Gavin smirked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wall not far from the bed. He eyed Dante in silence, studying him for so long that it got under Dante's skin. While Dante wouldn't have called the two of them close, they got along well enough, more than he got along with most people.
A miracle, considering Gavin was as related to them as it got without being pure blood.
"Why are you here?" Dante asked quietly.
"Heard a rumor you were alive," Gavin said. "Couldn't believe it. Had to see it with my own eyes."
"Well, here I am. Nobody's killed me yet."
"Yet," Gavin repeated.
Dante nodded. "Yet."
"I'm glad," Gavin said.
"You? Glad I'm not dead?"
"If you can believe it."
"I don't know if I can," Dante said. "Never really took you for a sentimental bitch."
Gavin laughed at that, his laughter loud and infectious. "That's me. Sentimental bitch."
"Don't know why I'm surprised, considering I heard you had a kitten. That true?"
Gavin shrugged. "It's more of a cat now."
"That's just one step away from a fucking Chihuahua in a purse."
Again, Gavin laughed. "You don't know what you're talking about. Vito Corleone had a cat."
"No, he didn't. Marlon Brando picked up a stray cat on the set of The Godfather and it turned up in the movie. There's a difference."
"Brando was a cool guy."
"Brando was the kind of guy who would carry a Chihuahua in a purse."
"He was not."
"Dude had a pet raccoon. Who does that?"
"An artistic genius?"
"A sentimental bitch."
Another laugh, but no argument about that. Silence again overtook the room. Dante picked at his fingernails, finally clean from incessant showering, as Gavin's gaze bounced around at the horrendous flower garden that had popped up in the hospital room. He had something more to say. Dante sensed it. The unspoken words were so suffocating Dante damn near choked on the insinuations.
"You don't need to pity me," Dante said. "I don't want your pity."
"It's not pity."
"Then what is it?"
"Sympathy."
"You know, if you pick up a thesaurus, those words are synonyms."
Gavin sighed. "Yeah, well, it is what it is."
"And what exactly is it?"
Dante looked at Gavin, raising his eyebrows. Gavin stared back at him in silence before his expression softened, his lips tilting down into a slight frown. It was obvious he understood it then, that Dante didn't know specifics.
"It went down in Little Italy" Gavin said quietly. "Another car bomb."
Dante's stomach dropped. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, pain tightening his chest. Fucking car bombs. Even to that day, he sensed the violent tremble of the ground, felt the flames lapping at his skin as he inhaled the suffocating smoke. It was a moment he'd never forget. It was something he wouldn't have wished on anyone. "Genna's BMW?"
Kidnapping him hadn't been enough. They had to attack his sister on top of it, the only innocent one out of them all.
"Oh… no," Gavin said. "Matty's Lotus."
Son of a bitch.
Dante's eyes opened. "Barsanti blew up his own kid?"
"No," Gavin said, hesitating before adding, "It wasn't him."
Maybe the medication was leaving a haze over Dante's brain, because it took a full minute for him to grasp the true meaning of Gavin's words. If a bomb had been planted in the Lotus, chances were someone else would've been responsible.
Someone else, being the Galantes.
Someone else, being Dante's family.
"No." Dante shook his head as he clenched his hands into fists. No. It didn't make any sense. "My father wouldn't have done it. He loves his kids. He does. He loves us."
"She wasn't supposed to be there," Gavin explained. "And she wasn't... at first. She showed up right before the car blew up. Guess she found out what was happening and wanted to stop it."
"How do you know?"
Gavin didn't answer, but he didn't have to. Dante saw the agony in his steel-colored eyes. It was the look of helpless remorse... the look of someone who had witnessed the kind of devastation that only something like a car bomb could cause.
Sighing, Dante's gaze flickered to the ceiling as his eyes started to burn. Don't fucking cry. Don't cry in front of him. Don't cry in front of anybody. Don't fucking do it. "This is my fault."
"You can't blame yourself."
