Chapter 4
FOUR
STAN
TEN DAYS LATER
Greedy, grasping hospitals had nothing to do with my two-week imprisonment in this goddamn room—my brother’s status had done that.
He’d strong-armed somebody high up to keep me stuck in this damn bed, claiming I either suck it up in a private room or he’d have me committed.
After experiencing a psych eval, the last thing I wanted was to go through a sixty-day psych hold. I considered six to eight hours of evaluation over several visits sufficient torment so I’d chosen the better poison, but all Luc had achieved was delaying the inevitable.
Inches away from attaining what I’d worked toward for years and he’d set my deadline back by not letting me return to my lab.
I’d call him a figghiu ri buttana, but that’d insult my mother too.
As I dragged on a pair of jeans, I refused to accept how the easy task taxed my diminished strength.
“Domineering jackass. Just because he’s the Don of the city, doesn’t mean he’s the Don of me!”
“Oh! I’m sorry—this is a bad time—”
It wasn’t a mortified squeak at someone breaching my privacy or listening in on my one-sided rant, but an amused drawl at finding me talking to myself.
My head whipped around, tongue primed to lash at whoever had dared to open the goddamn door without knocking, only for the words to freeze on my lips.
The light from the hallway shone around the creature, making her silhouette glow and appear fuzzy.
But that didn’t steal my breath.
She did.
The apparition was beauty personified.
Her features were soft and warm. An oval-face dominated by surprisingly strong brows and a narrow mouth that housed lips made for biting.
I could feel my teeth sinking into them—a delicacy I needed to savor.
The glow around her arced and striated, forming the strangest circlet over—
No.
I was imagining things.
But I wasn’t imagining her.
At least, I didn’t think so.
I blinked at that halo of light and—
I recognized her!
Deep in my memory, I saw her. I just didn’t know how—
“Who are you?” I rasped, only just refraining from asking what she was too.
Her cute button nose wrinkled as waves of silvery gray danced around her shoulders.
“You don’t know me,” the stranger dismissed, unaware that I could dismiss nothing where she was concerned.
Her delicate beauty had me in as much of a thrall as those wide-set, gray-green eyes urged me to dive into them.
“But I wanted to check on you. See how you’re doing.
I figured it was strange when I heard they hadn’t discharged you before I got back. ”
Got back?
“You thought I’d be dead?” I wheezed.
“No. People in your tax bracket can afford treatment at home.”
Tracing that mesmerizing glow around her, I continued blinking. “You weren’t one of my nurses?”
I had to verbalize the question because aside from the scrubs, I didn’t even know if she was a nurse. I guessed it made sense for angels to work in hospitals… Talk about prime hunting ground.
“No. I work in the ER,” she answered cheerfully. Lips I needed to taste curved into a smirk. “Just FYI, you should probably fasten that zipper before you leave.”
“Who are you?” I repeated, half-certain she was about to fade into the ether.
My fingers curled in on themselves as I fought the desire to reach out so I could keep her here. With me. I wanted to touch her. To see if she was really there.
It wouldn’t be the first time my work triggered a hallucination, and with the buzzing in my head from bending over to put on my goddamn jeans, passing out was a possibility. But… she had to be real.
“I’m nobody. Truly.” Her eyes twinkled, further ensnaring me in her web. Cristu, the color reminded me of the waves crashing into the cove below our villa in Catania— “I just wanted to check in before the doctors discharged you. I’m glad to see you on your feet.”
With that, she twisted on her heel and... disappeared.
It was so abrupt that it left me gaping at the doorway where she’d hovered.
I swallowed as the light seemed to return to normal, that glow fading into the sharp LED illumination I’d acclimated to during my ‘stay.’
A part of me wasn’t sure what had just happened.
She’d seemed real, but… she’d definitely disappeared.
One blink and poof. No more.
Christ, was Luc right?
Did I need to be put in a psych hold?
And if she was a ghost, why didn’t Evangeline visit me? Or Patri? And what about that ring of light around her head—a halo?
Desperate to confirm the sanctity of my sanity, I darted out of the room to trace her path.
But she’d gone.
I rushed to the end of the hall, hoping to see that head of silvery gray hair. No dice. I tried the other four corridors too, but there was no trace of her.
I rubbed at my temples, where an ache burned, as I trudged back to my room.
Fear swelled and surged inside me.
“Did I dream that?”
Her swift disappearance proved I was hallucinating.
Dragging a hand through my hair to grip the back of my neck, I raced through the compound of the drug I’d spent years formulating, second-guessing whether hallucinations could happen this late post-overdose, but it seemed unlikely.
