Flashlights and Realizations

Candice's P.O.V.

The interior of the van was now a mobile emergency room and the air reeked with the coppery taste of blood and the harsh sting of antiseptic wipes and each time the van went over the rough backroads, it was like a new pain in the chest of Mantovani, the chest lifting and falling in shallow, uneasy pumps that made my own lungs ache in keeping time. One hand was against the wet bandage on his chest, the other against the fingers, and I was on my knees in the blood-greasy room between the stretcher and the wall, and the doctor was frenetically busy and my knuckles were sore, and I was whispering in his ear, "Stay with me, love; just stay with me, just stay with me, like a mantra, and the doctor was doing the job he had to do, despite the mayhem, steadily adjusting drips and checking vital signs with the calmness of the battlefield. The monitors cried their danger--pulse falling, pressure plummeting--and every blank wave was a betrayal of him personally, the universe itself seemed to be developing to tear him away after all we had gone through.

The night had become a battlefield of flashing red and blue lights outside, the federal SUVs had blocked every exit off the mountain road and the agents were pouring out in the tactical vests with the rifles up, megaphones screaming at them to stop, surrender, hands-up procedures familiar with high-profile fugitives but now we were not criminals anymore, we were a family trying to fight one more breath, one more chance. Conti was a maniac at the wheel, steering through by-paths and through the woods our local friends had reconnoied, and Sanna was his shotgun rider, gravel jumping off of the side of the armour and hitting like furious hail,--and Sanna was shouting in a radio, voice hoarse yet unbroken,--We are two minutes to the second route--bar the line, keep off us! Mom sat on the other bench, and IV bags were steadied in her hands, and her face was pale and determined, and the tears were running silent paths over the dirt on her cheeks and she was watching Mantovani fight, and her whispers were the prayers I had prayed when I was a child.

My dad was on his knees beside me, his soft hands assisting the doctor in pressing the wound when the blood had soaked the other pad of gauze, and his voice was unshaky though shaky; he said, "He is tough, Candice; he has your fire in him now. He won't quit." The words were intended to reassure, but instead cut deeper--Dad, who had lived his life not wishing to be part of violence was now, up to the wrist, in the war chosen by his daughter, with the life of the man my heart was held in his hand. I stared at him, and saw the silent strength which had drawn me up, and I grabbed his arm, "Thanks, thanks... for coming. For all of it." Always, princess, he nodded and his eyes were wet. Always."

The hand of Mantovani was shaking in mine, there was a feeble twitching of fingers which made my heart jump, and his eyes grew open again, cloudy with pain and morphine and seeking me and finding me and holding on. "Piccola..." A word was nothing much, rather breath than voice, yet it was a word--sufficient to keep me breathing, sufficient to keep fighting. I bent forward, forehead to his, and tasted salt and iron as tears started streaming over his lips, talking, saying, I am here. I'm not going anywhere. You told me everlastingly--do you now think you can betray that. His lips smiled the slightest shadow of a smile and the blood stained his teeth, and he could say one more word, which was love. his eyes rolled back, and the body again went slack, and the monitors again sprang into anarchy.

The physician swore, and laid fresh charges upon the paddles--"Clear!--and the shock passed through his body, the body shuddered in an electric spasm, the van turned sideways, and Conti avoided another roadblock. And back came the rhythm,--weak, thready, yet there--and the doctor breathed a sigh of relief, He is suspended by a thread. We need that clinic now." We heard gun fire outside--our men fighting the feds in a last desperate skirmish, and gaining us seconds that seemed years. The first barricade, Conti screamed in reply, Two minutes and they are over the first barricade!

We are not stopping, Sanna turned in his seat, grimly determined. Break the blockade, should you need to. He is killed in this van and we all are killed with him. These were mean, plain, the Godfather of the mafia took off his shirt, a father who would torch the world to redeem his son. Mom reached over and clasped Sanna by her good hand, and they looked straight at each other in silent understanding of how much they loved and how much had been lost that kept them together when all the rest had fallen.

The van swerved, the motor strained to the last bit of gas, and Conti dumped it in the last few miles of road with the federal lights in the rear view as blinding as the screams of sirens. I stretched out the hand of Mantovani, and could feel the faint throb under his skin, and yet so stubborn, so feeble--and promising into his ear, of beach houses, lazy mornings, children with his eyes and my smile, living beyond blood and bullets. You will wake up, I thought to him, voice breaking, we will fight over what to paint the kitchen cabinets, and you will lose, because I always win and then you will kiss me and we will forget why we were fighting in the first place. His fingers again twitched,--once, feebly,--and I hung to that gage of a twitch as to salvation.

The road twisted, and ahead the size of the road was decreased, federal vehicles creating an armor wall, and behind them the agents, their rifles at the ready, and their Spotlights making the van a bug on a board. Conti didn't slow. "Brace!" we shouted, and seized anything we could--handrails, others--and the van was speeding on, tires squealing, metal colliding with metal in a crash that will either smash through or smash us.

The monitors of Mantovani again flatlined.

The paddles were charged by the doctor one more time.

And with that dying throb--between the dying pulse of Mantovani, and the imminent crash--Conti turned off at a right angle, bending around even a thick woods that should not have been so thick that the van could pass, the branches scratching the metal like claws, the vehicle skidding about and the van keeping straight as the federal cars tackled the task of catching up.

We scrambled out on the other side into an obscure logging path, our tires squealing in the mud and gravel and rattling off in the darkness with the sirens shouting behind us and the blockade being beaten by sheer bravado and local experience. The clinic was five minutes off now--five minutes that were annuity.

The chest of Mantovani got up again--shallow, ragged--but getting up.

When the doctor heaved a sigh, he was still with us. Go on talking to him--he must hear you.

I bent over, my lips rubbing his ear, and my voice deep and steady, in spite of the tears, "We are about half-way there, love. Almost home. Just hold on a little longer. I'm not letting you go."

The night was long, dark and interminable, outside.

Yet, even now, inside the van, and though it was, like the war itself, against all odds, Mantovani could not stop beating his heart.

And somewhere away in the far off, the first glimpse of dawn was touching the horizon, gray, uncertain, but there.