26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Gianna

If we were in any other aging beach community, there probably wouldn't be anyone on staff at the local hospital with the experience necessary to deal with Dom's injuries. However, since this is like a tiny Chicago, the doctors at the hospital seem very familiar with his injuries and they rush into a private room to start attending to him.

They don't let me stay with him, ushering me away to get X-rays and to check on the baby. I know that I need to let them work, but some irrational part of me thinks that if I can't see Dom, he will die.

I am probably driving the nurses crazy who are working on me as I keep asking them every ten minutes or so if they have heard anything about Dom.

"He's going into surgery," one of them finally tells me as she comes back into my treatment room. They have stripped me of my smelly, bloody clothing and gotten me into a hospital gown. Someone has put me back into my sling.

"Is it bad?" I ask stupidly.

She smiles at me reassuringly in that way that medical staff have of being vague but kind. "We don't really know yet. We have to let the surgeons do their jobs, okay?"

I nod numbly and press my hands to my belly again.

"Shall we check up on that little bundle in there?" she says to me pleasantly.

I nod again. Coming up with words to say just seems impossible at this point. The ball of fear and worry lodged under my ribs feels like it's choking me.

"Is this your first baby?" she asks me conversationally as she rolls over a cart and starts collecting items from the cupboards in the room.

I swallow with difficulty and then say in a thready voice, "Yes."

"How exciting!" she says happily.

I watch her collecting ultrasound gel and towels. She's probably in her thirties, with long, blonde hair and a slightly round face.

I wonder how many mafia members she has patched up over the years. She hasn't said a single thing about the condition that Dom and I were in when we arrived.

She hasn't even acted like there is anything strange about a group of men in black suits bringing a pregnant woman with a broken arm and a man who has been stabbed and beaten into the hospital.

This is one of the various little surprises that have crept up on me since Dom came into my life. Some na?ve part of me always assumed that mob families had to have private doctors because they couldn't trust regular medical staff not to call the police.

Part of me thought that the things that Dom's family did for money were far more secretive than they really were. It feels strange to think that so many people interact with crime families on a daily basis and don't ever involve the police.

Maybe it's safer that way.

"Okay," the nurse says as she moves my gown to the side and squeezes some ultrasound gel onto my belly. "How far along do you think you are?"

I feel confident as I quote the number to her. I probably conceived that first time that Dom and I had sex. By my math, we should be able to see the baby by now.

"Perfect," she says to me, sounding a little distracted as she changes some settings on her machine. She slides the probe around a little bit, and then the sound of the baby's heartbeat sounds out loud and clear. "Ah, there it is," the nurse says with a smile.

I burst into tears. I hadn't actually acknowledged to myself just how afraid I had been that my poor baby had gotten hurt by all the tussling with my brother and his thugs.

I listen to the strong sound of my child's heartbeat and sob. I don't know what else to do.

"Everything looks great in there," the nurse says to me as she wipes the jelly off my skin and pulls my hospital gown closed. "Let me go see if your X-rays are back yet."

I manage to nod, and she passes me a box of tissues. She opens the door and steps partway out into the hall, then slips back inside.

"There's a man out here who says his name in Vince. He asked if he could come in," she tells me.

"Oh!" I say. "Yes, he can." I blow my nose and swipe at my wet cheeks.

"Baby is good?" Vince asks me as he comes to stand by my bed.

I nod. "Thank God, yes," I choke out around my tears.

He smiles a little. "That's important. I want to get a chance to be a really indulgent grandfather who spoils that little munchkin rotten."

I chuckle at his words despite my fear and exhaustion. "I'll let you do that," I say to him, and I mean it.

Vince is probably the closest thing to family that I'm going to have now that my brother is dead. My parents are going to be so upset that I killed Will, that I'm pregnant and that they didn't know about any of this.

They aren't going to want to talk to me for a very long time, if they ever decide to let me back into their lives.

"I don't know anything about Dom yet," Vince tells me. "I'm terrified," he adds.

I look up at him sharply. I had expected this to be like old hat to a man like Vince. Surely, he's dealt with far worse than this over all the years that he's been the leader of a major crime family.

As I look at the worry on his face, I realize he's so scared because he thinks of Dom just like his actual son. My heart softens toward Vince despite how much he had rubbed me the wrong way when we first met. Even then, he had meant to protect Dom, just like any parent would do.

"We have to believe that he'll be okay," I tell Vince. I hold out my good hand, and he takes it, giving it a squeeze.

"We make a good team, I think," he says to me chummily, and I laugh. "I'm not kidding!" he says to me. "You're as fierce as a lion. There are many men who wouldn't have been brave enough to take on your brother like that. It means a lot to me that you saved Dom's life."

I swallow hard. I hope that I did. It's killing me not to know anything about his condition. He had looked absolutely terrible when we dragged him out of the warehouse. I wanted to kill my brother all over again for beating him up and stabbing him.

I'm sorry about your brother," Vince says, seeing the look on my face.

"Thank you," I say in a small voice.

"It doesn't get easier," Vince says, coming over and taking my hand. He gives it a squeeze. "But it's just part of the game for us. I'm sorry if you didn't want to be involved in this life."

