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His Fading Pulse
Huling Na-update:
2026-02-03 07:02:22Candice's P.O.V.
The alarms waked the world like a hell-siren, banging, banging, with the noises of the alarm into the quiet farmhouse bedroom and broke the delicate hope I had been festering on, that the mountain, the monitors flashing red warnings that Mantovani was dead, had gone dead, into a straight uncompromising beep that filled my ears like an orchestra of orders--Clear! Bill to 200!--and I fell to the wall, my knees shook, as I saw them cut off his shirt, and there our fresh bandages, all wet with blood, and there the sheriff had shot him a ragged hole in the side, all to the derision of every prayer I had uttered. Mom had grabbed me before I collapsed, and the arms were around my waist in a wild embrace, and her own face was shot through with tears and dirty and her voice was gone on the last word, it was a scream of fright at seeing someone you love being lost and yet it had to be so, and the boys the boys must have been, and through her sobs she was saying, hold on baby he is a fighter he has to be, but her voice cracked on the ending, the familiar horror of seeing someone you love lost that makes us both begging the universe to give us another minute, another breath.
Sanna stood paralysed in the doorway, his bandaged arm limp at his side, his face as pale as he had seen a ghost, or possibly his own mortality of his own son resting dead against his chest, and he muttered a word in Italian, a prayer, or a curse, and he did not look away at the defibrillator paddles as he pressed his chest with them, and the machine made a whining noise as it recharged. Dad lingered there, and his kind hands on her shoulders pushed her up, giving her quiet encouragement in the only way that he could, his voice amiable and steady as the storm-whipped wind, They will bring him back, they must, but even he looked blank, the man who had set my scraped knees and chased nightmares now useless in the fight, the lack of a beating heart that had become my beat.
The doctor shouted "Clear!" and they all drew back, and the room stood still as the shock shot through the body of Mantovani, catapulting him out of bed in spasmodic convulsions which made me jump, the monitors beeping wildly a moment, and then the straight line was once more taunting us all. "Again! Charge to 300!" the doctor shouted, the sweat running down his forehead, and he was shocked again, the crash of electricity like thunder in my heart, the limbs of Mantovani moving unnaturally, and I begged--threatened, rather,--whatever was the name of the deity or the deities that no one should listen to, "do it to me; do it; just leave him to me and have him back again, the feeling that we shared playing lightly across my brain, his mouth on my lips in the garden of the villa, his hands on my skin in stolen glimpses
The third shock stunned the monitor, and once, twice, and the beeps were filling the room like the sweetest music I had ever heard, and the doctor reached out to breathe, We have sinus rhythm; he is back, but just, as the doctor breathing out, Prep for transfusion, he needs blood now! The wave of relief crashed down, and my legs were jelly, and with the help of Mom I went to a chair, and her hands were massaging my hair, He is fighting, see? He is struggling on your behalf, and I nodded, and the familiar fatigue of nearly-loss crept in, and I felt the weight of it all dropping on to my bones. Sanna then made a move, his leg crooked in pulling himself to bedside and the hand trembling above the lifeless body of Mantovani before it touched his son with the contact of its shoulder, and, with feelings that were heartening and heartbreaking, said, You hold on boy; we are not finished yet, the father-son relationship, which had been broken by years of mafia thrones and simmering resentment, was now coarse and true in this improvised hospital room.
