Chapter 42
Chapter Forty Two
Nico
The ER smells like antiseptic and old coffee and something metallic underneath it that I don’t like.
The sliding doors shut behind me, and I scan the waiting room quickly, eyes working before my brain finishes catching up. People in uncomfortable looking chairs. A vending machine that hums too loudly. A receptionist behind glass. A TV with closed captions running across the bottom of the screen.
Then I see her.
Erica is on her feet near the edge of the seating area, squared off with a man in a white coat. Her shoulders are high and tight. Her face is flushed in that way it gets when she’s trying not to shake.
She’s not crying.
She’s angry. I can see it on her face… and hear it in her voice when she speaks, all the way from here.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard her like that. Not at the office. Not in a hotel room. Not in her own kitchen with her world falling apart. This is different.
I close the distance immediately.
“Erica,” I say.
She doesn’t look at me right away. Her eyes stay locked on the doctor.
“No,” she says, and her voice is sharp enough to cut. “No, it wasn’t.”
The doctor’s posture stays stiff, professional.
“Ms. Crawford,” he says, “a follow-up CT is standard. It would have been in the discharge instructions.”
“I read every word on every sheet of that discharge paperwork,” Erica snaps. “Every word. Multiple times. It was not in there.”
The doctor’s mouth tightens.
“It has to be,” he says, like repeating it makes it true.
“It wasn’t,” she says again, and now she finally turns her head toward me for half a second, like she needs an anchor. Her eyes are bright. Not wet. Bright with fury.
“Perhaps you misplaced it,” the doctor says.
Erica’s eyes snap back to the doctor in disbelief.
“Misplaced it?” she says loudly. “You’re telling me you think I lost critical paperwork for my dad?”
“It happens, Ms. Crawford.”
My anger immediately narrows in on the doctor with teeth too big for his mouth, and the look on his face that says Erica is anything other than ruthlessly organized.
But Erica seems to need to handle this on her own. She’s practically seething.
“I didn’t misplace anything,” she says, her voice full of venom. “Ever. And definitely not paperwork that might make the difference in whether my dad lives or dies.”
Dr. Shah lifts his hands slightly, a gesture meant to soothe.
“I understand this is upsetting,” he begins.
“Upsetting?” Erica barks a laugh. It’s not humor. “My dad is bleeding internally.”
I feel the punch to my ribs when she says it.
I didn’t know that part. I don’t know any details yet, not beyond the panic in her voice on the phone and the fact that she’s here again, in a waiting room again, while her father is in the hospital.
My jaw tightens.
Erica’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“I called your office two weeks ago,” she says.
“I called because he was exhausted. Because he didn’t have an appetite.
Because he looked gray. Because he was sweating at night.
And whoever I spoke to told me it was a normal part of recovery.
That you relayed the message that it was a normal part of his recovery. ”
Dr. Shah’s expression shifts, just a fraction.
“I wasn’t involved in that call,” he says.
“Because you couldn’t be bothered,” she snapped.
“And those symptoms,” the doctor continues, “fatigue, appetite changes—after a major surgery can be expected. I couldn’t have known from that alone that he might have a delayed hemorrhage.”
“No, that’s what the CT scan was for,” Erica says, and her voice dips lower, steadier, like she’s building something brick by brick. “Right? To catch problems you can’t ‘know’ from symptoms.”
“Yes,” he says.
Erica’s hands shake once, and she forces them still.
“And I would have brought him in for one,” she says. “If I’d been told about it.”
“You were,” Dr. Shah says, and now his tone has an edge. The kind of edge people use when they want to end the conversation here and now.
His eyes flick down his nose at Erica. “It is the caregiver’s responsibility to follow up—”
“And it’s the doctor’s responsibility,” Erica cuts in, voice rising, “to tell the caregiver what the follow-ups are. And if you’d bothered to take my call when I phoned your office instead of brushing me off, you might’ve realized that you never ordered a CT scan.”
Silence snaps tight between them.
Erica steps closer by a half step. Not aggressive. Not physical. Just refusing to be pushed backward.
“Because you didn’t, did you?” she says. “You obviously forgot.”
For just a moment on the doctor’s face, the truth is there. A tiny delay before his eyes meet hers again. A crack. It’s only for a moment before he smooths it over, but I see it.
And so does Erica, if her sharp inhale is anything to go by.
“That is what happened,” she says, and this time her voice is quieter. Stronger. Like the rage found its mark. “Isn’t it?”
Dr. Shah starts to speak.
