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“We need to stop by a hospital. Look at her!”
“I don’t know…”
“Hugo!” She cut him off. “Hospital, now.”
I should have been more concerned with my situation. I was going to face Roman again and he was probably thinking about every torture mechanism in the book to make me pay, and Romina was going to have to watch me die, have that image in her head for the rest of her life. Instead of being concerned with all this, my mind was focusing on how a woman so tiny could control someone like this Hugo man. She was obviously in charge in their marriage because not only did he take me to the hospital where I was given enough antibiotics and corticosteroids to stop the burning in my chest, but he refilled my prescription, and brought me food. And her, this Catherinelle woman that I’ve never seen before – well, she was more of a girl than a woman – she was by my side every step of the way. I still felt incomplete because my baby or Roman weren’t there, but the loneliness was gone.
In a few hours, I was packed in a luxurious private plane, the type that costs millions, so I assumed the mafia pays well, and Catherinelle came to my seat with a blanket.
“Hey, how are you feeling?”
“I’m good now, really. The meds help.”
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”
I looked away from her.
“Because I stopped taking my meds after Roman left.”
“What is wrong with you? Really, Salvatrice, I’m trying to be in your corner but it is hard. First, you screw my brother, and then try to kill yourself.”
“Brother? Roman?”
“Yeah. Well, he’s not my brother brother. He was raised in our house, and my brother, Gino, and Hugo, my husband, are his sworn brothers. We’re a complicated family.”
They were a crime family.
“I see.”
“Why did you stop the medication?”
“I…I’m dying, ok? With or without the meds, I’m dying, it’s just a matter of time.” I burst into tears even though I tried my best to stay calm. “I just didn’t want my daughter to see me waste away. I saw my parents die and it’s not pretty. She deserves a better life than that.”
“Woman, she needs her mother. Don’t you think seeing you sick – sick and not dead – is better than thinking you’ve abandoned her?” I wrote her letters, a bunch of them. Roman probably found them in her luggage by now. She’d know how much I loved her even if I wouldn’t be around to tell her myself.
“Not dead yet.”
“I talked with the doctor, Salvatrice. He said there’s still a chance. We’ll take you to the best doctors in New York and make you better. Money is no object. Why the hell didn’t you tell Roman about this?”
“Because there’s nothing he can do. He can’t throw money at my chest to make my lungs heal themselves, Catherinelle, and I didn’t want him to feel hopeless. I felt like that many times in my life and trust me, it sucks. I would rather have him hate me.”
“You could have a transplant.”
“A match for me would be a miracle. I have this thing, a protein or something, that’s weird. I don’t know.”
“Yeah, the doc said that too. He said that only six percent of the population could be your donor. We just need to wait for one of those six percent to have a motorcycle accident.”
I looked at her with my mouth hanging open.
“Oh, my God, that’s horrible.”
“It’s horrible for you to die too! You have a child and a man who loves you. I know Roman better than I know my own reflection and he loves you. A part of him might be mad, because you know, you left him twice now.” You don’t say. “But he loves you. He’ll take care of everything.”
I didn’t pay any attention to her words. A few more hours and I would hug my baby girl again and see Roman. Maybe for the last time.
