Chapter 2
MASSIMO
I was supposed to keep him safe. I always have. Now he’s sedated. The breathing machine they brought him in on has been removed and cleared away. I didn’t see it. The staff wouldn’t let me. They whizzed him by me, straight into surgery.
Dumped my ass in the waiting room with my boys.
Then the mess between Dom and Holli. What a fucking shitshow.
In a completely fucked up way, the adrenaline from holding Dom back made me want to fight too.
Fight him, or Holli. Either one to take away from the reality of my baby brother being in this goddamn fucking place.
The chair beneath me is hard plastic, warped from years of use. My spine is curled at a strange angle, but I haven’t moved. Not in hours. Not since they wheeled him in here and left me alone with the sound of machines surrounding him. With the lights dimmed, he’s pale.
Lifeless but alive.
I’ve never been a spiritual guy. But fuck if I haven’t prayed to everybody I know. I wipe my face again, though the tears stopped a while ago. My cheeks are dry and itchy from the salt. My eyes burn, the lids swollen, and lashes crusted.
Crying was the easy part.
That was earlier. Back when the fear and panic hit. Back when the nurse told me they had to intubate and sedate him. When they said the crash was bad. When I thought he might be . . . I can’t even say it. Won’t even think about it.
He’s alive.
That’s all that matters.
I straighten up slowly, bones aching, muscles stiff.
My elbows dig into my thighs as I lean forward, eyes locked on the broken brother lying in the bed beside me.
My identical twin. A mirror image of me, down to our haircuts.
Only my tattoos separate us. Otherwise, people always confuse us until Em opens his mouth.
That big mouth gets him in trouble way too much, shooting off too many times at too many bars, parties, and clubs. I’d give anything to hear him chirping in my ear. Now, my tattoos won’t be the only thing differentiating us.
I hate that.
He doesn’t even look like my brother. His body is covered in bandages and tubes.
His right leg is elevated, wrapped from the top of his thigh down to his ankle in thick white gauze.
He has a shattered femur. Metal pins were screwed into the bone to piece him back together when they rushed him into surgery.
Road rash climbs up his body from beneath the blanket. Bright red, raw, and oozing in spots. It splays across his left calf, angry, streaked with shredded skin. His shoulder is torn up on the same side. The nurse said he was lucky.
Lucky.
That’s what they call it.
When you get hit by a fucking car and thrown into a concrete pillar at 50 mph. His skull didn’t split open because that hungover idiot had the smart idea to wear his full helmet. The rest of him was so bruised and banged up that they couldn’t find a clean patch to place an IV.
I swallow hard, stomach churning. The edges of the memory are jagged. Blurry. I don’t know how long he was gone before I woke up. I just know the house was empty. His bike was gone. I fucked up.
I’m the reason he’s here. Banged up and broken. My dumbass had to fall asleep watching the Sox get murdered. If I had just stayed awake, hidden the keys, or done a hundred other things, everything would be different.
The door slams open.
“Ay carajo! Who turned off the fucking heat in here?”
I jolt upright, heart pounding, a bit from the racket but mainly from the energy coming off this chick.
She bursts in like she owns the damn place.
A flurry of curls piled high on her head.
Coffee-colored skin glowing against several gold necklaces.
A fat ass grabbing my eyes in those navy scrubs that don’t even try to hide the thick thighs scraping against each other.
The sound is as loud as her sneakers squeaking with every step. Warning everyone that she’s coming.
A clipboard is clutched in one hand, a giant insulated tumbler in the other, and she slams it down on the counter. She doesn’t knock. Doesn’t pause. Just keeps talking to herself and the machines, as if they all owe her rent and are late paying it.
“Somebody turned off the warmers again? We got a boy freezing in here like it’s a damn meat locker. What are we doing, prepping him for the morgue?”
Morgue?
I stare, remaining completely still.
She hasn’t noticed me yet. Her focus locks on Emilio. Her brow furrows. Lips purse. She’s mumbling half-Spanish, half-nurse lingo as she checks the monitors, scribbles stats, then adjusts a tube near his arm. She moves like she’s done it a thousand times. No nonsense, fierce and beautiful.
My eyes dry out from how hard I’m staring.
The tight stretch of her scrubs when she leans across him. The way her big gold hoop earrings catch the light. The sound of her bracelets clinking when she adjusts the IV. Everything about her is loud and out of place in the quiet Intensive Care Unit.
