5. Damiano
What the hell did my guardian angel give me and where can I get more? My shoulder has never hurt like it did yesterday.
Was that yesterday? I have no fucking clue.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot, but it’s the first time I’ve been shot at point-blank. Fucking scorched my skin as it pierced through me, like a bolt of lightning incinerating my skin.
Whatever the fuck magic potion she concocted, it knocked me on my ass. It’s like my head is floating a few inches above my neck. But at least the inferno burning in my shoulder is gone. So far gone that I don’t even think pain is what woke me.
It’s the need to take a piss.
I’ve never needed to piss like I do right now.
The apartment is quiet, except for clanging coming from a metal cage on the desk in the corner. I haven’t heard any other noises for the past few minutes, so I think I’m alone. Which is good because I’m not ready to answer any of the girl’s questions. Not until I talk to Salvo and find out what the fuck happened last night. Or two nights ago. Whenever the fuck that was.
But I have to piss now. Doesn’t even matter if I can stand on my own. The need to piss far exceeds any concerns I have about falling flat on my face when I try to stand.
Let’s do this.
Left foot onto the floor. Check .
Sitting up is going to be a bitch. I need to push myself up with my uninjured left arm, but. . . What the hell?
My left wrist is. . . tied to the end table? Come on, angel, seriously? You bring an absolute stranger who was obviously in a gunfight home and then you tie him to a small table? A table I could just carry around with me? Should have at least tied me to the foot of the couch.
I roll toward the end table to check this shit out. I’d reach over with my right arm to yank the rope off, but I know exactly the pain that will shoot through me if I do. Being exceptionally well-versed in the precise quantity and quality of pain an action will cause makes me particularly good at my job as enforcer for the Galliano Famiglia.
The knot tied around my wrist actually looks half decent. A textbook bowline. I’m not wriggling out of that one-handed. But the way the other end is tied around the leg of the end table. . . can’t I just. . . lift up the table leg and pull it out from under? No way it’s that easy.
Yeah. It was that easy. There’s still a loop dangling from my wrist, but I’m detached from the table.
I push up onto my feet. Fuuuuuck, that hurts. Pain shoots from my shoulder up the back of my neck, straight to my teeth. Son of a bitch .
Breathe in. Breathe out.
It’s only four steps to that chair. Do that. Get there.
Either get there or piss in your boxers for Florence Nightingale to clean up. No fucking way.
Step. Breathe. Step.
Actually, walking isn’t bad. Much easier than standing up. Walking is almost perfectly fine, as long as I don’t swing my right arm. I make my way through the tiny living room, through the tiny bedroom, into the tiny bathroom. I feel like a giant in this place.
I piss for what feels like ten minutes. Best piss of my life.
Holy fuck, this is a good piss. Euphoric. Better than a blowjob from any of girls at the Cat.
Except for Candy’s. Hers are like bursts of rainbows are shooting out the tip of my dick while glitter snow-globes around in my balls.
But that piss may have been the next-best feeling ever.
I glance in the mirror. I look like absolute shit. I mean, handsome as fuck, but handsome as fuck looking like absolute shit. There’s dirt and blood in my hair, all over the left side of my chest. Looks like she washed the blood off my face and around the exit wound, but the rest of me is disgusting.
And almost all of that is Paulie’s blood, not mine.
I could shower it off. There’s a shower right there . I’ve never wanted a shower more in my life.
But I need my sweet nurse to think I’m still passed out until I connect with Salvo, which means finding a landline somewhere around here. I have no fucking clue why Paulie— one of our own guys —would shoot me. And since I actually know what I’m doing with a gun, he’s no longer available to explain this situation to me.
So until I know what the fuck is going on—whether he was acting alone, whether he was acting on someone’s orders, and if he was, was that someone from a rival Famiglia or from within ours?—I can’t go home or to the Cat.
And, until then, I need my angel to think I’m passed out so I don’t have to answer any of the million questions I bet she’s going to ask. That means scrubbing the blood and dirt off me will have to wait.
Except for my balls. They deserve attention now. I grab the towel hanging on the shower door. Wet it, soap it up. This soap smells fantastic. Vanilla. Good for you, balls. You get to smell like Zia Lucia’s cannolis. I pull my boxer briefs down and give the boys a rubdown.
Love having squeaky-clean balls.
