جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 50

The paddles were once more laid against his chest by the doctor--"Clear!,"--and all stood back, the room taking a breath as one would an inevitable funeral burial as the shock surged on through his body, his frame jerking off the bed in a violent convulsive that made me feel that my own stomach was being pulled out, the monitors leaping wildly and then falling into the same fatal position of the dreaded flat line, the beep reaching an infinite, soul-destroying cacophony. "Again! Increase to biphasic!" the doctor shouted, pouring sweat down his face, and they shocked him again, the thud seeming like a hammer on my heart, the arms of Mantovani jerking unnaturally, and there was a horrible moment when I believed that it was all over, the war had been won the last battle not with weapons but with sound not, and I was empty, shattered, the love we had made out of each other turning to ashes in this god-forsaken room.The third shock gave the monitor a jolt--one, and then another,

Then Mantovani groaned, and lifting the lips that had been cracked, fluttered his eyelids, and gazed at me through green eyes, opaque with pain and morphine that met my eyes across the room. "Candice..." Something in me was struck by the sound of my name, weak, raspy, but alive, out of him, and I came forward and passed the doctor and kneeling by the bed, pressed his cold hand between both of mine, and touched his cheek. I am here, love; here, I said, crying over his knuckles, you are not leaving me. Not after everything." his fingers were twitching in mine, the faintest squeeze, his lips drew up in the semblance of a smile, his voice having scarcely been audible, "Told you... I'd always... come back..." It cost him, as he was hitching his breath, his monitors spiking once more, and the doctor swearing in his heart, He is tachycardic--ready another shock should he crash.I pressed my forehead more against his, my breath in his, saying the things we had promised each other i

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,

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

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