26. Deirdre
Deirdre
I try to learn everything I can from Doctor Morelli and Lucia.
Lucia has the right temperament for a nurse, I think.
She’s the slightly more reserved and softer-spoken, sweeter twin, but she’s also extremely competent and she’s thankfully patient enough to teach me.
Soon, I know how to interpret all the numbers and screens on the machine that Doctor Morelli has brought up to Elio’s room, and I can switch out the bags of IV fluids with ease.
It makes me feel a little less useless while Elio’s so damaged in that bed. If I don’t have something I can do to help him, I think I might go crazy.
I skip my classes, not able to bear the thought of leaving Elio here like this.
What if something happens to him, and I’m not here?
What if he needs me? All thoughts of running from this man have suddenly been replaced with how I can best stand by him now.
The reversal should be enough to give me whiplash, but I’m too busy taking care of him.
Fortunately, it seems like nobody except Elio actually cares if I go to school or not, and while he’s incapacitated, no one tries to make me.
I don’t even think his men notice me at all, to be honest, except in the context that I’m almost always hovering somewhere in Elio’s room.
They’re too distracted, too on edge, too worried about their boss.
The number of soldiers in the house has doubled, and sometimes I hear Vincenzo Titone’s gruff, loud voice booming from downstairs.
Elio’s condition has turned this house into a hornet’s nest of stressful, buzzing activity.
But I tune it all out. It’s calmer here, at the centre of the storm with Elio.
When we’re alone, I wipe his face with cool cloths, brush his hair back from his forehead, and talk to him.
I remind him of our deal – that he has to live for me to marry him – and I try not to think about the fact we had another deal, once.
One that I’d never quite agreed to. The deal that I was supposed to marry him in exchange for my father’s safety.
Marry me , he’d said. Or I’ll tell Darragh exactly where your fucking father is.
I try not to wonder what it means that I was fighting so hard against the marriage when it would save my father. But now, I’m grasping at it with both hands, hoping that it might somehow save Elio.
And hell, maybe it does. Maybe it helps, just a little bit. Because on the morning of the fourth day, Elio opens his eyes, looks at me exhausted, but lucid, and says the first words I’ve heard him speak in days.
“You’re here.”
He’s too tired to sound actually surprised, but I gather that he is.
He stares at me almost uncomprehending. Like he thought I’d vanished, somehow, while his eyes were closed.
I lean forward in the chair I’m sitting in at his bedside, running my fingers over his forehead, his cheek, so that he can feel me.
“Of course I’m here,” I whisper. I can feel tears biting at me, but I don’t let them fall. “Who else was going to make sure you held up your end of the bargain?”
When he doesn’t say anything in response to that, I smile softly.
“The wedding, Elio,” I explain gently. “I’m not fighting you anymore. I agree to everything. You get well. And we’ll get married.”
“I…” His voice croaks, and I grab water from beside us and ease it up to his mouth. But he ignores it, never taking his eyes off me, his gaze weak but somehow just as intense and arresting as ever. “I thought I dreamed that.”
For some reason that makes something inside me feel like it’s cracked. To know that, while he was burning and in pain, my voice actually got through. I put the water back down, taking a moment to steady myself before I respond.
“No,” I say, “It was real.”
“I thought I dreamed you ,” he says, his voice getting stronger with each word. “All of you. Everything.” He raises his hand, lifting it as if trying to reach my face. But it’s too heavy. It falls back to the bed. I reach for it myself, grasping it and stroking along his scarred palm.
“You’re here,” he says again, so softly I almost can’t hear.
“I am. Although, I really should go get the doctor…”
I move to rise, but his fingers fasten themselves around mine.
“Don’t go,” he says. And I want to fucking weep with relief, because there’s the Elio I know. He’s not begging me to stay.
He’s commanding.
I don’t weep, but I do beam tearily at him as I ease my hand out of his grip.
“Just because I’ll be your wife doesn’t mean I plan on giving into your every demand and whim,” I tell him. “You just lie here for a minute and I’ll be right back with Doctor Morelli.”
I rise fully from the chair this time, making sure Elio can’t grab any random parts of me to try to haul me back down. He tenses as I move away, his dark eyes eating into me like he’s starving for something, like there’s an empty ache inside him that food could never even hope to touch.
I feel that soul-hungry gaze, hard as teeth against my skin, even as I leave and close the door behind me.