drugs and for shit she thought made her fit in with the Hamptons-Martha’s Vineyard crowd. Purses. Clothes. Shoes. Sunglasses. All of it. I told her what I thought of her, what she’d done, and what I wished would happen to her. I told her she’d either cave her nose in or die. I hoped it was the latter.”
I close my eyes as the tears burn again, but this time I’m prepared. I can work through it. I just need a moment. Gabriele’s not pushing me. He’s still holding my hand and stroking my arm.
“It was one a.m. when she called. We didn’t know some things we saw were signs of what was to come for our dad’s early onset dementia. We thought it was stuff from being in combat. Some of it probably was. I didn’t have a party that year because my dad wasn’t well enough to organize it. So, I was home on my birthday while she was out wasting my money. When the phone rang, I ignored it. I knew it was her. When it rang a third time, I answered only long enough to hang up. Then a call from another number came in. Something told me I needed to answer it. It was one of her friends calling to tell me she’d OD’d. They wanted me to come pick her up. I couldn’t drive. At least not legally. I’d been riding four wheelers and dirt bikes for years. I’d driven my grandpa’s old truck on their farm plenty of times. Ever since I could reach the pedals.”
