Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (25 page)

Joey had lost most of his air when Sam had slammed him to the wall. He tried to take a breath, but his lungs fought the effort. Still, he did all he could to appear calm and not in distress. Every strategy he’d ever learned, all the improvements he’d made over the past months, he called it all up and brought it to bear now, so he wouldn’t be a pathetic, gasping, reeling, mess after having just punched Don Pagano in the face.

While Sam stayed on Joey, Angie offered his hand to the don, and Nick took it and stood. He pulled a white linen square, a gentlemanly handkerchief, from his pocket and put it to the corner of his mouth. When he pulled it away, he didn’t bother to look at the blood it had absorbed.

To Tina’s father, he said, “Angelo, go be with your daughter. We’ll speak later. Angie, go with your father. Your place is with them.” Then he turned to Sam. “Give Joey and me some space.”

Sam shook his head. “Don…”

Nick gave his bodyguard a level glare. “Do you think he could touch me with anything but a sucker punch?”

To himself, Joey could admit that was a valid point. Nick was a lot older than he was, but he was strong and fit—and not disabled. And, for that matter, a killer.

Sam held their stare for a beat longer, then nodded and stalked farther down the hall, toward the other Pagano men.

When they were more or less alone, Nick asked, “Do you need your tank?”

Joey absolutely did, but he didn’t speak or move. Fuck Don Pagano right up the ass.

Nick stepped to the doorway of Tina’s now-empty room, looked in, then nodded his head, calling Joey to follow.

His tank was in that room, and he really did need it or he was going to be in trouble, so he followed. Whatever was going to happen next, he hoped it would happen fast. He wanted to get to Tina and find out what had happened to her, if she’d had the stroke her father seemed sure she’d had, and what that would mean for her.

In the room, he went straight for the tank, and Nick slid the glass door closed. When Joey had the mask over his face, Nick said, “It’s been a very long time since anyone’s punched me.”

It had also been a long time since Joey had punched anyone. His hand ached like crazy; he flexed it, hoping it wasn’t broken. Didn’t seem to be.

“You know, Joey, I’ve never given you much account. Since you were a kid, you’ve been weak and unserious. You were a brat, then you were a clown, then an invalid. I thought Uncle Ben and my father were wrong to bring you into the business, and I wasn’t surprised when you failed. Other than that, I never paid much attention. I have no patience for weakness.”

Joey kept the mask on his face and breathed steadily. Though he seethed, he didn’t respond.

Nick didn’t need him to. He was having himself a monologue.

“You won’t get another punch like that without consequence, but I understand the impulse. It comes from a place of strength. The impulse to protect the people you love. It guides my life. Every single day, everything I do, that is my first priority: keep my family safe. Should I fail, and I have failed, then I render justice. The kind of justice that creates a safer future. Angie failed to keep his sister—your woman—safe. He’s my agent. His failure is my failure. So I understand the punch. Now
you
understand that I will render justice for Tina. The kind that makes a safer future.”

Jesus. Angie was a dick, but if Nick was talking about killing him…no. That would hurt Tina, too, and she was dealing with enough. He took the mask from his face. “Don’t…hurt Angie.”

Nick shook his head. “No. Angie is loyal, and he’s not the one responsible for this. But he let his guard down, and she was taken, and
that
was his failure. I know this failure myself. It’s hard to be who we are in this business and also to be the men our loved ones wish us to be. It’s easier to hold ourselves apart, but that’s a lonely life. Sometimes, when we walk that line, when we try to have a full life, we set our sharper instincts aside to make the people we love happy. That is
always
a mistake. I’ve learned that lesson, and now Angie has as well. The lesson is harsh payment itself. The people who hurt Tina, though—they will pay dearly.”

Joey took the mask from his face. “What…happened? …Who? …Why?”

Nick folded his handkerchief and slid it back into his suit coat pocket. “You’re changed, Joey. You’re stronger than I’ve ever seen you, and I’m not talking about your lungs or your words. It’s good to see. Go take care of your woman, and I’ll do my job, too.”

With that, and no answer to Joey’s questions, Don Pagano slid the door open and walked away.

~oOo~

They’d taken her hair.

When she was brought back, Tina’s head was wrapped in a white gauze bubble. Her father had been right. She’d had a hemorrhagic stroke, and they’d cut into her head to find the bleed and stop it. They’d shaved her whole head to do it.

Now everyone waited to see if she would wake up—and who she’d be when she did.

Joey was dying inside.

He thought of the past eleven years of his life, how alone he’d felt, how isolated and unwanted, how he slept every night tied to tubes, how he had to struggle to order a fucking burger at a fast-food counter.

All the ridicule he’d dealt with, the impatience, the rolled eyes and exasperated sighs as he tried to make himself known.

The depression, the constant beat of anxiety at the base of his skull, waiting always to be judged inferior and unworthy.

The waste his life had been.

And he’d been
lucky
. They’d called his recovery a miracle. He should have died on the table, they said. He might have ended up a vegetable, they said. God was looking out for Joey, they said.

He couldn’t stand the thought of Tina going through that—or worse.