Then she looks at me. Clipboard midair. One brow arched. Lips parted just slightly, like she’s not expecting to see anyone conscious in the chair beside the bed.
“Well, shit.” Her accent hits hard, and she eyes me like I’m a second patient nobody warned her about. “You alive over there, Papito?”
I don’t answer.
Don’t think I can.
She walks toward me slowly, hips swaying like she doesn’t even notice they do that. Her eyes are as dark as her hair. But when they don’t leave my face, sharp and accusatory, I nod once. She looks from me to Em and back. The same look I’ve seen a million times when people make the connection.
“You’re his brother?”
“Twin.”
Her gaze softens just a little, but she looks again. As if challenging my word, even though we’re identical and not fraternal. “Identical.”
“No.”
A pause.
More staring between us.
From me because she’s hot as fuck and loud as hell. A bolt of energy in this sad and depressing place.
“Your right eyebrow is different. Higher.”
She points to my brother, who is utterly oblivious to his hot nurse. He’d be so fucking pissed. He loves the whole nurse costume. Although she’s not wearing the short skirt and low-cut top that our last nurse role-played in.
“You see, Papito?”
I don’t see. My eyes are glued to her. She’s a burst of energy to the guilt crowding my mind.
To the nausea that keeps me from eating.
Keeps me staring at my brother, the machines, and the groans of pain whenever he moves.
To the sympathetic eyes and concerned looks that every other person who enters this room gives me.
It’s like being in a nightmare. Being stabbed over and over with every medical professional handling the knives, every time I hear more bad news.
“I’m Sofia Santiago. I’m your brother’s day nurse.”
She bustles over to this whiteboard. Starts angrily writing her name and cell number on it, the marker squeaking the entire time.
“You need me, call my number. Don’t do anything without me being here. If he wakes, you call me. If he needs to pee or drink, you call me. If he wants to get up, what do you do?”
She turns, the uncapped marker threaded between her fingers. Her fists plant on that curvy hip, looking at me for the answer. In charge. That’s what she is. It makes me more worried. More scared that they brought in the drill sergeant. Like, shit just got real with her.
“I call you?”
She stabs the tip of the red marker in my direction.
“You call me.”
Then writes ‘CALL ME’ in big bold letters under her name and adds little stars around it. My gaze slides from her to my brother. Still drugged up, still sleeping, and thankfully, still alive.
“Um, you said, it’s like a morgue in here. Is he going to die?”
A glance over her shoulder before facing me. The edges of her thick lips, covered in gloss, pull back. Sort of a frown. My gut twists, and my heart throbs in my chest. Like it always does when someone enters. But her assertiveness knocks it up a fucking lot.
“Oh, Papito,” she mutters, closing the distance between us to hover over me.
When her hand lands on my shoulder, a bolt runs straight through my body, making me feel more alive than I have since I set foot in this place.
More human in a place made to save humans.
“Of course, he’s not going to die. He’s just a bit banged up.
But we’ll get him better. Don’t you worry about it. ”
But I am worried about it. Does she even know that I’m the reason he’s in here? It’s my fault he’s lying in that bed? Having gone through surgery to fix his leg and clean out the road gravel from his flesh?
The warmth from her hand seeps into every layer of my body. From the skin, muscles, and down to my bones. I want to believe her so bad it hurts even more.
“Are you sure? I mean, this is the Intensive Care Unit. The worst of the worst, right?”
Tears sting my eyes. If she notices, she doesn’t react. Maybe she’s numb to all the tears this place brings. I don’t know. But it’s all I’ve done. Here, the chapel, the bathroom, the waiting room. Every fucking room in this place is covered in the salty waters of my sadness.
“He was on a motorcycle, yes?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, looking from her to him and back.
“All motorcycle accidents come to the ICU first, to monitor the brain.” She draws closer.
The light smell of hand sanitizer and some fruity lotion distracts me.
She’s the only thing that smells good and nice.
Not reeking of iodine, blood, and bleach.
“Unless they are treated in the emergency room and go home.”
“And his brain? Is it good?” My eyes roam all over the machines, wanting the answers that everyone is hesitant to give me.
Always giving to my parents instead, who are overprotective and never share bad news with Em and me.
But this time, it’s about Em, and if they heard or know something bad, they definitely wouldn’t tell me. “I mean, he’s not . . . brain . . . ?”
I can’t even say it.
Brain-dead.