Whispers in the Void

Candice's P.O.V.

The alarms rang out like a knife thrust in the flesh, and the sharp beep of the alarms grew louder and louder, and I could hear them piercing the air like a knife thrust in the flesh, and then, as the doctors crowded around the bed of Mantovani, I felt them cutting holes in his flesh, and then I was in the doorway as my hands were clenched into fists, and my nails tore a crescent into the palm of my hand, and I heard the doctors swarming around the bedside, and their voices blended into a frenz Mom drew me back and her arms were round my waist, and her body was trembling against mine, and she was whispering through sobs, He is strong, Candice, he is going to pull through, he has to, but her words seemed empty, the familiar fear of losing him, of having the life seep out of those green eyes that had stared at me with such passionate, unsated intensity, were tying at my stomach in knots, so that it was hard to breathe, hard to think beyond the endless repetition of the word please, please, please, repeating in my brain.

Ordered about the din the doctor--"Push epi! charge the paddles to 360!--and the nurses darted like shadows, and jabbed something into the IV line crawling up the arm of Mantovanni, and his chest heaved up and down like a ship, the monitors glaring red warning,--that his body was giving up, the bullet had gone too deep, too vile, the war was taking its pound of flesh in the most inhuman manner. Sanna stood by the bed, and his face, which had been a mask of stoic sorrow broken by the tears streaming down his cheeks, his bandaged hand hovering above his still body like the possibility of that one more, by pure force of paternal love, he was able to bring life into that body again. Conti leaned against the wall, himself forgotten in the moment, and with the eyes wide and haunted, gripping his side with the blood streaming through fresh bandages, and saying, "Come on, Ro; do you dare leave us now," the brotherhood they were, made in the blood, in the loyalty, hanging by a thread that was growing thinner with each passing moment.

On the other side of the room kneeling in silent supplication was the father whom I had known all my life as a story-teller, a cello player, and now he saw the ugliness of the world which I had so freely chosen to enter, and his voice was scarcely audible over the alarms, "Father, please, father, in thy sight, grant him strength; he is one of the family now. The language struck me, the familiar pain of mingling my previous life with this new one, as a feeling of guilt and gratitude rose up, knowing that Dad had stepped into this fire on my behalf, on my behalf as we knew him, and with no hesitation, the love of my father, I knew, was a silent element that held the room together even as everything fell apart. I broke the circle of her arms, stumbling to the bed, pushing aside a nurse to make contact with the hand of Mantovani, cold and limp in my own, and gripping it as though I could give him my own heartbeat, and was secretly swearing, "You have sworn me forever, you cannot betray me now, fight, cursed, fight on our behalf, on behalf of the beach house, of lazzarriuri mornings, of lazy mornings, of the way he would say piccola, a secret sacred word that we both shared, of the passion