Library

Maghanap

Home / Mafia / Falling for My Biker Stepbrother / Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Lahat ng Kabanata ng Falling for My Biker Stepbrother: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

64 Kabanata

Clear!!!

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,

Between Heartbeats

Candice's P.O.V.The bedroom of the farmhouse was already a battlefield by itself, the air already carrying the acrid smell of antiseptic, coppery blood, the ozone smell of the defibrillator, and I was pushed against the wall, with nails cutting into my palms and dropping blood, as the doctors cut and stitched and cut and stitched the body of Mantovani, and worked like priests at a burial, with their grim masks of concentration beneath the cold overhead light. The flatline had been twenty-three seconds--twenty-three infinite, soul-destroying seconds where the world had been as narrow as the heartbeat, where some part of me had snapped asunder never to be renewed, the familiar horror of having the person with whom I had grown to share my gravity, the one who would have been my anchor, beginning to absorb me. Mom was holding me round the waist, her chin against my shoulder, and her voice was giving broken prayers in my hair, Come on, love; come back to her, as cracking as her

Told you... I'd always... come back...

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

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 univ

Alive in the Wreckage

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,

The Long dawn

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

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

His & Hers

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

Dawn through the Blinds

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

The Morning that felt Real

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

PREV

NEXT

I-scan ang code para mabasa sa App

DMCA.com Protection Status