"Tomasso was only kind to me and the baby because of my late husband!" Catarina sobbed, crawling to Tomasso's legs. She pressed her face against his knee, and the gesture was so perfectly calibrated, so precisely the image of a grieving widow seeking protection from her fallen husband's blood-brother, that I almost admired it. Almost. "The baby fell from a height. I don't even know if he'll survive. Tomasso, please, don't waste any more time. Call a doctor!"
"Don't be scared. I won't let anything happen to him." His voice dropped low, tender, a register I hadn't heard him use with me in years. He cradled the child closer.
Tomasso turned to leave with the baby in his arms.
And in that moment, I felt something warm and wet sliding down between my legs.
The sensation froze me with terror. Everything else disappeared. The voices, the faces, the fluorescent hum, the smell of antiseptic and spilled porridge. All of it fell away, and there was only the warmth spreading beneath me and the cold that followed it, a cold that started in my chest and moved outward until my fingers went numb.
I looked down. A shock of red was spreading beneath me. Bright against the white tile. Impossible to mistake for anything else.
"Tomasso, my baby... our baby!"
He didn't turn around. He didn't even slow down. His soldiers parted for him in the doorway, and not one of them looked back at me on the floor.
"Giovanna, I've never been more disappointed in you. Get yourself home. I'll be staying at the hospital with Catarina and the baby for the next few days." He paused in the doorway. The light from the corridor caught the edge of his jaw, and I could see the muscle there working, tightening. "And you'd better pray her child is all right. Because if he's not, I won't let you off."
Every last one of them followed him out the door. The room emptied the way rooms empty after a Don has spoken. Completely. Without hesitation. Without a single backward glance.
I stayed on the floor. The blood kept spreading. The fluorescent light kept buzzing. Somewhere down the hall, I could hear Catarina's voice rising in fresh sobs, and the low reassuring murmur of Tomasso answering her, and the quick footsteps of a doctor being summoned.
No one summoned a doctor for me.