I look down at my belly, thinking of the tiny life inside of me. "I already was part of it and just didn't know," I tell Vince honestly. His hand feels nice holding mine. I can't think of the last time that my father did anything like this for me.

I realize now what I probably should have noticed before. My family had always treated me like an outsider, as though I wasn't actually related to them. They had taken care of me, paid for my school, and provided me with what I needed, but they had never acted like I was one of them.

Even now, lying injured in this hospital bed, terrified for Dom, I still feel more loved and wanted than I ever have in my life.

Vince's warm fingers wrapped around mine feel like a solid anchor in a storm of uncertainty and I'm grateful that he came to rescue us.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" Vince asks me.

I shake my head, then wince at the pain that the movement causes. "Can you stay with me? I…I'm scared," I admit.

Vince smiles warmly at me. He has a nice smile. His face is weathered from years of sun and stress, but his smile crinkles the skin at the corners of his dark eyes and softens his craggy features.

"I'm glad you said yes," he tells me, going to get the chair in the corner of the room and bringing it over closer to my bed, "because I'm scared too."

***

A hand on my shoulder wakes me up. I blink owlishly, feeling like I'm trying to swim through oatmeal to get to the surface of wakefulness.

Vince is looking down at me with a gentle smile on his face. "The doctors are here to update us about Dom," he says.

I feel a sharp stab of worry, and suck in a breath. I nod, feeling a little dizzy. Everything about my future comes down to this moment. Everything about how I will live my life depends on what they say to us.

"I'm glad to hear that the baby is just fine and that your injuries will heal without surgery," one of the two doctors by my bed says to me. She looks like she's about forty. She's quite pretty, and she exudes competence.

"Thank you," I manage to choke out around the fear that is clutching at my chest.

"The surgery went much better than expected," she goes on. "We were able to repair all of the damage. He will have to have a tube in his chest for a little bit so that his lung doesn't collapse again. It's not very comfortable, but we'll give him medication to make the process of healing the damage less distracting for him. He's very lucky that you two were there to help him. If you had shown up even a few minutes later, he might not have survived his injuries."

I sag with relief against the pillows behind me. Dom is okay. He's hurt and healing, but he's going to be okay. I start crying as I thank the doctors over and over again, mindless with relief and retreating fear.

Vince asks some more questions about how long Dom will need to be in the hospital for, but I'm not really listening. I press my good hand to my belly.

"You're going to get to meet your dad," I whisper to the baby. "Everything is going to be okay, after all."

"When can we go and see him?" I hear Vince ask.

The doctor checks her watch. "He's in recovery right now. In about a half hour, I will have someone come and get you guys so that you can go see him."

Vince thanks the doctors and we watch them leave. I start to sit up in bed, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain that are surging through my body.

"Hey there," he says to me. "Slow down. We'll get a wheelchair to take you to him. They aren't going to let you walk around while you are in their care."

I realize that Vince probably knows far more about how all of this works than I do. He's probably been in the hospital a fair number of times over the course of his life due to the kind of work that he does.

I reluctantly lean back against the pillows, tapping my fingers on my thigh until finally, a nurse shows up with a wheelchair. They transfer me to the chair, and we go out into the hall.

The hospital isn't large, but I'm glad that they brought the chair. I already feel exhausted and all I did was get out of bed and sit down in the wheelchair.

We round a corner, and then the nurse pauses by a large door that is labeled, "Recovery". They push open the door and then turn my chair to back me inside. When they turn me back around, I can see Dom's beautiful body lying in a bed not far away.

He looks like a statue lying there, barely alive, connected to all kinds of lines and beeping machines. However, I know enough to know that the beeping is a good thing.

"Dom," I say softly as they push me closer to his bed. I reach up cautiously to touch his large hand which is lying by his side on the crisp, stiff hospital sheets. "Dom, Vince and I came to see you and say hi."

His eyelids flutter, and he turns his head. When he opens his eyes, the sight of his bright blue eyes makes me start crying again.

"Hey there," he says, his voice sounding rusty.

"Hi," I say inadequately, squeezing his fingers.

"You scared us," Vince says, coming to stand behind me.

Dom utters a chuckle that sounds more like a cough. "I scared myself, if I'm being completely honest," he says.

We all laugh a little.

"Is the baby…" he starts to say.

I interrupt him, "She's fine."

His brow furrows. "It's a she?" he asks.

I blink a little. I didn't realize I had said that. "Oh," I say with a little giggle. "I guess we don't know yet, but maybe my mother's intuition is showing."

Dom smiles at me and nods slowly. "A daughter. What should we name her?"

"What was your mother's name?" I ask him.

"Jade," he says dreamily.

"Jade Santoro," I say. "It's perfect."

"Perfect," he echoes sleepily, his eyes closing.

"I love you," I tell him.

"I love you, too," he mumbles, going back to sleep.

As I hold his hand, my heart is overflowing with love and joy. I hadn't imagined that there was any way that we would be able to share a happy ending. That everything had turned out for the best, really felt almost impossible to me.

I looked at our linked hands, imagining years of being able to hold his hand just like this. My arm hurt, my ribs hurt, but my heart was full of love. I couldn't imagine wanting anything more.