Chapter 18
Rotto Molto Gravemente
Heat. Pain. Dizziness. Confusion. Thirst. So hot.
Then cold.
Darkness.
Nothingness.
Lights—white and artificial.
Movement. Faces, voices. Words I don’t recognize.
Killian.
I wake up briefly. I'm conscious and lucid but weak and drugged—pain is a dull, distant throb, tolerable but annoying.
I peer through hazy, heavy-lidded eyes—a small, dark room.
Not a hospital—it looks like a clinic or urgent care exam room, except I'm on a bed instead of an exam table.
By bed, I mean a regular bed, like from someone's house, not a complicated and expensive hospital bed, although I see an IV machine on a rolling pole with two clear bags of fluids, a portable oxygen machine, and a heart monitor beep-beep-beeping steadily.
I hear, behind the beeping of the heart monitor, the gentle susurrus of waves breaking on a shore. I hear a horn going BWAAAANNNNHHHHHH in the distance. Seagulls cree-creeing.
Feet on gravel, nearby.
"Tio, eccoti qui."
"Nipote."
Dante and his uncle.
"Dove eravate?"
"Non preoccuparti, Dante."
"Dove eravate?" More insistent, now.
"Dante—"
"Tio. You didn't." This being in English feels…significant, somehow.
"Dovevo. Non avevo scelta."
"I give him my promise, tio."
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Context clues are giving me big-time worry. My window of wakefulness is closing, fast, however.
"I have no choice!" The uncle isn't shouting but hissing. "How he knew, I don' know." The uncle speaks much better English than he let on, back on the boat. "I have no choice." This time it's muttered, as if to reassure himself of the truth of it.
"Quando?"
"Domani. Presto."
"Tio…" Dante sounds tired and pissed. "Cazzo. You make me a liar. Un traditore."
"Salvatore, il numero due, he tell me your tia, your cugina Maria, they are killed. Or I am pay enough money to retire. Andare a pesca per divertimento."
"How do you know sta dicendo la verità?”
"Come faccio a sapere che non lo è?”
Silence.
"Cazzo, tio. Cazzo di merda. Mi hai fottuto."
"No, nipote. I fuck them over. You are family, they are not."
"Tio—"
"Dante," he snaps. "Enough. It is done. Ti mando a casa."
Dante responds in Italian, but I'm falling asleep—passing out, more accurately. I fight it desperately, but it's a losing battle. My fingers are clumsy and thick as I fumble at the IV, and the twinge of pain as I pull at it rouses me a little, and the beeping of the heart monitor increases.
I need Killy. He has to know.
He has to know.
"Hey, hey, hey. Easy." Killian's voice, close, low, quiet. "I'm here. You're okay." To someone else, then. "She's in pain. Can you increase her meds?"
No, no, no. I struggle, but warmth floods me, a blissful nothing that makes the panic subside.
No…
They're coming.
But I can't make myself care anymore—the all-consuming dark is warm and peaceful and quiet and so, so easy to slip into.
I wake again, this time to darkness and the trill of frogs and crickets.
A small lamp casts a dim sepia glow, and I hear the beeping of the monitor.
I look around—this is a bedroom converted to a makeshift recovery room.
I take an exploratory breath—mistake. Big, big, big mistake—the lance of pain is swift and brutal.
If I’m lying flat, holding still, and breathing shallowly, I’m relatively okay.
But breathe too deeply or move too quickly, the pain is immediate and incredible—and that's with drugs.
Once I've recovered from my stupid experiment, memory of the overheard conversation smashes through me like a detonating frag grenade.
I need Killian.
But my god, I simply cannot fathom trying to get up. Even reaching for the side of the bed in an initial foray into getting up leaves me panting and groaning and sweating and about to vomit from the agony.
Yeah, that's not happening. Dammit.
I have to spend another few minutes recovering from simply trying to reach for the bedside. Where is Killian?
I need him.
He has to know.
I hold my breath until my lungs burn and my temples throb and the heart monitor starts protesting rapidly as the lack of oxygen makes my heart race. Even the rapid slam of my heart against my ribcage hurts.
An elderly woman with steel-gray hair in a low bun bustles in, a tablet computer in her hand, real-deal half-moon spectacles perched on her nose.
"Hey, hey, hey," she croons, her English lilting with her accent. “Is okay, is okay. You are safe, now."
Yeah, right.
"Killy."
"Your boyfriend?"
I nod.
“He is sleeping. He is hurt more badly than he says to you."
"I need him. Please."
"He should rest."
"I—need—him. Now. Please. It's life or death."
"Alright, okay. Just…" she gestures, both hands pressing palms down.
"Riposa, per favore. You are very, very lucky, you know.
" She points at my gunshot wound. "One millimeter any other direction, up or down or this way or that way, you are taking many, many months to recover, if you live at all.
Only by a hair does the bullet miss your colon. If it hits you there…"
I grimace. "Yeah, I'm an ER nurse."