But no. She wouldn’t. Because no matter what, she would never feel alone. She would never feel unwanted. She would never
be
alone. She would never
be
unwanted.

She would always have him. And he would always want her.

No matter what.

~oOo~

Early the next morning, while Tina still lay unconscious, during her brother’s turn at her side, Joey went down to the first floor. He needed to be outside for a few minutes and hear and smell something besides hospital.

As he passed the lobby area, headed for the front doors, movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and he turned.

Sabina was standing there.

He stopped. Opening his mouth to say her name, he closed it again when he realized that it wouldn’t come. He’d barely spoken in almost two days. His head was packed too full of worry to leave room to navigate the paths and chutes of his word maze.

Carlo’s wife crossed the lobby and stood before him. She put her hand on his cheek.

“I know her father doesn’t want us so close. I understand. But if maybe
you
have need, I’m here.”

At first, Joey’s head felt suddenly empty. He didn’t know what to do or think. But then something tore loose inside, and a flood of emotion swamped through him.

Sabina must have seen it happening in his eyes, because she pulled his head to her shoulder and wrapped him up in a hug, and she stood there in the lobby and rocked him while he cried.

~ 18 ~

Farfallina
bella e bianca
vola vola
mai si stanca
gira qua
e gira là
poi si resta sopra un fiore
poi si resta sopra un fiore

“Do you remember that,
tesorina
? Nonna Corti sang it to me when I was a boy, and I sang it to you when I could hold you in my arms.
Farfallina
. Little butterfly. Come out of your cocoon and fly, baby girl. Come back.”

Her daddy. She wanted her daddy. She tried to speak, to move, to see. She wanted to touch him. She wanted him to hold her.

But she was not there.

~oOo~

Everything was black.

She turned her head, and each movement left contrails of agony, but all she saw everywhere was inky emptiness, vast and impenetrable. An infinite void.

When she tried to open her mouth and scream, nothing happened. She had no mouth.

God, the pain. All that was left of her was hurt.

This was hell. Oh God, she was in hell. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

From a far, far distance above her, she could hear her father. “It’s okay,
tesorina
. It’s okay. Daddy’s here. Shhh, shhh, shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

More pain, and then less. Still less. Fading.

But it wasn’t okay. She was falling into eternity.

~oOo~

“Listen to my voice, Valentina. Do you hear me? Focus on me. I’m here. Joey’s here. We’re with you. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. No, no—easy. You’ll hurt yourself. Shhh. Listen to my voice. She won’t listen—can she hear me? God, help her! Please!”

~oOo~

“Valentina, I want you to listen to me now. You can’t see because your eyes are bandaged. You can’t open your mouth because your jaw is wired. A tube is breathing for you. Don’t be afraid of these things. They’re helping you get well. Stay calm,
tesorina
. Stay calm. You’re not alone. We’re with you. Just listen to my voice and come back to us.”

Her father’s voice at her ear, slow and steady, soft and kind.

On her other side, she felt hands. Warm hands, grasping her firmly, one over her hand, the other over her arm. Experimenting with the sense of this place she was in, she turned her hand and felt fabric move against her skin, felt her skin slide against palms and fingers.

Felt the supple roughness of leather and the cool rigidity of metal. A bracelet.

A medic alert bracelet.

Joey. It was Joey.

Was she here? Was she with him?

Joey, Joey, Joey.

She closed her hand around the bracelet and tried to speak, but fire blasted her throat and her mouth barely moved.

“Shhh, Tina. …Love you. …Love you so much.”

Tina—that was her. She was Tina.

His voice was so far away, rooms away, miles away, but his hands were with her. He was with her.

Joey.

~oOo~

“Okay, Tina. The swelling is down. Everything looks pretty good. Next, we’re going to remove the corneal bandages. It might be uncomfortable, but be as still as you can, and it won’t take long. Then we’ll give you some cool shades so the brightness doesn’t bother you so much. Almost done now, okay?”

She nodded slightly—they’d told her not to move her head too much—and gripped Joey’s hand as hard as she could. When a doctor admitted that what he was about to do ‘might be uncomfortable,’ a colossal amount of agony was sure to follow.

And oh,
God
, it hurt. She thought she was used to pain by now, but every time she believed she’d hit the ceiling on the amount she could deal with, something happened to find a new, higher place.

She clutched her fingers with Joey’s and felt his hands gripping right back, and she tried to be still while they pulled things off of her eyes, dragging like razor blades across the delicate surfaces.

They’d taken the bandages off, and she’d still been blind, but now with white light instead of black void. As they’d worked, grey blobs of shade, too diffuse even to be shadows, moved around in the opaque light.

A machine still did her breathing through a tube in her throat; her nose had been crushed and her jaw fractured. She’d need more surgery before she could breathe from her nose again. They also had to rebuild her left eye socket. They said they wanted to get her blood pressure down before they would operate again, and they wouldn’t take her off the ventilator until they rebuilt her nose.

Such a strange thing, to have the ability to breathe taken away, to feel a machine do work so basic and instinctual as respiration.

She wondered what she looked like. It didn’t matter; she’d been blind for an infinite time now.

