She shakes her head. “That’s insane.”
“I know.” I press my forehead to hers and cup her cheek. “But it’s true.”
This is worse than watching her through the window of her mother’s car, her face streaked with tears as Mrs. Santoro drove her away from me. It’s more painful than getting on that plane to Italy. For almost my whole life, my heart has had room for exactly one person. Mina. Only Mina. Everyone else was furniture. An irritation. I didn’t think I was capable of loving anyone else.
But there’s a four-year-old boy with my eyes on an operating table right now, and the thought of losing him is a physical pain in my chest.
“I’m going to save Leon,” I promise her. “I won’t let anything happen to our son. Not the surgery. Not anything. Do you understand me?”
Mina stares at me for a long time, and instead of arguing and telling me that I can’t protect our son from everything the universe might throw at him, she nods.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” I say, and press a kiss to her forehead.
The last thing I see as they wheel me down the corridor is her face, pale, terrified, and tear-streaked.
In the operating theater, the anesthetic pulls me under, cold and inevitable.
My last thought is her face. Her voice. Her hand in mine.
Wait for me, Mina.
I’m coming back to you.
I’m always coming back to you.
18
Mina
Ipace the length of Leon’s hospital room. Ten steps from the window to the door. Ten steps back. The empty spaces that once held Leon’s and Cristiano’s beds mock me. Both of them are gone, somewhere else in this building, and cut open on operating tables.
My mother sits in the armchair by the window, rosary beads clicking softly between her fingers. She’s tried to get me to sit three times. Tried to get me to eat twice. I can’t do either.
It’s been two hours. They’ve barely begun the surgeries, and I’m a nervous wreck.
I keep picturing Leon’s small hand reaching for mine until the double doors swung shut between us. Cristiano turning to keep his eyes on me until the last possible second.
Every time footsteps pass in the corridor, my heart stops. When they continue past our door, I feel like I’m going to shatter into a thousand pieces.
There’s a gnawing, guilty feeling in my belly telling me my son’s illness is punishment. If I’d made other choices, none of this would have happened. If I’d called Cristiano in Italy the moment I found out I was pregnant. If I’d married a normal, supportive man like Danny years ago. If I’d given Leon the love of two parents instead of doggedly insisting I could do all of this myself.
If I hadn’t been soselfish.
Because Leon could be dying right now, and Cristiano too, and that has to be someone’s fault. There’s always someone who could have done something, and that person should have been me.
Stop it, I tell myself.This isn’t helping. This isn’t rational.
But the guilt is coiled inside me, feeding on every minute that passes without news. I don’t deserve to be out here, safe and whole, while they’re in there. I should be the one under the knife. If something goes wrong, if either of them doesn’t wake up, it will be because of choices I made and lies I told.
I press my hands to my face and try to breathe.
“Mina.” My mother’s voice is gentle. “Come sit down. You’re going to make yourself ill.”
“I can’t.”
“Just for a moment—”
“Ican’t, Mom.”