They’d dosed me with some random shit to fix my fuckup, and because one of the nurses had a look of Nurse Annie, and I figured she’d tie me to the bed if I hadn’t swallowed like a good boy, I’d taken the prescribed meds without too many complaints, but—
“Seen a ghost?”
Jerking in surprise at the second intrusion in as many minutes, I found my older brother standing in the doorway, right where dream girl had been.
I studied the light over his head. Not that my brother would ever earn a halo… But the LEDs seemed fine. Not malfunctioning.
“I-I might have?”
“Patri?” he inquired calmly, as if the prospect of seeing our dead father was a regular occurrence.
But then, we were Sicilian.
As much as pasta kept our joints lubricated, superstition filtered through our veins more than white blood cells did.
“No.” I rubbed my forehead again. “A… woman.”
“A woman?” His tone brightened. “Does this mean you’re not going to turn into a monk?”
Guilt speared me.
I’d offered God a vow of celibacy when Evangeline had passed away if he helped me find a cure. Evangeline, the woman I’d been certain I’d call wife one day…
“Stan?”
“Drop it, Luc.”
He raised his hands, but I knew my brother never surrendered. Unless it was to his children, who had him wrapped around their pinkies.
Honestly, I hadn’t known my brother had it in him to be such a sap until I’d seen him as a father, and unfortunately for me, this last overdose had triggered less fraternal and more paternal instincts in him.
“You need to fasten your fly.”
“Yes, Dad.”
He grunted as I complied. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“You said that when you woke up the first morning in this hospital room.” Because I was wearing on his last nerve—give me longer than two minutes and I would—he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I know you have a better vocabulary in you, porca troia.”
“I don’t need this right now.”
“No, what you need is for me to shake some sense into you. Remember when I hovered you over the cliff that time?”
“How could I forget? And you didn’t ‘hover.’ You hung me—”
“It was an order! You never back down from Rory’s orders. You know that better than I do.”
“You were the worst big brother,” I grouched.
“I was and still am the best big brother.”
“Only you’d think so.”
“Did it or did it not work?”
“Did your stunt give me a nose bleed? Se. It did.”
Luciu sniffed. “Got you to tell us that that little bastard was picking on you.” The irony still evaded them both. “If only you were that size, I’d do it again.”
I plunked my ass on the hospital bed I was sick of. “I’m well.”
Tiredly, he joined me. “That’s the same as fine.”
“Check a dictionary.”
“When you pick up a thesaurus.”
My lips twitched.
“He smiles! Thank fuck for that.”
“Shut up.”
“No. You worried the hell out of us, Stan. My girls sobbed for their uncle every night before bed, Matri couldn’t look at you without weeping, and my wife, my riggina, spent more time at your beside than ours!
Never mind my twin. You nearly ruptured our family with your idiocy—” He bit off the words then, on an exhalation, rasped, “What the fuck am I supposed to do without you, frate?”
When his voice broke, I tensed. “I’m not—”
“You’re my baby brother and my best fucking friend, you pezz'i miedda.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “Love you too.”
“Don’t mock me—”
“I’m not mocking you!” I yelled. “What do you want from me, Luc? I’m as okay as I can be. How would you feel if you’d killed Jen?”
I just knew that if we were in Catania, he’d make good on his threat to dangle me over Faro Cliff. Unluckily for him, despite losing muscle mass in this pit, I was twice the size of him now.
“Firstly, don’t even fucking go there. Secondly, you didn’t kill Evangeline.
The drug you’re illegally trying to create didn’t let her down.
The healthcare system did. She was sick and unlucky and she broke your fucking heart, Stan, and I’m so sorry about that.
I’m sorrier than you can even know because her death shattered something in you that I have no idea how to fix.
All I know is that you killing yourself won’t bring her back. ”
His words were logical.
Rational.
I heard them. Understood them. Agreed with them.
Didn’t stop me from snarling, “You don’t know what I’m going through.”
“No. I don’t. And I’m glad I don’t because I’d murder the Pope himself if it meant bringing Jennifer back. But at the same time, it fucking destroys me to know that I can’t help you.
“What use am I as your brother if I can’t shake you out of this?”
“It isn’t on you—”
“No? It isn’t? You had to call in your own overdose, Stan.”
His devastated tone had me cringing.
“I knew there was a chance I’d get the dose wrong. I prepared for the worst-case scenario, Luc! Doesn’t that prove I’m well? I just didn’t want this whole rigmarole.”