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CHAPTER26
“If Bruno were here, he would never have let thatstronzo di merdaanywhere near Lily,” Zia Rosa informed him.
Aaro clenched everything he had. Teeth, hands, toes, ass. “Thank you for that useful observation,” he said, his voice rigidly even.
“He wouldn’t have let that nurse lady bully him, either,” Zia Rosa went on. “Bruno doesn’t let anyone put their foot on his face.”
“Yeah, Bruno’s perfect. I suck. We’ve established that. Let’s move on. Or better yet, just shut up.”
“I’m going to see Mamma now.” Rachel tossed her black curls.
He stared her down, eyes squinted in his best Dirty Harry stare. “No, you are not,” he told her. “Stand there. Do not move a muscle.”
Rachel sniffed, and threaded Lily’s shoelace around her fingers. Zip, snap and yank. She showed him the knot form she’d made. “Look.”
He looked. “Yeah?” he asked warily. “What’s that?”
“My witch’s broomstick,” she announced. “Lily showed me.”
He knew he was being set up. “You’re a witch, now?”
“Yeah.” She fluttered her long lashes. “I’m going to turn you into a frog. Or a pig. Or a bug. I haven’t decided yet.”
Aaro forced air out of his constricted lungs. “Do your worst,” he said. Things couldn’t get much worse. He did not look forward to telling Bruno about the day’s events. The guy already thought he was pus.
“A centipede,” Rachel mused. “Lots of creepy crawly legs.”
“Speaking of legs,” Zia Rosa said truculently, fanning herself. “Get me a chair, Alex. I can’t stand on these legs much longer. Standing in one place, they swell up! Like balloons! And my varicose veins,madonna mia!See? Look!” She leaned on the wall and stuck out one thick, swollen ankle for his inspection.
He averted his gaze hastily. “Suffer until Lily is out of there.”
“Maybe I’ll turn you into a big, slimy slug,” Rachel suggested. “Or a spider. A big fat one, with hairy legs.”
Aaro was suddenly afflicted by a pang of longing for his quiet, solitary house in the woods outside Sandy. Where he would have been right now, blessedly alone, if only he’d kept his various protruding body parts out of this godawful mess. He banged on the door of the suite.
“How are you guys doing?” he shouted.
Not a peep. The nurse was punishing him with silence. Or to be fair, maybe they were concentrating on stitching up torn human flesh.
The door of one of the adjacent medical suites opened down the hall. An elderly lady in a floppy hat backed out, muttering querulous instructions. A tall guy in scrubs followed, pushing a wheelchair that held another old lady, this one slumped low in the chair. Her head flopped to the side, slack. Gray hair was matted against the nape of her neck. A stroke patient, maybe. The trio moved slowly down the corridor away from them. The lady on her feet clutched the wheelchair for balance. An oxygen tank accompanied them, rattling along on a rolling trolley.
Prickles shivered over his flesh as he watched the little triad. A goose walking over his grave. Unacknowledged fear of death, age, infirmity. Who knew. He hated hospitals. They made him tense. But then, he didn’t like introspection, either. There were enough threats coming at him from the outside to stress about. He didn’t have the stomach to entertain the ones from the inside, too.
Besides. Threats from the outside were easier to kill.
Rachel started dancing from foot to foot. “I have to pee.”
He stifled a groan. “Hold it,” he told her.
“I can’t! I’ll pee my pants!”
A door flew open down the hall. A middle-aged black woman in a white coat came out, looking harried. She looked to the right, the left. “Sylvia?” she yelled. “Sylvia!” She yanked out her beeper, punched numbers into it. “Angela? Goddamnit, where is everybody?”
“You looking for the nurse?” Aaro asked.
The woman gave him a sharp look. “Did you see her?”
“She went in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the suite. “Our friend got a cut. The nurse is stitching it up.”
