The Mafia's Angel

The air within the emergency room was never calm for an extended period of time, a fact that Gabriella knew quite well. But it would be the calm before the storm that she found herself loathing; that is similar to the petrichor prior to a heavy rain. She had preferred the chaos as she had come to excel in its ever present existence. And this night would prove to be no exception in more ways than one... The doors to the emergency department at Mercy Hospital flew open in a quick whip as a team of EMT’s made their way into the main lobby with a man horribly bloodied upon a gurney. Scanning the scene for any sight of a doctor, they were left with the presence of a handful of nurses; one having been the incredibly proactive Gabriella Driscoll, who moved to the man’s mangled body. One of the paramedics was using a bag valve mask upon the patient, breathing for him by squeezing a bag rhythmically with his dominant hand, as he had now passed off this duty to a lingering nurse.  “90 over 60 bp, ECG inconclusive due to travel restrictions, EtCO2 is low following a motorcycle accident involving two vehicles, the other having taken minor damage-” He began to explain to Gabriella as she took in the notes to understand that there had been clear ventilation issues for the patient recently brought to them. However, midway through this verbal explanation, the patient ceased breathing entirely-leading Gabriella to shift her focus entirely onto the victim of the accident and away from the medical professional. “We need to intubate!” She called out as the man was slipping closer to death then remaining among the living as she hoisted herself onto the stretcher with her impressive strength and swiftness as she took the ‘bag’ of the manual ventilator until they were in the confines of the trauma room. “Get intravenous fluids in him immediately!” She cried out as she ripped a stethoscope from her neck and shoved the buds into the canals of her ears to hear a horribly faint pulse beating within the chaos of them all desperately trying to save his life. But during this assessment, she heard something rattle within his shallow breathing. “Nobody can be here for at least ten minutes…” One of the fellow nurses wearing a yellow headband spoke as her eyes nearly bulged from her cranium in desperation.  “It’s too long…” Gabriella spoke to herself as she began to assess the situation in its entirety before moving towards the crash cart, where a scalpel and a pair of tweezers had remained. Quickly dipping them in a small silver bowl used for collecting tissue and foreign fragments from the body, Gabriella poured a cleaning solution upon the tips of the instruments before taking her fingers to their respective holds upon the man’s chest as she saw the sight of shrapnel from the crash embedded deeply into his chest. Drawing the blade to her finger, she began to cut as the man bled instantly from the unfamiliar slice parting his skin with a painful force.  “What are you doing-” A rival nurse questioned as Gabriella remained focused on her task and ignored that of her fellow peers watching her in a mix of awe and resentment. “You could kill him!” Another one called out to her as she ignored these words and focused solely upon the man she had straddled between her legs. Abandoning all sense of medical training that had told her she needed to wait for a doctor, medical lead, or surgeon, she knew by the time one of them arrived it would be too late-and so she used the tweezers to begin to search for the object within the man’s chest cavity-risking her career in the process. “Doctor will be here in five minutes!” Gabriella suddenly felt something tap against the edge of her tweezers and she managed to retrieve a piece of metal the same size as a penny obstructing the man’s pulmonary artery from pumping blood. Quickly retrieving the cauterising gun from beside the table, she attempted to light the tip before being caught by another nurse’s hand.  “We aren’t trained for this-” “He will bleed out in seconds if I don’t mend it.” Gabriella reminded the nurse before she was allowed to resume her attempt to save this man’s life once again. Her heart was racing and her own blood was pumping rapidly as she steadied her hand and moved along the line of the artery before sealing the damage caused by the shrapnel.  “Oh my God...He’s...His BPM is rising…” The rival nurse spoke in disbelief as Gabriella let out a sigh of relief before using the instruments at her side and the knowledge following nearly a decade of schooling, to sew the man’s wounds and place him into a state of recovery in the intensive care unit of the same hospital. Those who surrounded her looked at her in complete bewilderment as she climbed down from the cart and moved beyond the room, covered entirely in blood, tissue, and her own sweat.  Without speaking a word to any who had passed her within the hallway, Gabriella moved immediately into the locker room, where she turned the shower to a dangerously fervent temperature before slipping beneath its unkind heat and wiping away yet another shift in the emergency room. Her fingers began to run through her hair, thick with hairspray to keep her curls in place, until outlining her own neck, moving over her breasts, and finally to her sides. When completing her quick cleanse, Gabriella pulled herself out of the shower to find a fellow nurse also ending her shift with a shower and wrapped within a towel as she stood near her own locker.  “The board will ring your neck for working without a higher up present-” “You and I both know that he would have died, Mae…” Gabriella informed this nurse-her closest ally throughout a team of medical peers that seemed the least abhorrent of them all. “If we always do everything by the book, there will be too much blood on our hands...And besides, I’ll take the heat, it was my call and I acted alone.” “But we graduated together and I don’t want to see you lose this job after only a year-” Suddenly Gabriella’s focus came to her phone that had been lit up with the name of her boyfriend clad across the screen in bold letters following a picture she had taken of him sitting across from her the night they met; appearing like a young Clark Kent minus the glasses.  “To shift the conversation into another direction...do you think he will ask you tonight? You two have been together for five years...I’d say it’s about time SOMETHING happened between the two of you...Because we need a party around here after all of this gloom…” “I don’t know...Maybe…” Gabriella spoke in confined seclusion with her own thoughts as she was not exactly keen on marriage due to the disasters she had witnessed as a young girl and adolescent. But when the phone screen lit again, it had been to inform her that a voicemail had been left, and so disrupting her conversation with Mae for a second, she presented the phone to her ear to listen.  “Hey honey, sorry about calling you at work-but I know we had plans to meet at La Amore tonight and I...I don’t think I’ll get out of this meeting until closer to eleven...But if you wanted to still meet, I will be at El Patron directly after work to get drinks with some clients...Okay, keep saving lives hun, love you.”  When the message had ended, Gabriella hid the sense of relief that washed over her as she knew he was preparing to propose to her as she had already come across the ring within the top drawer of his dresser that had been rather obviously placed beneath a raised pair of boxers. After spending a decade surrounded by death, mayhem, and tragedy-she had never been more anxious or nervous than thinking of the gravity behind what accepting that ring would mean. “Did he bail AGAIN?!” Mae asked as Gabriella simply shrugged off both her comment as well as answering before pulling out her clothes from her own locker and dressing for the small jaunt home so she would not be arrested for public indecency.  “Maybe we should just both become cat ladies and rely on only each other because men in this town suck!” Mae explained before placing her jacket over her shoulders and giving Gabriella a look of pity. “But I’ll see you tomorrow-just think about my offer because we could absolutely be happy with Rachel and Ross.” Gabriella smirked at the “Friends” inspired feline names before being parted from Mae following a kind hug and returning to her own locker to finish dressing.  But as she spun the dial on her locker that would keep it closed and her leftover belongings safe, the sound of the locker room door coming open once again could be heard; only now, so had the lock that would have imprisoned her. “Um-Someone is still in here!” She called through the empty space before moving to the door and finding it to have been locked from the outside-a design flaw set within the very hospital she was employed with. Using her fists, she began to pound on the cold metal as she was left with the simple frigid room as company.  “Great…” She commented as she attempted to lift her phone to call the front desk for help before learning she happened to wander into a deadzone of the hospital-leaving her frustrated and in captivity. Curious as to how Alec had managed to get through prior to this drop of service, she moved about the room, standing on objects to try and get a call out as the only exit to the room had been entirely blocked by someone’s ignorance upon the other side. Frustrated and realizing she would have to act as her own savior, she began to rummage through her locker for something she could use to try and break herself free-but found the only thing she possessed was an empty lunchbox full of teal tupperware and a dirty thermos, and that of an extra uniform and warmth change of clothes, she was at a loss once again.  Then suddenly her eye caught upon the fire alarm present just beside the exit-and so she moved as she believed she had no other option and could not spend the entire night in the locker room when she had a boyfriend to meet in a few hours. But the second her fingers prepared to pull down the tab that would grant her her freedom, her eyes met with the reflection of a man in the room behind her. As soon as she had turned to witness this man, he pushed his body against her own before slipping a cloth soaked in something that forced her unconscious.  Her eyes would slowly climb open as the effects of whatever drugs he had given her continued to keep her drowsy until her lashes would remain apart and she was determined to verify if her prior memories were a horrid dream or that of a new reality. And she would learn the latter to have been true as she found herself tied to a seat as part of a private plane. Shifting immediately to test the ties on her hands, she learned that the knots that kept her in place were impenetrable and she had been kidnapped.  “Gabriella Driscoll.” Her name was spoken by a man who made his presence known as he emerged from the aisle behind her and pressed his weight into the seat across from her. For a second, she was surprised to find this very man at her side as he was indeed a stranger-but was one who was quite intimidating to her. His thick black hair had been pulled back by an obsessive use of styling gel that failed a few strands that fell loose beside a pair of hazel eyes that looked to her with urgency but also dominance. But she was unable to question who he was or even where she was being taken as her mouth had been wrapped with a silk necktie that made it impossible for her to speak anything intelligible.  “If you listen and do what I need you to, you will be returned to the city by the first of January...” Her eyes widened as it was just a week into September, leaving her fearful for what it was he had planned for her. Immediately, her mind began to rationalize how she had been collateral in a ransom scheme that would be left disappointing as she had no parents to pay for her and could not offer an amount herself as she was still paying off her own student loans-but then she conjured the theory that perhaps she was the subject of a human trafficking operation that would leave her a mystery to those who knew her as she would be forgotten in the illegal circulation of broken morals and immorality. But each speculation would be proven false as he continued to speak to her.  “My father has been sick for quite some time and there is no doctor in any of the seven continents that seem to have a f***ing clue what is killing him...But I saw you tonight with that man from the accident...And I have a good feeling about you because you don’t seem to follow...protocol.” He spoke each word with possessiveness and sexuality, the two words to describe him best as he remained at her side until her gaze moved to the window beside her-eyeing the tarmac approaching below.  “They gave my father four months to live...if you manage to spare him from this timeline, then I will return you safely back home.” His words hinted to a temporary kindness before he rose from his chair and now bent over her; a strong scent of cigarettes and whiskey following him and lingering as she learned his kindness was short lived and seldom expressed.  “But if you do anything that may harm him...Mae Bennette, Amandla Erickson, Brennan Quincy, and Vera Crisholm will find demented ends from your selifhsness.” Tears filled her eyes for a second as she came to break from his eyes long enough to spot the gun in his waistband. “To specify, you will be submissive to me-” Her eyes narrowed to him now as she began to fear that he would now be aggressive with lust. Then this fear turned to resentment as she would not allow herself to be the victim of a man who would force a woman in to his possession such as this-no matter how drawn she could have been to the mysterious arousal he awoke within her that she fought with every sane nerve of her body.  “You will obey my orders and rival me only in your thoughts as you will respect me and remain silent unless addressed. If there ever calls for a time when you are to be at my side to care for my father, you will remain dutiful or find yourself returning to New York in a body bag beside your friends, am I understood?” He asked as she did not dare move any portion of her body as she had not doubted his words or threat for a single moment. Whoever this man was across from her, he was undoubtedly devoted to his cause and intimidating in the mystique of the lengths he would go to in order to keep his father alive. After all, he had already kidnapped her and taken her to a different country as she would learn this as the plane came to a cessation and her eyes caught to the sign reading “ITALY WELCOMES YOU”, off in the distance of this private airport.  “You have just under fifteen weeks, one hundred days to save my father….But just know that I am not a man who gives instructions twice or tolerates disobedience once. I have no interest in repeating myself or expressing mercy at your inability to understand me. Therefore, I will take your silence as having heard me. For if you haven’t, you will find unimaginable pain to follow your actions as your own savior as there is no running from this...or me.” These words would haunt her as she was torn from the plane and onto the pavement, where a car was already awaiting her.  “You will have everything you need and you will not be deprived of anything- as long as you continue to understand and execute what is expected of you. Now...stand.” Any sense of fear that had developed since she understood her circumstances had now turned to animosity as she was well aware that she had lost any ability to control her situation. Because of this, she remained resentful to this man-whoever he had been.  “I was hoping you wouldn’t-” And with this comment, Gabriella was forced over his shoulder and out of the plane as he lifted her with ease, despite her curves, and placed her against the car, seemingly admiring her own dark features for a moment present upon her ivory canvas. It was here that a line was drawn in the sand for them both as she understood that he was the head of this operation and she was collateral in the transaction between life and death; but it was also at this moment that she felt drawn to him-although she refused to show it or even acknowledge it within any of her thoughts. “Get your ass in the car.”  He told her as she kept her perpetual glare onto him before he took hold of her waist and pulled her just far enough to the side to open the door. Suddenly she was pushed inside, her back on the leather seat as her hands remained tied at her front. “It will only be more enjoyable for me each time you fight it...But more difficult for you in the long run.” He explained as she looked away, not wishing to offer him any sense of enjoyment in this interaction. And so, she accepted her circumstances and thought of her friends as he hovered over her, his scent of expensive alcohol and lingering smoke having driven her to nausea while his appearance and intimidation had made her curious…Of all women, of all doctors and surgeons...why her?