“Mina?” Cristiano’s voice is sharp with alarm. I hear the rustle of sheets, the beeping of monitors. “Mina?”
“He’s okay.” I’m crying now, sobbing, the words barely intelligible. “Leon’s okay. You saved him. Cristiano, you saved him.”
His hand finds my hair, my shoulder, pulling at me clumsily until I lift my head. He cups the back of my head and presses his forehead to mine, both of us shaking.
“My son,” he whispers. “Ourson.”
When he pulls back, there’s fierce pride burning beneath the exhaustion and tears. A father who saved his child’s life with his own body.
But the movement costs him. His jaw clenches, the muscles in his neck going rigid. A tremor of pain runs through him. I can see it in the gray pallor of his skin, the sheen of sweat at his temples, the way each breath comes shallow and careful.
“Cristiano, please use that morphine pump.”
“I want to see him.”
“You can’t get up.”
“Then get me a wheelchair.” The don’s voice. Low and dangerous and leaving no room for argument. “Get me a wheelchair or I walk there myself.”
Mom and Adora exchange a helpless look.
I take his face in my hands. “Leon is alive. He’s stable. He’s sleeping, and he won’t wake for hours. He won’t even know you’re there.”
“I’ll know.”
“You’ll be walking in a couple of days. But if you tear your stitches or fall down and hurt yourself, it could be weeks. Do you want days, or weeks?”
His jaw works. His hands fist in the sheets.
“Let me go to the ICU and video call you from the doorway. You’ll see him.” I brush my thumb across his cheekbone. “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. I can’t watch you hurt yourself. Not after what you just did for Leon.”
Something in him gives. A long, shuddering exhale. His body sags back against the pillows.
“You’ll call me the moment you see him?”
“The moment I’m at the door.”
“Okay.”
I lean down and press a kiss to his forehead. “The morphine, Cristiano.”
He grimaces. Nods.
I squeeze his hand once, then let go. Mom settles back into the armchair by the window. Adora perches on the edge of his bed, one hand resting gently on his arm.
“We’ll keep him company,” Adora says to me. “Go see your son.”
The pediatric ICU is quiet. Dimmed lights, soft beeping, the hush of machines keeping small bodies alive. A nurse leads me to a private room at the end of the corridor, and I pause in the doorway.
My hands shake as I pull out my phone and video call Cristiano.
He answers before the first ring finishes. From his tense face, I don’t think he’s had any morphine yet.
I direct the front camera toward the small figure in the big bed.
“There he is,” I whisper. “Can you see him?”
Cristiano holds the phone close to his face.
