Her shriek of pain rose into the air. Even as he scooped her into his arms, Dante saw the flesh around the bite start to swell. He paused only long enough to tie a scarf around her arm above the bite and to pick up the dead spider, place it in his handkerchief and tuck it into his pocket.
Heart racing, he ran for his car.
HE PHONED THE HOSPITAL when he was two blocks away. Two physicians and a nurse were waiting outside the emergency room. The nurse tried to take Sam from his arms but he refused to give her up.
“I’m staying with her,” he said, and neither the doctors nor the nurse doubted his determination.
They led him into an examining room. Sam clung to his neck, sobbing. He soothed her with words he barely knew, things he’d heard people say to weeping children, things he’d once wished his nonna had said to him when he was small and he’d skinned his knee or bloodied his nose, except this wasn’t a bloody knee or nose, he thought, as he dug in his pocket and produced the ugly corpse.
The nurse grimaced; one of the physicians barked out a command, and Dante’s heart turned over when the nurse appeared with a tiny needle and reached for Sam’s hand.
“Shh, bambina,” he whispered, “everything will be all right.”
But Sam was past listening. Her little body arched; Dante cursed as a convulsion tore through her.
“Do something,” he snarled.
“Wait outside,” the doctor snapped.
Dante flashed him a look the man would never forget. “I will not leave my baby,” he said.
He didn’t. Not until Sam finally opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Da-Tay,” she whispered, and for the first time since his mother had left him, Dante wept.
IT TOOK TWO HOURS and a dozen calls to the house by the sea before Tally answered the phone.
She was, as Dante had anticipated, frantic.
“Dante! Dear God, where are you? Where is Samantha? I came home and the place was empty and—”
He interrupted. Told her everything was fine, that they were at the hospital,
in the emergency room. Lied and said he’d let his worry over a little bug bite get out of hand. He didn’t want her to know the truth until he could take her in his arms and hold her and she could see for herself that the crisis was over.
He was waiting at the big double doors of the emergency room when she came flying through them.
“Where’s my baby?”
Dante caught her in his arms. “She’s fine, cara.”
“Tell me the truth. My baby—”
“Tally.” He held her by the shoulders, brought his eyes level with hers. “I would never lie to you. Never.”
She nodded, though he could feel her tremble in his embrace. Slowly, carefully, he explained what had happened. When she swayed, he gathered her against him, rocked her gently until she pushed her hands against his chest and looked into his eyes.
“Where is she?”
He kept his arm around her, let his strength seep into her as he led her to Sam’s room. The room was private; so was the nurse who sat beside the baby in the white crib, peacefully sleeping. The danger was past but the IV was still in her arm.
Tally bent over the crib and put her hand on her daughter’s back. Tears fell from her eyes.
“My baby,” she whispered, “oh, my sweet little girl! I could have lost you.”
“Your husband did all the right things, Mrs. Russo,” the nurse said softly. “Without his quick thinking, things would have been much worse.”
Tally looked at the woman. “But he isn’t—”