Helping Mr. Gang Leader
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Chapter 2: a brother's love
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“Do you need an ambulance?” Giovanni demanded, and it certainly sounded like her brother.
“Hurt?” Gianna managed to get out, but thankfully she was starting to feel a little better. Her chest wasn’t so tight and she didn’t feel as if she were seconds away from a heart attack. “You …hurt?” She could only see the blood on her baby brother’s face.
“No,” Giovanni was quick to tell her, tugging her into a much more confident hug. “Gia, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t think about your heart at all.”
“Is she a doctor or not?” the man with a gun demanded.
As Gianna steadied further, she saw Giovanni give a confident nod and say, “My sister is the best doctor I know. Get Cypher to one of the examination rooms and I’ll have Gia there in thirty seconds.”
“He better be good,” The man with the gun said, but then he was darting away to follow orders.
Gianna grabbed hard to Giovanni’s sleeve and demanded, “What’s going on?”
“Is the code to the alarm still mom’s birthday?”
Before Gianna could respond, Giovanni was on his feet and headed from the room. He shouted over his shoulder, “You just keep breathing. I’ll be back in a second and I’ll explain everything!”
The moment Giovanni was gone, Gianna bowed over more fully, hands braced on the ground as she sucked in the last of her uneven breaths.
She didn’t know what was going on. She didn’t know why there were unfamiliar men, some wounded, who’d broken into her clinic at one in the morning to threaten her with a gun. And she didn’t know why her brother seemed to know not only what was going on, but know the men as well.
But Gianna was going to find out. Because nothing happened to her clinic as long as she was around, and that included people dying on her watch.
She was a little panicked, and a lot confused, but she could feel her nerves evening out, and her main priority was now the bleeding man who was being moved to one of the examination rooms.
A man who was likely a thug of some kind.
As Gianna lifted herself squarely to her feet, she wondered if that meant somehow Giovanni was a thug. He was associated with these men, and only criminals had guns outside of the military.
But that was a connection that Gianna didn’t want to believe, especially since her brother was so young and had so much potential. Gianna couldn’t bear to see him burdened by a life of crime, and to see him become a degenerate was a heart wrenching thought.
But she had to focus. Even if the man who’d been shot was a criminal or a thug, or whatever, he was still an injured party.
And to a doctor, the only thing that mattered was the injury, and not the person it belonged to.
Gianna didn’t go after her brother. Instead she careened down the hallway towards the sounds of men arguing, and shouldered her way into an examination room that her new patient was currently bleeding all over.
“I can’t treat him here,” Gianna said firmly, eyeing the man Giovanni had given orders to.
The gun was out of view now, but probably not far from reach.
“What?” the gruff man demanded, sharing a quick look with the man with the impressive bruise on his face. “I thought you were a doctor--”
“Your friend,” Gianna cut in sharply, “he’s been shot, correct?” She didn’t wait for a response to say, “I take it none of you have any medical training? Can you tell me if the bullet is still lodged in him? If the wound is being complicated by any excess bleeding, damaged organs, or--”
The man who’d been shot groaned terribly.
Quickly, Gianna pushed up the sleeves on her pajamas and said, “I need you to bring him with me to the operating room at the back. It’s sterile and will have all the equipment I need to save his life. Unless you’d like him to bleed out here in a room that mainly has cotton swabs and tongue depressors?”
“Where?” the man with the bruised jaw asked, already reaching for the gunshot victim. “Where is that room?”
“Follow me,” Gianna snapped out, and then she was running ahead to get the single operating room ready to go.
She could handle a gunshot wound, especially if the victim had made it this far.
“You,” Gianna said, rallying her courage, looking to the man who’d pulled a gun on her. “Street thug, don’t bump your friend into anything. Think of him like a delicate vase that’s already cracked. Too much jostling could do more damage than the bullet.”
The man glared at her. “Rio. I have a name.”
Frankly, Gianna didn’t care what the man’s name was. Just that he did as he was told.
“Move,” Gianna urged.
“What do you need us to do?” Rio asked as he and the others came through the door behind Gianna , flipping on lights and helping their friend onto the operating table.
The alarm finally cut out and Gianna breathed some relief.
“Get his clothes off,” She commanded, washing her hands carefully and thoroughly at the nearby sink. “All of them except for his underwear. I need to be able to see the wound clearly, but don’t touch it.”
“He’s bleeding,” The unnamed man stated, laying the nearly unconscious one down on the table. “I don’t want to take my hand off the wound. You have to keep pressure on it, right?”
“It’s an abdomen wound,” Gianna told him. “He hasn’t bled to death yet, despite you moving him all around, so that is a very good thing. You can let off the pressure now and take a step back.”
“Gia!”
