When I finished, I didn't look at Dario again. I turned and walked toward the back-room.
The doors of the surgery.
Dario paced back and forth, restless, his forehead damp with cold sweat.
The moment he saw me come out in my scrubs, he rushed over.
I had on my mask and cap. Only my eyes showed.
Just as I was about to go in, he suddenly called out to stop me.
"Adriana."
I halted and turned to look at him.
His mouth opened, then closed. He hesitated.
After a moment, he asked it anyway.
"You... you wouldn't do anything on the table, would you?"
For an instant the air went still.
I almost thought I'd misheard.
"What did you just say?"
He avoided my eyes, but forced himself to keep going. His fingers drifted up and adjusted a tie that was already straight.
"How do I know you won't use this to settle a personal score?"
"You hate us this much right now. Who's to say you won't let something happen to her on purpose?"
In that moment, I almost laughed.
Not out of anger.
Out of how absurd it was.
Nine years bound to him by blood and tribute.
And he actually suspected I'd take a life on my table to vent.
I looked at him, my voice cold without a trace of warmth.
"Dario, is that the kind of person I am to you?"
He didn't answer.
But the silence was answer enough.
The next second, he spun to the woman standing beside him.
"Donna Marchetti, I want a different surgeon!"
"Or put someone in there to work alongside her!"
"I can't let her open Gianna up alone!"
Mira Marchetti had already been holding back a chestful of anger.
At those words, her face went completely dark.
"Mr. Conti."
"Adriana is the finest hand the Family has ever put in that room."
"She's pulled hundreds of men and women back from the edge in there, and not once has anyone bled out on her watch."
"No one who answers to this house questions her honor."
"If you don't trust her, you're free to take Gianna elsewhere. Right now."
With that, Mira Marchetti turned and walked off. Her ring finger never once touched the table at her side — the matter, everyone present understood, was not finished.
She gave Dario no chance to keep making trouble.
Dario's face shifted from red to white and back. He wet his lower lip and laughed a half-beat too soon, the sound dying in the silent corridor.
But in the end, he didn't dare move her.
Gianna's condition was already critical.
Any more delay, and it wouldn't just be the child. They could lose the woman too.
In the end, all he could do was watch me walk into the surgery.
The heavy doors closed slowly.
Sealing off everything outside.
I drew in a deep breath.
Scrubbed in again, sterilized, pulled on my gloves.
Then took the scalpel the runner handed me.
From this moment on.
I was no longer Dario's wife.
Only the Family's surgeon.
Nothing more.
The work lasted a full three hours.
The hemorrhage from the rupture was far worse than I'd expected.
By the time I finished the last suture, my back was already soaked with sweat.
When I walked out of the back-room, it was three in the afternoon.
I hadn't had a drop of water since the morning's calls came in.
Three straight days without rest had built up an exhaustion that finally hit its limit in that moment.
The instant I pulled off my mask.
Everything went black.
My body tipped backward, out of my control.
In the last second before I lost consciousness.
I heard Dario's anxious voice.
But it wasn't my name he called.
"Doctor!"
"How is Gianna?"
"Is she okay?"
Consciousness dropped into the dark.
How long, I don't know.
Then noise broke through near my ear.
"Adriana!"
"Adriana, wake up!"
I forced my eyes open.
A young runner was crouched beside me, her face full of worry.
She pulled a piece of candy from her pocket without missing a beat and pushed it into my mouth.
"Your blood sugar again."
"You've worked three days straight. Two off-the-books jobs last night, and today the calls and the table back to back."
"Keep this up and even someone made of iron couldn't take it!"
The sugar dissolved slowly.
A little strength came back into my body at last.
Only then did Dario seem to notice I existed.
He looked down at me.
His gaze landed on my face, pale and drained of color.
For an instant his expression froze.
The runner explained, her tone sharp with irritation.
"She fainted. Her blood sugar bottomed out."
But the next second.
Dario let out a cold laugh.
"Blood sugar?"
"Her own bad health is whose fault?"
"If you ask me, she did it on purpose." He reached up and straightened the tie again, the laugh coming too quick.
The runner froze.
Even the other men nearby frowned.
And Dario kept going.
"Dropping right at this moment. Isn't that just to make me feel guilty?"
"Adriana, I know you too well."
"You just want to use this to get back at me, don't you?"
Each word came down like a blow.
Heavier than the three hours I'd stood over that table.
Suddenly I felt a hollow place open in my chest.
It wasn't pain.
It was numbness, complete and total.
So it turned out that when a person is disappointed past all limits.
Even heartache stops coming.
I pushed away the runner's supporting hand.
And slowly got up off the floor.
My voice was calm, even to my own surprise.
"The work is done."
"Gianna is out of danger."
"Someone will see to her from here."
I lifted my head and looked at Dario.
There wasn't a shred of feeling left in my eyes.
"You can go in and see her now."
With that, I turned and left.
From start to finish, I never looked at him again.
Early the next morning.
I made my rounds as usual, moving room to room through the quiet of the safe house.
When I reached the door of Gianna's room, the voice coming from inside made me stop.
"Dario..."
Gianna was propped up in the bed, her voice so soft and coy it could practically drip. Her fingers rested at her collarbone, pressing gently, as if to steady a heart that beat just fine.
"My stomach still hurts so much."
"Did that surgeon maybe botch the work?"
Dario tensed at once.
"Why would it hurt?"
"Do you want me to go get the doctor?"
Gianna bit her lip, the picture of injured innocence.
"I don't know either."
"I heard so many stories yesterday."
"There was a hand who left a blade inside a man he was cutting open."
"And another who forgot a length of gauze in someone's body, and the rot nearly killed them."
At that.
She deliberately paused.
"Dario."
"Do you think... maybe something like that could happen to me too?"
The room went quiet at once.
And standing outside the door, I slowly tightened my grip on the chart in my hands.
