My clinic my rules

Helping Mr. Gang Leader

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Chapter 4:

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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 the table.

“Stay here,” Gianna said, striding towards his side. “I’ll take care of the police. Keep everyone out of sight.”

Gianna brushed past Rio and the newly arrived man with his eyes straight ahead.

“Hey!” Gianna called out, a forced happy smile on her face the moment she saw the first police officer, baton in hand and flashlight shinning through the unlit reception area. “My name is Gianna. It’s my alarm that went off.”

Of the two police officers, the one at the lead looked the most agreeable, so Gianna directed her attention towards that man.

“What caused the alarm?” the first police officer asked.

Gianna ran a hand across the back of her head as she fabricated, “You know the neighborhood. I imagine it was only a matter of time before someone decided to test the waters and attempt to break in. As you know, there is a lot of valuable equipment in here.”

The second officer eyed her. “And where are the assailants now?”

Gianna shrugged. “I think the alarm scared them off. That alarm would scare me, especially if I were just looking for a quick steal.”

Palms sweating, Gianna knew whatever the look on the second officer’s face meant, it wasn’t good. He certainly didn’t look convinced. And it was highlighted when he reached for a small pad of paper and read off it, “Why did it take you … nine minutes to enter the code to the alarm, after two failed previous attempts.”

“Nerves,” Gianna told him, never so thankful for the medication pumping through her veins at the moment, helping to keep her calm. She forced another laugh. “I mean, I got the system installed just in case, but a part of me never expected to actually hear it go off and be confronted with proof that someone was attempting to break in.”

There was perfect silence behind her, and Gianna, who hardly believed in god, was praying desperately that none of her brother’s … associates, made a sound.

“So,” the first officer continued, “you heard the alarm, came down stairs, discovered that the perpetrators had run off, and that’s it?”

Nodding Gianna told him, “I guess I’m lucky, right?”

The second officer raised an eyebrow. “Do you need us to call an ambulance for you?”

“Ambulance?” Gianna frowned. “I’m a doctor. I don’t think I need an ambulance.”

The officer gestured to her. “You are injured, aren’t you? Bleeding?”

Gianna’s eyes darted down to her sleeve and she saw for the first time where Dante had grabbed her. Against her blue pajamas were streaks of blood. And there were more splashes of blood, too, proof that she’d been sewing someone up.

“I’m not bleeding,” She said slowly, thinking frantically for an excuse. “I was just … this is a clinic. I was cleaning. One of the doctors performed a surgery earlier. Our cleaning service doesn’t come until the morning. I was getting a head start on it.”

“In your pajamas?”

“I have insomnia. Cleaning helps.”

Now the first officer looked suspicious and he said quietly, almost so that Gianna had a hard time hearing him, “Is everything okay?”

And now the police clearly thought that whoever had broken in was forcing her to put on a front.

“Oh, no, everything is fine!” Gianna put up her hands defensively. “I’m just tired and shaken and upset all at the same time. I swear, officers, everything is fine.”

The second officer shook his head and said certainly, “We’re going to need to take a look around.”

Gianna bit her tongue nearly hard enough to draw blood.

Gianna followed behind the two men as close as she dared as they searched the clinic. And they were thorough, too. They opened all office doors, all examination rooms, and even the storage closets that held the extra supplies they used during business hours. And all the while the officers crept closer to the operation room, Gianna worried she wouldn’t think of a reason to keep them out in time.

“This is the operating room,” Gianna said darting in front of them when they reached the last room in the clinic, and the only that remained with a closed door. “Like I said earlier, that’s where a surgery occurred earlier today.”

The second officer pointed out, “Where you claim you received those blood stains?”

Gianna was certain she nodded a little too forcefully, and then the officers were pushing past her to the room where certainly Dante and the others were hiding.

“Well,” the first officer said after a moment, hands on his hips, “it looks like everything checks out.”

Gianna blinked in surprise at the empty room.

Empty.

How the hell was it empty?

The first officer patted his partner on the shoulder and said, “One of these days your suspicions are going to pay off. But not today.”

The second officer looked sour.

Gianna still couldn’t believe the room was empty. All of the evidence was still there, from the blood on the floor to the used tools and the bloody bandages. But it also looked like Gianna had claimed, and that there’d been a surgery in the room earlier.

Her lie held up, even in the face of the truth, and she knew from the way the offices were shuffling away, that they believed her.