Gianna was getting her first look at the wound when Giovanni came skidding into the room, sweaty and breathing hard.
“Not now,” She said, placing a tentative amount of pressure on the wound. The hole looked clean, the placement was as good as it got, and a few seconds more Gianna was able to determine the bullet had gone completely through.
The fact that it wasn’t still lodged inside was likely the reason the man was still alive. “I’m busy.”
The wounded man groaned again, eyes opening wider than before, but with a delirious haze.
“Sir,” Gianna said, feeling blood gush out warmly over her gloved fingers, “My name is Doctor Gianna. You’re at my clinic and you’ve been shot. I am going to help you. I will take care of you. But I need you to listen carefully to me, and do as I say.”
A furry of movement caught Gianna’s attention, and when she next looked up at her brother she could see another, suspiciously dangerous looking man standing next to him, leaning up to whisper in his ear something.
“Do any of you have basic medic training?” Gianna asked, looking from face to face.
There were only headshakes in response, and Gianna knew there was no way she could wait to call in any kind of assistance. Let alone, how could she explain it?
“Giovanni,” Gianna said sharply, wiping the bullet entrance clean to get one more look at it before she assessed any possible internal injuries, “take your new friends and leave. I need to concentrate.”
“Gia--”
“You,” Gianna said, narrowing his eyes at Rio. “You get out too. You especially get out.”
“Doctor,” the man on the table moaned out, one of his bloodied hands reaching up for Gianna’s pajama sleeve.
“You’re going to be okay,” Gianna told him again, giving him a soft smile. “I promise you. I’m a very good doctor, this isn’t the first bullet wound I’ve treated, and you’re going to be okay. I’ll take care of you.”
The man’s hand felt back limp as Rio demanded, “Why should I leave?”
Ignoring him completely, Gianna turned to the man with the bruised jaw and asked. “What’s your name?”
The man hesitated, something that was awkward and unsettling to Gianna, before he said, “Zeke.”
Gianna balked, “Your name is Zeke?”
“Stop making chitchat and save his life,” Rio cut in.
“Zeke,” Gianna said, nodding across the room. “You’re now my nurse. See that surgical tray over there with the blue tarp? Bring it over, but be careful not to touch anything but the side handles. It has sterilized surgical tools for an operation that’s supposed to take place in about nine hours. I need to inspect the wound and clean it up before I can pack it and seal it. I need those tools.”
Zeke, who looked young like Giovanni, and out of place with the others, moved quickly to get the items requested.
Rio shouted, “I’m talking to you!”
“Don’t snap at my sister like that!” Giovanni’s own voice rose.
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 3: .Rio shouted, “I’m talking to you!”“Don’t snap at my sister like that!” Giovanni’s own voice rose.And then the new comer, whoever he was, interjected, “Stop fighting, all of you!”Gianna turned to Rio and looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you know why you have thirty seconds to get out of my operating room?”“Go ahead and tell me.”“Because,” Gianna said, muttering a thank you to Zeke when he deposited the tools at her side. “Because you’re the idiot who pointed a gun at me. You’re the idiot who, instead of asking nicely if I could save his friend’s life, demanded that I do so. Because I don’t like you. Because I don’t like violence. And because this is a clinic where I treat people and take care of them, and you are making it very difficult for me to want to do that. Now, your friend is laid out on my operating table, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Do you want to stay here and be an ass, or do you want to leave now and let me work? Fif
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 4: .Giovanni rushed out, “Gia! The police are here!”Gianna whipped off her bloodied gloves at once, giving a worried look down to Dante’s still body. “Figures they’d pick tonight to be the one time they make it here within an hour of an emergency.”Uncertainly, Giovanni asked, “What are we going to do?”There was a lot implied in that simple sentence. Gianna knew at one that whatever her brother was mixed up in, whoever Dante or Cypher was, it wasn’t good. And the police were a complication that could possibly endanger everyone.Gianna was certainly going to rip her brother a new one at the first chance she got, but she wasn’t going to let anyone else hurt him. She wasn’t going to let Giovanni be in danger, and she wasn’t going to expose him to the police.And then there was Rio to consider, with his gun. The clinic couldn’t afford a shootout, and Gianna couldn’t let anything happen on her watch that endangered people, including her patient on th
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 5: . “Talk,” Gianna demanded, and she wasn’t going to let Giovanni go until she had all the answers.“You’re not going to like it,” Giovanni warned.Gianna told him plainly, “Somehow, I already figured that.”“Don’t you think instead we should talk about how you almost had a heart attack tonight?”Gianna narrowed her eyes at her brother. “You’re attempting to distract me.”But then she wasn’t so sure, because Giovanni looked absolutely serious and worried as he insisted, “Oh, we can talk about all the things you want to know in a second. I’m fully prepared for that lecture, I have readied myself. But Gia, you almost … it looked like …”“Your friend,” Gianna said tersely, “the one with the gun, he startled me.”“We almost lost someone we’d do anything for.”Gianna sighed. There was never an excuse for bringing a weapon into a house of healing. But instead of fighting the matter, she told her brother, “I can tell all of you care very much for each ot