"The hell if I can't. I should've been there. I should've done more to protect her. She shouldn't have been left alone to fend for herself."
"She wasn't alone," Gavin said. "She had Matty."
"And a lot of good that did her."
"He tried. After you… you know… Matty did everything he could for her. He wanted to get her out. Wanted to get her away from it all." Gavin paused, like he was considering what to say next, and finished with a whisper. "They were planning to make a run for it, before the car went…"
Boom.
Once silence took over again, Gavin pushed away from the wall. "I should get going. If you need anything, look me up."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Gavin nodded, turning to leave. "And I meant it, you know... I'm glad you're not dead."
Dante waited until Gavin was gone before muttering, "Me, too, man. Me, too."
Gabriella stood in the doorway of the cramped hospital room down on the general medical floor. Seven in the morning and her shift up in the ICU just ended. Two new patients had come in, one of which occupied the recently vacated bed in room twenty-two. More often than not, when patients left, it was because they lost their fight. But sometimes, happy endings happened, landing them on this floor on their way out the door, their last stop before being released back out into the wild.
She seldom saw people again once they made it there.
She tried to separate herself from her work.
But sometimes, she couldn't help it.
Sometimes, she had a hard time letting go.
Dante lay propped up in the small bed, his arm draped over his eyes. He'd gained a few pounds since she first laid eyes on him, but the hospital gown was still too big for his body, loose around the neckline, exposing some of the scars on his chest. The lighting was dim, even the television off, but the room still managed to feel lively, courtesy of the vast array of flower arrangements and balloons shoved in the corners and along the counters.
Those things weren't allowed up in the ICU.
"So, I heard you're really digging the red Jell-O… true?"
Dante's arm shifted, resting across his forehead, as his eyes drifted toward her in the doorway. "False."
"Oh, well, that sucks," she said, stepping into the room as she pulled the container of Jell-O from behind her back, along with a flimsy plastic spoon. "Because I happened to have some with me, but I guess since you don't like it..."
He held his hand out. "Give it to me."
"But I thought—"
"Hand it over," he said, "and nobody gets hurt."
Laughing, she approached, handing him the Jell-O. Shifting in the bed to sit up, he tore the foil top off of the plastic container and took a bite.
He wasn't eating. Gabriella had heard the complaints, the frustrated whispers passed along between nurses, ones that violated a dozen hospital rules (and even a few laws, for that matter). An intolerable patient. Uncooperative. Bad-mannered. A full-blown a-hole, quite frankly. He accepted nothing anybody offered and he certainly wouldn't thank you for anything forced upon him. A nurse's nightmare. The only thing he seemed to touch was the red Jell-O off of his food tray.
"You know, you can't live off of that alone. No fat, no carbs, no cholesterol, no vitamins… just mostly a crap-ton of sugar."
He nodded, continuing to eat it. "You moonlighting as a dietician now?"
"Maybe," she said, "or maybe I'm just concerned about w
hy you're not eating."
"Ah, moonlighting as a shrink." He motioned toward the door with his spoon. "They make you come talk to me?"
"Nobody made me do anything. I shouldn't even be here. It's kind of a gray area, morally."
"I'm a gray area, huh?"
"Basically."
"That's good to know."
"They'll tube you again," she said, sitting down in the stiff cloth chair near the bed. "If you don't get enough nutrition, if you keep refusing to eat, they'll revert back to a feeding tube."
"And if I refuse that?"
"Then you'll be refusing medical care and there won't be much else they can do for you."
"That's also good to know."
She watched him as he ate the Jell-O. The container was nearly empty, the spoon scraping the bottom of it, when he said, "It doesn't taste right."
"The Jell-O?"
"Everything else," he said. "It all tastes like shit."
"It's not uncommon for your taste buds to have changed," she explained. "It's just temporary."
"I don't like it."
She wasn't surprised. He didn't seem to like most things. He'd been complaining since he woke up.
