Emily had fallen asleep in my arms. She'd cried for a long time, but I'd been holding onto Enzo so tightly I barely noticed anything else. She'd finally exhausted herself. I held her close, clinging to her like she was the only thing keeping me from falling apart completely.
Just thinking that Enzo might leave me forever—it nearly drove me insane.
The time crawled by, brutal and endless. Finally, a nurse pushedthrough the operating room doors. She had a clipboard and pen in hand, stopping in front of me.
"Family?"
"Yes."
"Need you to sign the surgical consent form."
She handed me the clipboard. I looked down at the paper covered in dense print. I couldn't focus. The words swam in my vision. But a few phrases came into sharp relief.
Massive blood loss. Organ damage. Risk of cardiac arrest during surgery.
I knew exactly what that meant. My hands shook harder. The pen slipped twice between my fingers before I could steady it. I signed my name—crooked and barely recognizable. After I handed the clipboard back, the nurse glanced at where I'd signed, nodded, and walked away.
The door closed again. The red light above the operating room glowed.
Fear finally swallowed me whole.
My chest felt tight, painful. My breathing came short and shallow—every breath felt like not enough oxygen. My teeth chattered. I curled into a ball on the bench, my arms tightening around Emily until she frowned in her sleep. Only then did I realize I was holding her too hard. I loosened my grip slightly.
Would Enzo die?
No. He wouldn't. He was an unstoppable force—how could he die in a place like this? I tried to comfort myself, but another voice whispered back: But he was shot. The bullet hit his stomach. Before the ambulance took him away, his face had turned white, then gray. His lips had faded from red to a shade of purple-blue I'd never seen before.
But even when he'd gotten that bad, he'd still held my hand. He hadn't let go.
More tears fell. They hadn't stopped since we got to the hospital. I didn't know how many tears I had left, but they just kept coming.
I stared at the red light, counting the seconds. Waiting had become a form of torture.
Then I thought about all the time we'd wasted. All the accidents and lies between us. If we hadn't wasted that time, if I'd forgiven him sooner, if he'd learned to express love earlier—maybe we wouldn't be here now.
If Enzo died, all that wasted time could never be recovered.
By the fifth hour, a nanny Luca had called had taken Emily. I sat there in a daze until the operating room doors opened.
A doctor in green scrubs came out, mask pulled down to his chin, sweat on his forehead. He scanned the hallway, spotted me, and walked over.
I stood up. My legs had gone numb from sitting so long—my knees nearly buckled. Luca strode over from the other end of the hall and stood beside me.
The doctor's expression was grave.
"The patient lost a massive amount of blood. He went into cardiac arrest during surgery. We performed emergency resuscitation and got his heart beating again, but his condition is extremely unstable right now."
He handed me a sheet of paper. Critical condition notice.
All the strength drained out of me as I took it. Luca reached out to steady me, his hand gripping my elbow hard—probably because he could see I was about to collapse.
The doctor went on about follow-up care, but I didn't hear a word.
What gave him the right to die? He couldn't die. He sure as hell wasn't allowed to die.
I realized I was clutching the critical condition notice so hard my nails had left crescent marks in the paper. I loosened my grip, folded it, and shoved it in my pocket. I didn't want to see those words anymore.
Luca came over and handed me a cup of coffee from the vending machine. I took it but didn't drink—just let the warmth seep into my frozen hands. Luca didn't offer any comforting words. He wasn't in much better shape than me. He just sat down in the chair next to mine, hands clasped on his knees, staring at that red light with me.