“I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here,” Gianna said, trailing after them to the front door.

“Don’t worry about it,” the first office said in a good natured way. He gave her a dismissive wave. “We’re more than happy to come and check out any possible threats to this place. You’re doing the neighborhood a great service. This is the least we can do in return.”

The second officer stopped them short and pointed to a small, side door barely in sight. “What about that?”

Gianna thumbed towards the door as nonchalant as she could manage. “That’s the stairwell that leads to my apartment above the clinic. You’re welcome to search it too, if you want.”

The officers shook their heads and continued towards the front door.

The moment they were gone and the door was shut behind them, Gianna choked out a gasp of air and leaned against it.

“You nearly blew it,” a voice behind her stated.

“Are you serious?” Gianna demanded, spinning around to glare at Rio. “I just saved your asses from the trouble you likely brought down on yourselves, to my clinic which is supposed to be the very opposite of trouble. Be thankful I didn’t turn you over.”

Rio, who was even shorter than Gianna had first assumed he was, still managed to look intimidating and threatening as he crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.

“You wouldn’t give your brother up.”

“Maybe I would if I thought it would get him in trouble long enough for my father to snatch him away from you and put him into a reformatory school in China.”

“Gia?” Giovanni called from behind Rio. “Everything okay?”

Gianna did her best to glide past Rio without so much as a glance, to get to Giovanni. “Where’s Dante?”

“Excuse me?” Rio demanded still at the front door. “Why does she know that name?”

Gianna leveled an angry finger up at her brother. “I expect you to have a very, very good explanation for bringing this to my doorstep--and for being involved yourself. And I will want to hear that story, likely with several bottles of alcohol to go along with it. But right now I need to know what you did with my patient. My patient, I should tell you, who needs to not be moved barring an absolute necessity.”

“This was a necessary thing,” Giovanni insisted. “We thought we’d be okay in the back room until the cops started searching the clinic. And we were counting on them not searching your apartment. We had to move him up there.”

“Take me to him,” Gianna insisted right away, and was climbing stairs a second later.

Gianna found that Dante had been placed on the only soft surface available in her small, one bedroom apartment located above the clinic. And that happened to be her bed. It was the first time Gianna had had a boy in her bed in quite a long time, and it wasn’t exactly the way she wanted it to happen.

But for the most part Dante was still sleeping comfortably. His wound looked good, there was still no sign of a fever, and he looked fine for having been carried up steep stairs and moved so quickly after being sewn up.

“Well,” Gianna said, now aware that she had all of the men in her thankfully clean and tidy bedroom, “everything looks fine. I think, if he gets the blood transfusion that he needs, he’ll recover just fine, and quickly at that. I don’t expect any complications if the wound remains free of infection, and he can go home to rest as soon as tomorrow.”

The only unnamed man, the most recent arrival, asked, “Tomorrow? You want him to stay tonight?”

Gianna asked, “And who are you?”

The short boy thumbed at himself and said, “Salva.”

Gianna had to fight to roll his eyes as he stated, “It’s one ridiculous name after another.”

“Gia,” Giovanni said, almost at a whine.

Gianna asked her brother, “What’s your nickname? Ova?”

Giovanni scowled.

“He needs to stay with me tonight,” Gianna said definitively to them all. “Whether he sleeps here or down in the clinic, he shouldn’t be moved any more than he has to. I want to watch him for any possible signs of a developing fever, too.”

Rio told them, “Jovani said he’ll be here in ten minutes with the blood. Zeke, you’ll stay with--”

“Listen,” Gianna said, and she felt as if Rio was the kind of person who would crawl under her skin and never fail to irritate her. “This is my home and my clinic. I’m Dante’s doctor, and I’m going to tell you all how it’s going to go.”

Rio’s head cocked in almost an impressed manner.

“My stupid brother,” Gianna said pointedly, “will be staying with me tonight so that I can lecture him for the next five hours. Because if I’m not going to get any sleep, he’s going to suffer as well. My new nurse, Nurse Zeke, will stay here as well. He’ll hand me the blood, he’ll run errands if I need them for Dante, and he will be the only one other than my brother that I have contact with.”

“The rest of you can prowl around outside, or go home, or go steal candy from babies if that’s what you do. But you’re going to leave and you won’t come back until tomorrow morning when you take Dante to rest at his place. If there are any questions or concerns about this, feel free to take them to someone who cares. My clinic, my rules.”