"Maybe someone can bring you something from outside," she suggested. "Like a family member or a friend or a girlfriend…"
He finished the rest of the Jell-O, tossing the empty container onto the small table between them but keeping the spoon to chew on. "You took care of me for weeks. Did you ever once see any of those around?"
"Your father."
"I'd rather starve."
"They said you had a visitor last night."
"I'm not asking him for anything."
"There's no one else you can call?"
"Depends. You offering to give me your phone number?"
"I, uh..." Crap, was he flirting with her? "No."
"Then no," he said. "No one."
She found that hard to believe, knowing what she did. Maybe visitors had been scarce, but somebody out there was thinking about him. Reaching over onto the table, she plucked the small card from a massive bouquet of lilies. "Do you like flowers?"
"Fucking hate them," he muttered, lying back in the bed again.
Gabriella read the card.
Pleased to hear of your survival
-Marco Valleni
Huh. Sticking it back in the bouquet, she moved on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one, finding the same general message written on each, amounting to 'good for you for not dying' from an Italian dude with a newsworthy last name. She should've minded her own business. Heck, she shouldn't even haven been in his hospital room. But curiosity got the best of her, and he didn't object to her nosiness, his gaze trailing her as she explored.
Had he been bothered, he would've complained, considering he complained about everything.
She squeezed around the other side of the bed, just enough space for her to move, plucking the card off of a vase of light blue hydrangeas. She pulled the card out of the little envelope, glancing at it. No specific name signed to it, simply, 'The Brazzi family sends their regards.'
Frowning, she stuck the card back in the envelope, returning it to the flowers. What a friggin cop-out.
"You find someone I can call?" Dante asked, so close those words grazed across the back of her neck. She shook her head, not sure what to say. "Didn't think so."
"It'll get better," she said. "Maybe ask for some pizza when they order your lunch."
"Tried it," he said. "The pizza here is shit."
She scowled. It wasn't that bad. She ate it often.
"I should go," she said, turning to him in the bed. "Take care of yourself, Dante."
She grasped his shoulder, squeezing. He didn't react. He didn't say anything. Instead, he closed his eyes, once again draping his arm across them, blocking out the world.
Gabriella left the hospital and took the subway home to her small one-bedroom apartment in Little Italy, on the fifth floor of a rustic brick walk-up with an Italian market below. Exhausted, she made the trek up the narrow staircase leading to her door. She unlocked it once she got there, stepping inside.
Straight ahead was a small kitchen, cut off from the rest of the place by a thin wall. Beyond that, an open living room, little more than a black couch and an old coffee table with a television across from it, affixed to the white-painted wall. Behind a sliding door with frosted glass was her bedroom, the full bed taking up most of the space, leaving just enough room for her dresser and well, her mess.
Cleaning wasn't exactly her biggest priority. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Gabriella hated doing laundry, especially since the washing machines were in the basement of the building.
Down a short hall, beside the bedroom, was the lone bathroom, the size of a closet, one you could barely walk in. It wasn't much. By her parents' account, it wasn't enough. They worried about her living in the city, but Gabriella loved it.
She loved being self-sufficient.
Stripping out of her clothes, flinging them on the floor, Gabriella fell into her bed, face-planting her pillow, desperate for sleep.
After tossing and turning for a few hours, dozing off to inexplicably find herself awake again, Gabriella forced herself back out of bed to shower. Time moved fast while she shuffled slow, putting on a fresh pair of scrubs before making her way back to the hospital.
Another night.
Another shift.
Twelve more hours in the ICU.
On the way, she stopped at Como's Pizzeria, grabbing a small pepperoni pie to go. She detoured in the lobby of the hospital, heading to the information desk, approaching the woman sitting there, answering phones.
"Can you have a volunteer take this up to the general ward?" she asked, handing over the red and white pizza box. "Room 245... patient's name is Dante Galante."
