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Alessio says, “I was trying to think how we could take you shopping but, damn, girl. Look what you can do by yourself.”
“Don’t let that put you off taking me shopping. That’s a fine idea.”
I hold up a hand. “First, did I hear mention of somebody in hospital?”
“Yes,” Carlo says, “your driver was hurt in the crash. They’re still keeping him under sedation.”
“My driver.” They’re all looking at me with a flicker-book show on their faces of fear and pity. “Like most of my mind, there’s nothing but fog.”
So I decide. At least that’s something I’m getting the hang of.
“Okay. Let’s go and see him. We’ll take fruit and flowers and chocolates. All those things that clutter up a hospital room and get snatched up by the nurses.”
Against Alessio’s wishes, and Carlo’s, I travel in the front of the car. I keep the hood pulled up on a dark rainproof hooded jacket, over my clothes and the leather jacket.
I have sunglasses, but they stay in the pocket. Everybody wants me to wear them, but I insist. “They’re better for attracting attention than they are to deter it.”
Instinctively, as we pull into the hospital lot, I’m scanning the people and vehicles. Two cars catch my eye, at the far corners ofthe lot. Dark sedans with a driver and a passenger up front. Both males.
“They’re ours,” Bruno tells me.
“Too easy to spot,” I say, shaking my head.
We go in through a shabby rear entrance, and up by a back elevator. In the hallways, I’m watching for single or pairs of males of fighting age, in civilian clothes, and anyone who doesn’t look busy or preoccupied.
I spot a large male in scrubs, carrying a sports bag. Alessio tells me that he’s ours, too. Like that should be reassuring.
Carlo says, “If the opposition are anywhere near as good as you are, then we are royally fucked.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The patient is in a room that should be large, but it’s filled up by all the machines around the bed. Curtains hang open by a large observation window on the hallway side of the room. As soon as we get inside, I tell Carlo, “Shut those.”
I pick up the charts at the end of the bed, but they only give timed reports of his vital signs, along with ticks and signatures for medications and observation.
There’s almost nothing to be seen of the person in that bed. He’s got a surgical cap on. His body and face are obscured and covered in tubes and wires.
No parts of him are visible, other than his big, strong work-worn hands.
And the watch my daddy gave him. The heavy Longines chronometer that he’s had since he drove me to school. I take his hand and hold it.
His hand and arm are heavy, and so are the big rings, the rubies and sapphires he used to give me to play with in the back of the black Eldorado when he brought me home from school.
Mikey.
A tear wells up in my eye. He’s warm. My heart aches.
I ask Carlo, “Where is Diabolo?”
He tells me, “They don’t allow dogs in here.”
“Bruno, go and get Diabolo. Quickly.”
I felt the tiniest buzz run through Mikey’s finger.
A nurse comes briskly into the room.
“What are all of you doing in here? Visits are two at a time, near relatives only, and this is not visiting hours –”
