Page 83 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. It starts her off again, tears sliding down her face and hiccups in her chest.

“I miss you,” she says, like she’s been holding it back. Not missed. Not past tense. Nadia actively, currently misses me while I’m sitting right here. I don’t pretend to misunderstand the meaning—I know exactly what she’s talking about. I miss a lot of things, and no matter how much I have tried to redo them, to send us back to that place and time, it never feels the way it did before.

The hospital seats put a barrier of arm rests between us and I can’t stand it. I get her up and put her on my lap, where I can wrap my arms around her properly and hold her against me. She sinks into me like I am the only safe place to land.

I remember how this felt. Like I’ve been thrown back in time. We’re both on the same page. There’s no space in this stuffy, obnoxious waiting room for our bullshit. No past or future here, nothing complicated about this moment. We’re sharing the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same gutting anxiety.

Nadia buries her face in my neck, hides herself from it all. I watch, uncomprehending, at the scenes that play out in waiting rooms. Phones on speaker. Music blasting too loud from headphones that don’t fit right. Nurses and doctors coming and going, bringing news. The occasional crying or laughing.

Nadia is right. It feels like it’s been too long. I want to go be with Harper. I want to tell her the stupid lies I can’t even tell her mother, like everything is alright (it isn’t) and I’m there for her (I won’t be).

My fingers drag through Nadia’s hair without realizing it.

Finally, a doctor approaches. I nudge her forward. She stands in a breathless rush, leaning into my hand on her lower back as we stand side by side. I brace for the worst—the way you brace to be hit by a semi pushing eighty-five. Totally pointless.

“Harper’s alright for now—” the doctor says. That alone nearly takes Nadia off her feet with relief. “—but Ms. Petrone, we don’t believe this is related to her heart condition. Everything seems fine there, which is good news and bad news. Is there anything she could have gotten into? Cleaners, chemicals, medications—?”

Nadia stares, her face pinched.

“I…no? I don’t know, she was at school when it happened, they just called me—they said she got sick after lunch.”

“Did she eat lunch provided by the school?”

My thoughts leap ahead, bounding from one question to the next, as if watching a string of dominos beginning to fall. The trajectory obvious and inevitable, yet you still can’t look away as they crash together one after the other in that long, predictable line—

“I fixed her lunch like I always do,” she insists. Her hands come up to her mouth. “Was it something I gave her?”

“That’s not likely, unless there was a chemical contaminate you didn’t know about. This isn’t your standard food poisoning.”

“But you are saying she’s been poisoned—” I say, softly.

“Based on her symptoms, it’s likely she’s ingested something toxic, yes. We’re still waiting for toxicology to come back with something definitive. She’s responding well to a generic round of treatment to flush out her system, though, so until we can isolate what it is, we’ll continue with a broad-spectrum treatment. I’d have more confidence if we could say for sure what she might have gotten into.”

“Can I see her?” Nadia asks.

“Of course. We have her under mild sedation to keep her relaxed. It’s better if you don’t wake her for now.”

The doctor leads Nadia back into the room. My feet follow her, though I don’t remember moving them. She pulls me along bythe hand, refusing to let go, our fingers knotted together like the universe might try to snatch us apart.

It could have been an accident, I try to tell myself. As if I would believe it. That part of me that blacks out with rage and wrath—it’s dead silent now. I don’t need it. I am it, except this time, I am coldly, clinically aware.

Harper is stretched out on a hospital bed that seems to swallow her up. The white sheets making the pallor of her face gray. Her eyes are closed, breathing quick and shallow. One look, and I don’t think I can stay in here. I need to go. Need to find someone, something—make them pay for it.

Nadia takes Harper’s hand. She looks up to find me frozen in the doorway.

“Ren?” she asks.

All I wanted to do was get in this room. For half an hour, I counted the goddamn seconds. But now that I’m here, I can’t do a goddamn thing for her, and, in its own way, that feels worse. My hands clench.

When I linger in the doorway too long, she looks back at Harper.

“Go if you have to,” she says. Like she can read me. She used to be able to. So many inside jokes; it was like our own language.

I take that murderous little voice in my head and drown it in my own anger. Hold it under until it stops breathing, just for a little while. I go and put a hand on Nadia’s shoulder. I can’t do anything for Harper, but I can still stay here for her.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

We lapse into another thoughtful silence.

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