"Uh, sure." She eyed Gabriella with suspicion, the morally gray area beginning to turn dark. "Is this from you?"
"I'm just delivering it," she said. "Nothing more."
Gabriella started to walk away when the woman called out, "Who's it from?"
She considered that before answering, "Tell him it's from a friend who thinks red Jell-O sucks."
Gabriella headed to a bank of elevators just as one opened. She stepped in with a few others, someone strolling in right behind her. A throat cleared as the doors closed, and Gabriella came face-to-face with Crabtree. "Doctor."
"Nurse." He nodded tersely. "Nice night for pizza, huh?"
"It's always a nice night for pizza," she said. "There's nothing better."
"Have I told you lately that I love you?" Genna mumbled with her mouth full. "Because I totally do."
Smiling to himself, Matty tore the plastic off the top of the tub of ice cream. She'd told him she loved him a moment earlier and a few minutes before that, too. In fact, she'd been repeating it non-stop since he'd carried groceries inside. "It's always nice to hear."
"Good, because I seriously love you."
Glancing over his shoulder, Matty watched as she shoveled a bite in her mouth with a plastic spoon, eating straight from the pan.
Chocolate cake with strawberry icing. Who knew how hard it would be to find? Every bakery had chocolate cake covered with vanilla or buttercream or even more chocolate but no damn strawberry to be found. So after searching for over a week, he gave up, buying the ingredients and a damn pan, baking one in the ancient oven.
It looked like shit. He was almost ashamed. He hadn't waited for it to cool before icing it, so crumbles of chocolate cake coated the top. He covered it with a container of chocolate sprinkles, giving up, hoping it would suffice.
It was the thought that counted, right?
The cake looked dry, like he'd baked it too long, and it came out of a box courtesy of Betty Crocker, but Genna devoured it like Martha Stewart herself had whipped it up in her kitchen.
"For the record: I love you, too," he said, pulling the top off of the ice cream tub. Half of it had melted in the
heat, the freezer in the house worthless. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry converged, creating a discolored mess. Grabbing a plastic spoon, he dug it in, watching as liquid ran off the sides. "So, you want some soup to go with your cake?"
Genna took a few steps over, pausing behind him, and glanced at the ice cream. She shrugged and dug her cake spoon straight into the carton. "I like it better this way."
Matty leaned back against the counter, regarding her. "You're kidding."
"Nope," she said, giving up pretense and grabbing the entire carton, hugging it to her chest. She stuck her spoon in and stirred, mixing the flavors together. "My brother and I used to eat all of our ice cream like this."
Matty eyed her curiously as she said that. He knew she was talking about Dante, considering she'd been too young to ever remember Joey being alive. Matty remembered him, though. And one thing he never forgot about him was that if you gave Joey ice cream to eat, he'd mix it up until he could drink it. "Really?"
A small, wistful smile ghosted across Genna's lips. "Yeah, we'd wait until it was all melted and just slurp it from the bowl. It drove my parents crazy. I still do it sometimes, but he doesn't..." She paused, her smile falling. "I mean, he didn't. After my mom died, he stopped. He grew up too quick after that."
Genna stared down at the ice cream in silence, lost in a memory. Matty stayed quiet, giving her that, and didn't chime in until she took another bite. "Joey used to eat his ice cream that way."
Her eyes widened. "He did?"
"Galante family trait, I guess. Can't even eat ice cream right. Gotta make things messy."
Genna laughed, her expression brightening just a bit. "I am pretty good at making things messy."
"That you are," Matty agreed. "Might even go so far as to call it your specialty."
Chapter Six
Manhattan found itself in a late summer heat wave.
Dante could feel the passing of time as he sat on the small metal bench along the sidewalk, in front of the hospital, the muggy heat sticking to his sweaty skin. It had barely been August the last time he remembered, but there it was, already September, fall just a few weeks away. Blinked, and he missed it, the days ticking by. It was like sleeping through a month of your life… a month where everything you knew vanished.