Lorenzo
My heart is in my throat as I stare down at Quinn.
Her lips are turning blue, her eyes are closed, and her chest is barely moving, and the sound coming from her throat is wrong. It sounds like she can’t get air in.
"Quinn. Quinn, look at me. Quinn," I plead, my hands pressed against her face, holding her close to me.
Nothing.
The room is in chaos behind me. I hear a chair scraping, I can hear Valentina's voice, along with my father giving orders, but I can't process any of it. All my attention is on my wife, who is not breathing properly in my arms. I don’t understand. I gave her the EpiPen. She taught me how to use it when I found out she was allergic to peanuts and how severe it could be. Why the fuck isn’t it working?
A hand grabs my arm. I fight it off without looking. I’m not letting her go, I won’t.
"Sir." An unfamiliar male voice says, close to me. "Sir, we need to get to her."
"She's not breathing." My voice comes out ragged and raw. "She can't breathe, she needs help."
"Sir." The hand again presses down on my arm, firmer this time. "We have her. We have her, but you need to let us in."
I look up at his words and see that the paramedics have arrived. There’s two of them, and they’ve already got their equipment out.
"Sir," the paramedic repeats.
I make myself move, my legs feel heavy and my heart won’t stop hammering. I’m unable to pull my gaze away from Quinn, she’s so small as she lays on the ground.
Come on. I plead silently. Come on, come on, come on, breathe baby, breathe.
The paramedics take over and I hate every second of it. I feel utterly useless watching them work on her.
The panic clawing through me feels horribly familiar.
For a second, I'm not looking at Quinn. I'm sitting in the back of a car, listening to the driver tell me my mother has been shot.
I remember the way his hands tightened on the wheel, the way everything inside me went cold before he even finished speaking.
That moment when you know your life is about to split into before and after.
I feel that same helplessness now, that same sick certainty that something terrible is happening, and I can't stop it.
No. I shove the thought away immediately.
Quinn is alive, she's alive, and I'm not losing her.
The paramedics get Quinn onto a stretcher. I reach for her hand, moving fast as they rush her out of the house and toward the ambulance. The paramedics are firing question after question at me.
They ask for her age, medical history, known allergies, when did the reaction start? Did she use an EpiPen?
I answer all of them automatically and as best I can, all the while my eyes never leave Quinn. She now has an oxygen mask that covers most of her face, but her eyes stay closed.
One of the paramedics is talking into a radio and the other is checking her pulse.
Neither of them look concerned enough, and I don’t know how to fucking react to that.
Is it a good thing they’re not overtly concerned or are they just fucking useless at their job and have no idea what they’re doing?
"Why isn't she waking up?" The question tears out of me as the ambulance doors close. I’m right beside her.
The older paramedic looks at me briefly and then refocuses on Quinn. "She's getting oxygen."
Fuck him, that's not an answer. "Why isn't she waking up?" I snarl at him.
I know they're trying to help. I know it, but every instinct I have is screaming at me to pull her away from them and fix this myself. The problem is I can't.
For the first time in a very long time, there is absolutely nothing I can do, and that terrifies me more than anything else.
"Sir, she's had a severe reaction, her body is taking time to recover. She’s breathing better with the oxygen."
Severe, like that's supposed to make me feel better.
I tighten my grip on Quinn's hand, it's cold. Too fucking cold.
"Quinn."
Nothing.
"Baby."
Nothing.
The panic in my chest keeps building,
I watch every rise and fall of her chest, every beep from the monitor makes my head snap up and every movement from the paramedics has me bracing for bad news.
I have never felt more useless in my entire life, and all I can think is that if she dies, I won't survive it.
"Sir." I look up at the paramedic calling me. "We're here."
The ambulance doors open, and everything starts moving again.
Her eyes open as we’re moving toward the hospital not much, just a sliver. They're unfocused, but they’re open.
"Quinn." I lean forward, so I’m in her line of sight. "Hey. I'm here."
Her mouth moves under the mask. No sound comes out, but I’m sure she says my name.
"I know," I say. "I know. I've got you."
Her fingers tighten around mine. I tighten back just as she's pulled out of my grasp by the nursing staff.
"Sir, if you'll wait—" the nurse says, her voice full of authority.
"No."
"Sir, the team needs space to—"
"I'm not waiting." I take a step forward.
"Lorenzo." Ciro says softly, his hand on my shoulder. "Let them work."
I stand back and watch as the doors close behind the nurse as she follows where Quinn’s just been taken.