The last sight memories she had were of wingtip shoes and mud-spattered slacks, and her brother hanging from a beam.

She was half-deaf, too. A lot of what she heard came to her as if through water, the way the world sounded when, as a child, she would pinch her nose closed and let herself sink to the bottom of the pool.

Mute, blind, and nearly deaf, she understood the horror of her mother’s fractional life far better now.

It was no life worth living.

~oOo~

Another infinite run of days and nights before they operated. In that unknowable space, she had gradually been able to see again, but the world had gone soft at its edges and taken on the sepia tone of the glasses they made her wear.

But Joey was there. And her father. She was never alone. Her father sat at her side and spoke where she could hear.

Joey sat at her other side, holding her hand, the one that wasn’t bound and immobile, kissing her fingers, her palm. Watching her. Saying again and again in his halting way that he loved her. The words came through deep water.

The sight of him, his love and care, kept her tethered.

Then it was time for more surgery, and they took her sight from her again.

~oOo~

Four weeks on the vent. Then
another
week after they’d stitched up her throat before they would allow her to try to talk. By then, she’d regained most of her sight.

She had permanently lost fifty percent of her hearing in her left ear.

But she felt better. She was healing and feeling stronger. Her punctured lung had healed, and her knitting ribs were only stiff. The new splint over her nose and cheekbones wasn’t too uncomfortable, and her right shoulder and arm were now braced in a more natural position.

Tina had finally begun to feel present in her own body again, and she was impatient to be able to speak.

When the doctor came in to check the healing of that incision, Joey and her father were both in the room, waiting with her. Matt was at the market; he and their father were taking turns running the market on short hours, taking care of their mother, and spending time with her.

To her knowledge, Angie had not been to see her. In this room, no one even said his name.

As far as she could remember, Joey had never left her side. He must have, if only for a few minutes here and there—after all this time, he would have been pretty gross if he hadn’t, and he looked fresh and handsome, albeit tired—but she couldn’t think of a time she’d been awake when he hadn’t been at her side. He’d grown a full beard in the time she’d been at St. Gabriel’s.

The doctor pushed a button, and the head of her bed moved down. “Okay, Tina. Let’s take the sutures out and see how you’re doing.”

Snip, snip, snip. Then a few pinches, and the bed came back up.

“It’s going to hurt, and your voice is going to be rough. Don’t try for volume. And remember, with your jaw wired, it’s going to feel even stranger. Take it slow, okay? Just tell me how you’re feeling.”

She was feeling okay, and ‘okay’ seemed like a pretty safe way to start.

What came from her mouth was a strange sound, like a dying animal. Not a word. Not even close to a word.

She tried again. Another anemic groan.

Her eyes went to the doctor, and she saw his forehead pleated with concern. Oh God.

His voice was bright and unworried, however. “Okay, that’s okay. It’s hard to get going after so long. Let’s start with your name. Just try your name. Say ‘Tina.’”

Her tongue wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do.
Tina
. Put the tongue on the roof of the mouth, against the teeth, for
T
.

Nothing but that awful, incomprehensible, inarticulate moan. As panic surged and she tried to force her name to happen, saliva bubbled up on her lips and ran in a thick stream down her chin.

Jesus, she was fucking drooling.

She couldn’t talk. The words were there, in her head, ready, impatient to be uttered. But her mouth would not obey.

Heart pounding, slamming against healing ribs, her pulse making her face ache, she turned to Joey. He was crying, holding her hand in both of his, tears sliding down his cheeks, through his new beard.

His name. She could say his name. Over and over, for weeks, his name had been a chant of peace, a beacon in the dark of her head. Joey, Joey, Joey.

She tried. Nothing but that fucking pathetic noise, now getting louder. She was screaming that nonsense, that nothingness.

Somewhere, a machine began making a sound like a siren, and there were hands on her; the bed was going back down, people were talking, their voices frantic.

Somebody ripped Joey’s hands from her, and she was alone.

Then everything faded away, and she fell into eternity again.

~oOo~

The therapist’s name was Nancy, and she’d made Joey leave the room. For the first time since Tina had first woken up in the hospital, she was without him.

Nancy stood on the right side of the bed, near Tina’s good ear. “Your father told me that you’re an occupational therapist, finishing up your PhD.”

Tina stared. She wanted Joey.

“Did you understand me?”

She nodded.

“That’s good. Then you should understand what we have to do and why. You know how important it is to get therapy going as soon as possible, while things are still healing. That’s when we have the greatest chance for significant improvement. I’ve read your chart. You’ve gone through some, frankly, shocking kinds of trauma, and, consequent to that, a hemorrhagic stroke. You’re doing fantastically well for all that. It shouldn’t surprise you that there are some things you need to relearn.” She patted Tina’s leg. “We need to do some testing, see where things are. You up to that today?”

Feeling bitter and angry, depressed and afraid, Tina wasn’t up to anything. Ever. She wanted Joey.

But the therapist in her understood where all those feelings were coming from and knew them to be dangerous. She had to decide right then whether she was ready to give up and deal with her life this way or fight for more.