I rehang the towel, making sure the wet part is hidden. I’d throw it in her laundry basket so she doesn’t end up washing her face with my ball towel, but she might notice it’s missing, so I don’t.
What’s this girl’s story? She obviously lives alone, with one small bed and a bathroom that couldn’t be more girly.
And I think she’s hot. At least the image of her imprinted in my brain is hot. Like the heavens were doubly on my side, not just sending a nurse to find me in the middle of the woods, but sending a gorgeous blonde one, with navy blue eyes and a tight body wearing sexy-ass scrubs.
And one who didn’t call the police or drag me to the hospital. Fucking unicorn.
But just because she didn’t call the police when she found me doesn’t mean she won’t call them once she finds out who I am. I don’t give a shit about the actual police, but if the police find out where I am, anyone Paulie was working with—if he was working with someone—will find out too.
So nothing that lets her know I’m awake. At least my balls are sparkling fucking clean. Them and my wound sites. Most of the rest of me is disgusting, but I’m stuck with that for now.
Speaking of wound sites, how bad are they? I lift the gauze off my shoulder, pulling back the tape, ripping out a few chest hairs.
Che cazzo? What the fuck ? Those are some fucked up stitches. Holy fuck. What kind of nurse is she, doing stitches like this? And suturing a gunshot wound all the way tightly closed—is she trying to kill me with an infection? I bet half her patients are dead by now.
I can’t leave my wounds like this.
I look around the bathroom until I find her suture kit in the little cabinet. Lucky for me, I got shot in my right shoulder, not my left one.
I snip and then remove her shitty stitches that completely closed the wound site. Fucking mess. At least the tissue around the wound looks good. Pretty clean shot, actually. Almost no surface damage. I think I’m fucked on my back though. No way I can reach those stitches.
It takes me longer than it should, but after twenty minutes, I’ve got a few new—absolutely perfect—stitches that don’t actually close the wound completely since it’s a gunshot wound .
Why didn’t she know this?
I don’t restitch my side. Standing for this long is making me lightheaded, and the wound on my side’s a laceration from getting grazed, not a puncture from actual bullet penetration, so her spiderweb of stitches should be fine. The scar will be worse than it needs to be, but I don’t give a fuck about that. The Cat girls dig scars.
I apply fresh gauze on both sites and then pack all her supplies back where they were. I wrap the old sutures and used gauze in a paper towel and head into her kitchen to bury them deep in the garbage.
Being in her tiny kitchen reminds me that I’m fucking starving.
Feels like I haven’t eaten in a week. I open her cabinets, looking for something she won’t miss, but also something low-carb. That doesn’t leave me many options though.
My hazy memory of this girl is that she had a tight, fit body. But looking through her pantry, it’s pretty clear she doesn’t watch what she eats. It’s all processed white flour and sugar. Who needs multiple boxes of Pop-Tarts?
At least I find a jar of peanut butter, a half-stale box of Triscuits, and a refrigerator drawer full of apples. Those will have to do.
Actually, this is one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Nutty and salty and creamy and sweet. I didn’t mean to finish off the peanut butter and crackers, but fuck it. She probably won’t notice. I stuff the empty jar and box in the far back of her pantry, hiding them behind other crap.
The food and two glasses of water make me feel normal again. That and having squeaky-clean balls.
I rifle through the pile of mail on her counter next to a half-dead pothos plant. Poor little guy.
The mail is addressed to ‘Paige McAfee.’ Paige. Is that like ‘page’? But what the fuck does the ‘i’ do? Or is it like ‘beige’ with a P?
Her address is in the heart of Bagliateri Famiglia territory. Shit . I hoped I was in a Galliano neighborhood, or at least a Calscione Famiglia one. But Bridgeport is deep in the worst possible place for me to find myself. Or for someone else to find me.
A bill. Another bill. Request for donation. Another bill. People magazine. Pay stub. From the Law Offices of Ferrera & Westgate LLP. Not from a hospital? Or at least at a doctor’s office. She was definitely wearing scrubs. Like a nurse. And she sewed me the fuck up. Like a nurse.
What the hell was a secretary doing stitching me up? At least that explains the shitty stitches.
But fuck it. I didn’t bleed to death, she didn’t call the cops, and I fixed the stitches. I don’t give a shit what she does for a living.
I have no clue when she’s getting home, so I need to get back on the couch before she does.
Oh, and where the fuck is my gun?