“I said,sit down, Mariano.”
My great-uncle pointed. He wanted to make sure that, if I couldn’t hear him over the roaring of my heart, I could see him. I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was seeing, but the frail old man had my attention. My body automatically seemed to take to the chair. I sat, and I wasn’t even sure how I got there. All I knew was my heart felt too fucking far from my chest, and my body felt as if it was revolting, demanding to be reunited with…life.
My great-uncle sat next to me. I blinked. It was only he and I in the room.
He sighed, shaking his head. “You wife, our lovely Sistine, is in stable condition. However, she is on life support. She lost too much blood, nephew. The placenta severed, perhaps when Sistine hit the rock. She sustained quite a bit of trauma. The list is extensive, including broken and bruised ribs. However, the blood loss is the most concerning issue.”
He made a pained sound, an ache that couldn’t be healed. Or was that me?
“I gave our first Matteo a name. When you have another child, you will honor the first Leopoldo Piero Fausti, even if I am not here to meet him. You will know that I am with him, my healing spirit always close to him.”
“A son.” My voice almost…floated.
I was a fucking ghost. Lost. Lost walking this earth. I wasn’t inside of myself. I was outside of it, looking at my life as if I had separated from it.
“Leopoldo Piero Fausti.” I repeated the name, a tightness in my throat that felt like barbed wire when his name came from my mouth. My wife had physically bled out for him, and I was bleeding on the inside, where no doctor could heal me—I’d always be shredded.
My wife.
My wife was the only soul who could make the mortal wound better.
ProzioTito nodded. “Leopoldo after the church you and your wife were married in. The name means ‘brave,’ and this is what you and your wife will need to continue forward after this—bravery.”
“Continue forward.” I looked him in the eye.
He touched his heart. “I cannot predict what God has in store. However…” he lifted his hands “…I still feel a touch of healing in these hands.”
“Doctor.” I was able to mutter that one word. He was one of the best, and after Dr. Musa…I didn’t know what our family would do.
He put his hands together. “No, nephew,” he answered me in Italian. “Doctor or no, these hands know how to heal, not because of the title, but because my mamma taught me how to pray, ah?”
A doctor knocked lightly before she walked in. She was wary of me and took a step back when she started naming all the things my wife was being treated for.
“She’s breathing,” I said, having already taken note of every ailment in my soul. I’d count her bruises when my hand was in hers, and for each one, I’d have my brother cause two on my skin when she was home.
Home.
She is my home.
The doctor lifted her hands. “The machine…”
“Nephew!” My uncle sounded as if he was struggling to get to his feet. Marciano appeared and hustled past me to get to him.
The doctor ran out of the room. I was going after her—woman or not if she gave me irrevocable news. My grandfather appeared at the door. He nodded toward the area the doctor had run to.
“Go,” he said. “Be with your wife.”
It wasn’t until I was in the room with her, monitors beeping all around me, that I felt like my knees were not going to hold me. I collapsed in the chair next to her, taking her hand, refusing to let go.
Her breath was mine.
And if hers refused to come on its own…
My brother had the letter.
All was in order.
I wasn’t sure how long I was in the seat beside her bed, but I based the element of time by the bruises on her skin, twenty-five, and how they all started to fade into gold patches. There was also a tide rising inside of me. It was slowly drowning me, and the longer my wife refused to look at me, the tension grew.
