“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, and I’m not letting them own either of us.”
“I love you too.” I looked up into his eyes and kissed him. We held that kiss for a long moment.
My man, my protector, my savior. He’d done so much for me—and now there was only one last thing to do.
We broke off the kiss and I held his hand.
“Come on,” I said. “We need to go to the hospital.”
He nodded and led the way.29GavinFiona met us down in the lobby. She looked exhausted and I figured she was at the end of her shift.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said.
She waved a hand toward me then looked at Erica. “You sure about this, sweetie?”
Erica forced a smile. “I’m sure,” she said.
“Okay then.” Fiona put her arm around Erica’s shoulders and steered her to the elevators. “You’re making the right choice. I know it’s going to be hard.”
We packed in and rode up to the third floor. Fiona had already prepped Erica’s mother, and all we had to do was remove the tube, and hope for the best.
Erica sat in a chair at the other side of the room. We don’t normally allow family in for this procedure, since things can go wrong—patients react in strange ways that can be somewhat confusing. I couldn’t ask her to stay in the hall or something like that though, because what happened next was so important to everyone.
I got to work and Fiona assisted. Removing a tube wasn’t incredibly difficult, not after the prep work was done. Erica’s feet bounced over and over again, making the legs of her chair creak, and she looked pale, even worse than she had when Cosimo died.
I forced that image from my mind. I didn’t want to think about the dead mobster in my house, about his corpse turning cold and stiff, his blood congealing and leaking into the downstairs ceiling. He deserved it, that sick fuck, and I didn’t regret killing him—but his death did make everything so much more complicated.
I didn’t want to leave Philly. I loved this city and planned on making it my home for a very long time. But there was no other choice at this point, and if I wanted to have a life with Erica, if I wanted to have any sort of existence with her at all, I had to be willing to run.
Fiona turned off the machines. The room went quiet as I slowly removed the breathing tube and the mouth brace. I wiped Linda’s mouth and we waited as she lay there, unmoving, not breathing.
“This is normal,” I said softly, more for Erica’s benefit than anything else. “Sometimes it takes a second. Just wait.” I took Linda’s hand and squeezed it.
Fiona gave me a look. I wasn’t supposed to touch a patient like that, but I couldn’t help myself. The woman was my mother-in-law, even if she didn’t know it yet, and this was perhaps the most important moment of my life. What happened here would determine so much of what came next.
Nothing happened. No gasps, no groans, nothing. Fiona watched the clock. “Gavin,” she said. “We might need to do CPR.”
“No. Wait. Give her a second.” I squeezed her hand tighter. “Come on, Linda, damn it. Take a breath. You know how.”
Fiona fidgeted. “Gavin—”
“Wait.” I leaned down, staring into Linda’s face. “Please, if you’re in there, Erica needs this. Take a breath. Come on, take a breath. Breathe!”
She gasped, raspy and harsh, and sucked air into her lungs.
Fiona cursed with surprise and a laugh jolted from my chest. Linda took another breath, and another, and then Erica was there, kneeling next to her mother and crying, fat tears rolling down her face and staining the white sheets dark gray. Linda breathed on her own, raspy and difficult at first, but slowly falling into a normal rhythm.
“Come on,” I said softly, leading Fiona to the door. “Let’s give them a minute.”
We stepped into the hall and Fiona leaned up against the wall, looking exhausted. “That was lucky,” she said.
“I know.”
“Chances weren’t good.”
“I know, but we didn’t have a choice.”
She looked at me, concern in her eyes. “What happened? You two seem… stressed, a little off, I don’t know.”
I managed a tight smile. “You’re perceptive.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I can’t go into detail, but we need to leave the city.”
She sighed. “What the fuck, Gavin?” she asked softly.
“I know. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s the only way Erica and her mom can be safe.”
“This is crazy.”
“I know, trust me, I know.”
“Where will you go?”
“As far as we can.” I shrugged and gestured vaguely in the air. “California, maybe. I’m not sure.”
“California.” She let out a sigh. “At least the weather’s good.”
“Mild winters.”
“No humidity.”
“I’ll find a job at a hospital somewhere. We’ll bring Linda with us and take care of her.”