Erica doesn’t let him.
“You forgot,” she says, and the words are harsh in the fluorescent-coated room. “You forgot to order the CT scan.”
Her throat bobs once.
“You fucked up,” she says. “And now my dad might be dying, so you’re trying to cover your ass and put it on me.”
It’s language Erica almost never uses. But if there were ever a time for it, this is it.
The waiting room around us blurs. People glance over. Someone looks away fast. A receptionist pretends not to hear.
My attention shifts, just for a second, because I feel movement at my back.
Not one person.
More.
There’s a beat of silence, then a silky voice slides in from the side—casual, almost conversational.
“Is that what happened, Doctor?” my father says.
The air changes the way it does when my family walks into a room. Not because they’re loud. Because they fill it with their collective energy.
I didn’t come alone.
When Erica called, I was at my father’s house. Everyone was still there. Dinner hadn’t fully ended, not really. The second I said “her dad’s back in the ER,” chairs moved. Keys were grabbed. Questions started before I could answer them.
Now they’re here.
The doctor stiffens and turns his head, not sure who the owner of the voice is, but absolutely sure it’s not someone he wants to fuck with.
It’s an aura that’s as natural to my dad as breathing.
And at the same time, from the opposite side, Vito steps in close enough to invade the doctor’s space and drops his hand on the man’s shoulder.
He jumps and looks around, realizing for the first time that he’s surrounded.
Antonio appears on his other side, really playing up the crazy eyes for the good doctor.
Erica is still focused on him.
“I believe I asked you a question,” my father says.
The doctor’s eyes bounce between us—me, my father, Vito, Antonio, Roberto, and Giovanni—not sure where to land.
“I-I know my rights,” he stutters.”
“I know your rights too,” Roberto says. “I also know what happens if you neglected to order a CT scan and a patient dies. And Ms. Crawford here happens to have a very good lawyer.”
The doctor’s face drains of all color.
“That’s not what happened,” he says quickly. “We—we don’t know that’s what happened.”
“You seemed pretty certain you knew what happened a moment ago,” I say calmly. “When you were telling Erica, whose father is in a hospital bed right now—bleeding, maybe septic—that she lost a piece of paper and that very well may be the reason he dies. You seemed pretty sure about that.”
The doctor swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“I’m not saying she lost it,” he says, backtracking desperately. “I’m saying it’s standard. It would have been provided. And right now, our priority is stabilizing him.”
“Pretty hard to stabilize him from all the way out here,” Erica says. Her hands are still at her sides, but her whole body looks wound tight. “Seems like your priority is to preemptively shift the blame for my father’s condition and possible impending death on me.”
The doctor’s mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
My father’s mouth curves into something that isn’t a smile. “Nico,” he says. “Vito. Show the good doctor the way back, would you? He seems lost.”
Vito’s lips spread into a slightly demented smile, and he tightens his grip on the doctor’s shoulder.
I press my hand reassuringly to Erica’s back before moving off without a word. I note that Bianca and Caterina are just behind and out of the way. Bianca nods at me to let me know they have it before stepping in next to Erica.
I step in on the other side of the doctor without a word, close enough that the doctor’s options narrow to exactly one.
The doctor’s breath goes shallow.
Vito gives his shoulder a squeeze. “C’mon, Doc,” he says, almost friendly. “Let’s go see if we can figure out how to do your job.”
The doctor swallows again and starts moving, stiff-legged, as if he’s afraid any wrong step will set one of us off.
Erica doesn’t look away from the doctor as he’s shepherded toward the hallway, her jaw set so hard I can see it working.
The three of us disappear behind the double doors.
The hallway swallows the noise of the waiting room the second the doors swing shut behind us.
We walk him past the first turn-off like we’re heading somewhere official, like this is routine. Vito doesn’t rush. That’s the worst part for him. Slow feet. Slow breath. Nothing frantic. Just inevitability.
At the next corridor, I angle left without speaking.
The traffic thins immediately. The lights hum. A janitor’s cart sits abandoned against the wall. No nurses. No patients. No one paying attention to the two men escorting a urologist.
The doctor’s shoulders creep up toward his ears.
His eyes keep darting—forward, back, at Vito’s hand still resting on him, at my face like he’s trying to read me.
He’s afraid.
Good.
When we reach an empty hall far away from the activity, Vito stops him with a shove.
I step in close enough that the doctor’s back meets the wall, and he has nowhere to go.
I look at him for a moment, then tilt my head.