"Oh, so the…woman time package…" she makes an irritated face, I assume as she tries and fails to find the right English word. "For the monthly blood. In your wound.” She pats her side where my injury is. “That was your idea?"
I nod carefully. "Yes."
“Is smart but risky. I would not recommend to do it unless you are having no other possibles."
"Possibilities," I mutter. "Sorry."
“No, no, grazie. I study to be a doctor in the States. The, what is it called? In your state of Minning-soto? Ah, no…Minnesota. The Mayo, this is it. But that was when I was a very young girl, many years ago.” She pats her bun. "Now, I am old. I forget the English I once spoke so well."
"You studied at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota?” I ask.
She nods. "Yes, yes. A long, long time ago."
"I'm from Minnesota. Minneapolis."
"For so a world so big, it is sometimes very small, sì?” She stands, looks down at me. "I will go fetch your young man."
"Doctor?" I call.
She pauses. "Hm?"
"Dante's uncle. How do you know him?"
"Giuseppe?" A tittering laugh. "He is my brother's…ehh…merda. He is the brother of my brother's wife. Whatever you call this."
I frown. “Um. I’m not sure we have a word for that.” I shrug. “Just my sister-in-law’s brother.”
"As you say." She eyes me cautiously. "Giuseppe and me, not always do we look upon things in the same way.
He is…well, he is un criminale. But he is family, and he says to me, Lia, I need your help.
A young American girl is badly hurt. Of course I will help.
But I do not like to know what is happened.
There are sometimes questions that have no very good answers, and so it is better not to ask. "
"I…I don't trust him," I whisper; it's as much of the truth as I can risk sharing with her.
Lia looks sad. "This, I understand."
"I need Killy."
"Okay. One moment."
She leaves, and a few minutes later, a sleepy, dazed, and in-pain Killian shuffles in, limping and pressing a hand to his side. Hissing, he lowers himself to the edge of the bed, then glances back at Dr. Lia, who nods and closes the door.
I watch the crack at the bottom of the door; a shadow lingers, and I press a finger to my lips. "Hey, babe,” I say in a normal voice. “Sorry to wake you up."
"All good. I was told it was important. Life-or-death."
The shadow fades.
I gesture for him to come closer; he bends over me, wincing. "I overheard Dante talking to Giuseppe," I hiss, my voice a low, breathy whisper.
"That's his name?" Killian asks. "Hadn't heard it."
"He's Dr. Lia's relative.”
"Oh." A pause. "So what's the life-and-death situation?"
"Pugli got to Giuseppe. He sold us out."
Killian accepts this news in silence, and then his head lolls. "Goddammit."
"Dante was pissed."
"He wasn't in on it?"
"No. For sure not. He said he made a promise. Giuseppe said he didn't have a choice. They threatened Giuseppe's wife and daughter. It was that or make enough money to retire."
Killian nods heavily. “Sounds about right. Talk about an offer you can't refuse, huh? Either we kill your family, or we make you rich."
"What do we do?" I ask. "I'm useless. I can't…I can't even sit up. I can barely move, and you’re not much better.”
Killian's eyes are hard and furious. "I'll handle it." A pause. "Did you hear anything about a time?"
"They were going back and forth between English and Italian. I heard…uh…quan-something. Quando?"
“That's ‘when.' "
I rack my brain. "Ahh. Domain? Dome-ahn? Dome-something."
"Domani?"
"Yeah, that."
"It means tomorrow. There's an English-Italian dictionary in the room I'm in."
"Killy," I murmur. "I just want to go home."
"I know," he murmurs. "Me too."
"We need to call our families."
“I know. It's just been a fucking whirlwind since the second they dumped you in that container with me."
"That was last year, right?"
He snickers. "Yep."
"You know what's kind of shockingly stupid?"
"Thinking we could take on that many guys on our own?"
"I mean, that too," I say. "But no. I was gonna say that I’ve only got Mom and Dad's phone numbers memorized.”
"Oh. Part of being a Harris is memorizing a fucking phone book full of phone numbers. I know Mom’s, Dad’s, Brynnie’s, Rin’s, Cal’s, Uncle Val’s, Aunt Key's….as well as at least half a dozen call-in emergency service numbers. I just haven't had a chance to get a hold of a clean burner."
"Do we still have our guns?" I ask.
He nods, pulls a compact Sig Sauer from the small of his back, shows it to me, and puts it back. "The bag's in my room, too."
Something in the way he keeps saying "my room" brings a question to mind. "How long was I unconscious?"
“Two days. You lost a lot of blood, and when you hit your head, you hit it a lot harder than I think you realized. You nearly fucking died, Story. Doc Lia operated on you for four hours, getting the bullet out and making sure you weren't bleeding internally."
"We owe her."
He nods again. "No shit." A sigh. "Fucking Giuseppe. Should've known he'd sell us out. I had a feeling about him."