Silence, that’s all I hear. Rage and panic are bubbling under the surface. How the hell did this happen? God, how did we end up here?
The hospital is bright.
People move, life continues around me as though mine isn't currently hanging by a thread behind those doors.
I stare at them, just waiting for a scrap of news. The worst part is that there's nothing to do, other than to wait, and waiting has always been its own kind of torture.
The doors stay closed, and every second feels longer than the last.
I keep seeing her on the floor, her lips turning blue, the sound she made when she couldn't breathe.
I close my eyes, just for a second, and immediately see it again. My wife, the woman I love more than I have ever thought possible, lying cold and small on our floor, struggling to breathe.
"She's going to be okay,” Ciro says as he comes to stand beside me.
I don't answer, because I don't know that. Not yet, and until somebody comes through those doors and tells me she's okay, I'm not believing a fucking thing.
Minutes pass, or maybe it’s longer. I don’t know. Every second stretches, and every minute feels like an hour.
At some point my father arrives with Vittoria, Valentina, Sofia and Elisabetta.
Valentina's eyes are red. Vittoria looks pale, and my father looks exactly the way I feel.
He doesn't say anything when he reaches me, he just comes to stand beside me. A silent reminder that I'm not carrying this alone.
"Giovanni and Marco wanted to be here," he says after a moment, his voice rough. "But I need them investigating."
I nod because I need answers. I need to know how the fuck this happened.
Nobody talks much after that. The waiting settles over all of us. It’s heavy and relentless.
I pace back and forth, over and over again. Anger and helplessness are threatening to swallow me whole. I need an outlet for it, but more importantly, I need to see my wife, alive and breathing.
"Sit down," Ciro says eventually.
I keep pacing. "No."
I hear his heavy sigh. "You're going to wear a hole in the floor."
Like I give a fuck? I’ll buy them a whole new wing if they fix my wife. "Then the floor's going to have a hole in it."
He doesn't push it, he knows me, and knows how very close I am to losing it.
Forty minutes pass before the doctor comes through the doors. My entire body locks up as she walks toward me. I stop my pacing as the doctor stops in front of me. I feel everyone get to their feet and join us.
"Mr. Mariano."
I don't waste time on pleasantries. "How is she?"
The doctor's expression softens slightly. "Your wife had a severe allergic reaction."
The hollowness I’ve been feeling doesn’t ease at her words. "Is she breathing?"
"Yes."
The single word knocks the air from my lungs.
The doctor continues. "The first EpiPen wasn't enough because of the level of exposure. We administered a second dose when she arrived."
She’s breathing, right now that’s all that fucking matters. "What does that mean?"
"It means she was exposed to more peanuts than we would typically see in an accidental contamination."
Fuck. I bury the pain and anger of that deep down. Right now isn’t the time. I'll deal with that later.
"Is she okay?" I ask.
The doctor holds my gaze. "Her airway has stabilized."
I don't move or breathe. "Doctor." I practically growl at her.
Her expression softens further. "Your wife is going to be fine."
The corridor disappears, along with the panic, the fear, and the pressure that’s been crushing my chest for the last forty minutes.
All of it is gone.
I close my eyes, just for a second. Then I drag a hand down my face. "Can I see her?"
"In a few minutes," she says.
I nod, that's fine. A few minutes is nothing, not compared to the last forty.
The doctor glances down at her chart and then back at me. "Mr. Mariano."
Something in her tone makes me tense up. "Yes?"
"Did your wife know she was pregnant?"
The question doesn't make sense. I stare at her, confused. "What?"
The doctor looks surprised. "She didn't know?"
The corridor goes silent. Beside me, I feel my father go still.
The doctor glances between us. "Approximately eight weeks," she says carefully.
Eight weeks.
For a second I genuinely think I've misheard her.
Pregnant.
Quinn is pregnant. My wife is pregnant.
The world seems to tilt slightly as the last hour replays in my head.
Her struggling to breathe, her lips turning blue, the EpiPen not working. The ambulance, the hospital, the fear, and the absolute fucking terror.
Not just Quinn, but our baby.
I nearly lost both of them.
"Mr. Mariano?"
I realize the doctor is still talking. I drag a hand over my face once more. "She's pregnant?"
The doctor nods. "Yes."
My father puts a hand on my shoulder, and for the first time since the ambulance doors closed, my knees feel weak because Quinn is alive. And somehow... So is our child.
“I’ll be back when it’s time for you to see her,” the doctor says softly and I watch her walk away to where my wife and unborn child are.