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 6: A little lie doesn’t hurt .Hagrid pressed further into Gianna’s personal space and Gianna had no idea what would happen next, only that it probably wasn’t going to be good. Whenever anyone from Infinite came around, it never was.“I assume you’ll answer my questions now?”Gianna breathed in deeply, then gave a nod.A dubious smile stretched its way out across Hagrid’s face. “Good. Very good. Let’s get started.”It was like this:You had to either be completely oblivious, or incredibly stupid not to understand who owned the area.Gianna had grew up in one of Sangrid’s most affluent neighborhoods. She had gone to private school, and rarely been exposed to the underbelly of the city. But even she, at least vaguely, had known about the gangs. And she had heard rumblings of Infinite.Infinite.All the gangs were a little different, with specific ways of running things, different rules, and methods of operation. The last thing Gianna had wanted to do
Helping Mr. Gang Leader.Chapter 6: A little lie won’t kill you, or Will it? .Hagrid pressed further into Gianna’s personal space and Gianna had no idea what would happen next, only that it probably wasn’t going to be good. Whenever anyone from Infinite came around, it never was.“I assume you’ll answer my questions now?”Gianna breathed in deeply, then gave a nod.A dubious smile stretched its way out across Hagrid’s face. “Good. Very good. Let’s get started.”It was like this:You had to either be completely oblivious, or incredibly stupid not to understand who owned the area.Gianna had grew up in one of Sangrid’s most affluent neighborhoods. She had gone to private school, and rarely been exposed to the underbelly of the city. But even she, at least vaguely, had known about the gangs. And she had heard rumblings of Infinite.Infinite.All the gangs were a little different, with specific ways of running things, different rules, and methods of operation. The last thing Gianna ha
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 7: a gang war isn’t that far away . “Tell me about Mariposa,” Hagrid commanded. “And know that my patience and cordiality is gone.” “I have no idea who Mariposa is,” Gianna said swiftly, “Other than the things I’ve heard about them. And when men broke into my clinic and set off my alarm, I had no idea who they were until much later. Yes, there were people who broke into my clinic, that much is true. But it’s not like I sheltered them. I’m not stupid. This clinic belongs to Infinite, not Mariposa.”“You treated them?”“One had some bruising,” Gianna relayed, as if having to think about it. That was Zeke. Not that Gianna was going to tell Hagrid anything, but Zeke had been the one with the facial bruising. He’d had the bruises that were so bad it was a miracle he hadn’t broken his jaw. Someone had punched him nearly hard enough for it to happen, and Gianna was willing to bet if it wasn’t Hagrid who was responsible, then it was one of his men.He l
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 8: aren’t all gang leaders the same? .“Giovanni ,” Gianna said a little breathless. She made her way back to the kitchen, feeling nauseous, and in need of her medication. “You need to call me as soon as you get this. Hagrid … Infinite’s Hagrid, was just here. He came by and he was asking all these questions about Mariposa and I tried to lie, I think he believed me, but you need to call me. I need to talk to you.” She forced himself to stop, hating how scared she sounded. “Call me.”She swallowed down a large red pill and a small white one, drank half a glass of water and wished like hell she had gone out for drinks. She certainly wouldn’t take enough to be considered drunk, and with her medical condition it wasn’t something she could risk doing in general, but maybe if there had been any alcohol in her, she could have handled Hagrid with a bit more delicacy. She had let her anger and her attitude run away from her and said things she shouldn’t
Helping Mr. Gang Leader .Chapter 9: to be remembered .“Cypher isn’t like the other leaders, Gia,” Giovanni said; his statement making her frown. Gia scoffed. “Oh please, they are all gang leaders, what could he be doing differently?.” “He doesn’t just throw me into danger and expect me to keep myself afloat. My loyalty and dedication earns me a paycheck for a reason, and I’m even moving in with one of the members next month.”“That seems fast.”Giovanni shrugged. “Zeke and Jovani are getting a new place within the week, and well Rio needs a new roommate to help with the rent. I need a place to stay, so it just kind of worked out.”Trying not to wince, Gianna asked, “What about the other one? The one with the round face?”. “Sal?,” Giovanni laughed. “He would never live with the others, even if it means all the money he’s got goes to his bills. Sal, I know you wouldn’t think it to look at him, is pretty clean and quiet. He says the others are too loud and dirty.”There was worry