Chapter Eleven: Did I choose wrong?
1157 Words
Light came first.
Warm and slow, spilling through the curtains and across the face of the man sitting in the chair beside my bed like he had been there all night.
Frank.
Jacket off. Sleeves still rolled. Forearms on his knees, hands loose between them. Watching me with the particular stillness of someone who had been watching for a long time
I sat up so fast the room tilted.
"Easy, Jane." His voice was low. He didn't move toward me. Just steadied me with his presence from a distance.
"I'm fine." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. Reflex. Survival habit.
He didn't say anything.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Found the floor. Pressed my feet flat against it and focused on the solidity of it, until the room stopped moving.
Frank watched me do all of this and said nothing.
The silence stretched.
"How are you feeling?"
I didn't answer.
He let that sit for a moment. Then he leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, and looked at me the way he looked at things he was trying to understand.
"You shouldn't have seen that.”
"But since you did—" He paused. Chose his next words with the care of a man who did not often explain himself and was doing it anyway.
“I want you to know that he deserved it.”
"He stole from me. Small amounts at first. He thought I wouldn't notice.Then he got greedy. And then—"
Something moved in his jaw. "He talked to people he should not have talked to. Gave information about this family to people who would have used it to put us all in the ground."
He sat back.
"I don't forgive betrayal, Jane. I never have. I never will. That is not something that is going to change.”
The room was very quiet.
Outside somewhere a bird was doing something completely indifferent to the conversation happening in this room. Living its small uncomplicated life in the morning.
"Someone steals from you and you—”My voice came out smaller than I intended.
"Yes.”
"Just like that."
He looked at me steadily. "It is not just like that. There was a process. There was evidence. There was a conversation before the one you saw.”
"What you saw was the end of something that had been going on for a long time. Not a decision made in a moment.”
"That's supposed to make it better?”
"No." He held my gaze. "It's supposed to make it accurate.”
"It's what I have to do." His voice was quieter now. "I am the boss, Jane. There is no one above me to hand this to. When something like this happens it has always come to me. And I handle it."
"And you're okay with that."
"I didn't say that.”
I looked up.
His face was unreadable. But his hands, the ones hanging loose between his knees, had closed.
I looked at him and saw the man who held a gun to my head and also the man who made sure he protected me.
Both of those things were Frank. I knew that.
Apparently knowing and seeing were two entirely different things.
"You should have told me before the dinner.”
"Would you have come to dinner?"
My silence gave him his answer.
"That's what I thought.”
I crossed to the window and stood with my back to him and looked out at the courtyard
"I'm a doctor." My reflection looked back at me. Pale. "I save lives. That's the whole point of me. That's the only thing I've ever been certain of."
"I know."
"And you—" I stopped.
"And I do the opposite. Yes. I know that too."
I turned around.
He was already standing.
"If you need anything," he said quietly. "Rosabella is down the hall. Vito is outside the door."
"Frank."
"I'll have food sent up.”
He picked up his jacket from the chair. Shook it out. Put it on with the practiced ease of a man armoring himself back up after taking the armor off for a few hours. And walked to the door.
He stopped with his hand on the frame.
“You can come down if you feel better.”
The door closed.
I stood in the middle of the room and listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor and thought about the question I hadn't let myself finish asking since I opened my eyes.
Did I make the right choice?
For the first time since I had walked into this compound, I genuinely didn't know.
Last night I had been so certain. I had meant it with everything I had.
I sat back on the edge of the bed. Pressed my hands flat on my knees.
I got up.
Found my clothes from the night before folded on the chair Frank had been sitting in. I didn't think about when he'd done that.
The compound was quiet at this hour.
I took the corridor toward the medical bay. My feet just knew the route now.
The door was half open.
Frank was there. Sitting in the chair beside Marco's bed with his forearms on his knees and his head bent forward, he had Marco's hand in both of his.
Just holding it. Like if he held on tight enough something would change.
He hadn't heard me come in.
I stood in the doorway and watched him.
I must have made a sound. Shifted my weight. Something. Because he looked up.
Our eyes met across the medical bay.
I crossed to the monitors. Checked the readings, made small adjustments that didn't strictly need making just to have something to do with my hands.
I stopped pretending to check the monitor.
Turned.
He was still sitting the same way. Still holding Marco's hand.
"He's going to be furious when he wakes up," he said finally. "Marco. He hates hospitals.He's going to start complaining before he even opens his eyes fully.”
"What does he complain about?"
"Everything. The needles, the smell, the fact that hospital gowns have no dignity.”
"He sounds exhausting."
"He is." His thumb moved across Marco's hand. "He is the most exhausting person I have ever known in my life."
He looked at his brother.
"I would burn this city to the ground before I let anything happen to him.”
I stood and watched Frank hold his brother's hand in the quiet of the morning.
Something in my chest went very still.
The question I'd woken up with had no answer yet.
Maybe it never would.
For the first time since I'd opened my eyes today, the question felt less urgent.
And I didn't know if it was just him, doing what he always did.
Finding ways to make me stay without asking me to.
- Writer