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Candice's P.O.V.The sun came streaming through the hospital blinds in fine golden bars across the bed, and made stripes across the chest of Mantovani as the bandages just showed their heads through the open neck of his gown. I had seen those stripes go on--slow, tireless, measuring them out as they had to be they were evidence that time still had some course, that we were still alive at night. It ached in my back where I had just left the chair, it hurt my eyes because I had not slept, and my fingers were sore because I had not managed to take my hand off his, but it did not make any difference.He was breathing.On his own.No engines pressurizing him. No alarms screaming. Only the hard, obstinate swell and heave of his chest, each breath a little wonder that I knew I was bones.I had not slept over a few minutes at a time since the time they wheeled him out of the surgery. Whenever I shut my eyes I would see once more the red mark on my chest, I
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Candice's P.O.V.The very first time that Mantovani opened his eyes after the third crash I believed I was dreaming.The room we were in was dark--blinds half-open to the mid-morning sun, machinery clammering its constant, mechanical lullaby--and I had been staring at his face so long that I had begun to see at the edges. His skin was too pale over the white sheets, the coarse stubble on his jaw coming out in sharp relief, the new scar on his temple still angry and red. I knew every word of him that had been stuttered in the operation since surgery: the tiny freckle in the left eye, the tiny crescent scar on his chin of some previous fight which I knew him when he was still young, how his lashes brushed against his cheeks when he slumbered.I hadn't slept.Not really.Each time my eyes drifted shut I saw the color red dot on my chest once more, saw him leap, saw him hit back at me and spurred my blood through both our shirts and I screamed his name
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Mantovani's P.O.V.The initial inhalation that I made in the absence of fire in my lungs caused me to feel like robbing something holy.Slow--deliberate--as though I had to relearn the operation of air. The hospital room smelled of bleach and coffee that was old and stale and the kind of sterile silence that rubs against your ears until you start hearing every little thing: the drip of the IV, the little beep of the monitor that was keeping track of my heart (steady now, stubborn) and the soft rustle of Candice in the chair beside me.She hadn't left.Not once.The head of her dark hair lay on the edge of the mattress against my hip, and the spilt hair was lying on the white sheet like spilt ink. One hand also remained clasped about mine in sleep--fingers woven together to such an extent that I felt her pulse as if it were my own still trembling where the right hand still trembled. There were bruises under her eyes, a nick on her cheekbone that was
My Biker Mafia Stepbrother Family
As we split up, foreheads against each other, breathing each other's air, she said, The doctors told me you had hardly escaped a surgical operation. The bullet tore--cut your lung, your spleen. On the table they lost you twice. Sanna was screaming at them in Italian. Conti punched a wall. Mom wouldn't stop praying. Dad... Dad just held me while I cried."I shut my eyes, and imagined it--my father losing his temper, my brother smashing up, her parents seeing the shambles of the life we had led. The feeling of guilt in my stomach was more like the surgical scars."They're all here?" I asked quietly.She nodded. "Down the hall. They wouldn't leave. Sanna is arguing with the hospital administrator regarding security. The fact that Conti is guarding the door like Fort Knox. Mom and Dad are going to get coffee and make a show that they are not terrified.I exhaled shakily. "Family.""Yeah," she said, voice thick. Our beautiful messed-up family.A
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Mantovani's P.O.V.My consciousness came back in bits--sharp jagged bits that cut deeper than the bullet ever had.Then there was the pain: a living entity, red-hot and angry, wrapped around my chest like barbed wire that was tightening with each inhalation. Then the cattle, the sounds, beeping monitors, low voices, chattering in desperate Italian and English, the drip, drip, drip of an IV line somewhere overhead. Odors ensued: antiseptic, blood (mine, mostly), the slight odor of coffee that some one had spilled somewhere. And finally--her.Candice.She lay huddled against the bed in the little corner beside me, with her head on the edge of the mattress, and one of her hands still clodded in mine even asleep. Her hair had dropped round over her face and strands of it had clung to the lines of tears that were still not quite dry. She breathed quietly and irregularly the type of rhythm that follows hours of weeping yourself to pieces. The view of her, weary
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Mantovani’s P.O.V.Pain was the first thing that registered--sharp, white-hot, blooming across my chest like someone had driven a red-hot poker through my ribs and left it there to twist. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass, shallow and ragged, each inhale dragging fire deeper into my lungs. The world came back in fragments: the low hum of an engine, the metallic taste of blood on my tongue, the faint scent of pine and gun oil clinging to the air. And then—her.Candice.Her hand was wrapped around mine, small but fierce, fingers locked so tight it hurt in the best way, grounding me when everything else wanted to pull me under. I could feel her trembling through the contact, could hear the soft, broken sound of her breathing—like she was trying not to sob and failing. My eyelids weighed a thousand pounds, but I forced them open anyway, blurry green meeting blurry green, and there she was, face streaked with dirt and tears, hair wild,
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