Happy Mother's Day! (23 page)

T
HE
room was little more than a box, white and clinical. Francesco approached silently. Erin appeared to be sleeping, or possibly they had given her something to make her sleep? As he looked at her lying there she seemed so small and scarily fragile with an intravenous infusion attached to her arm.

Francesco stood at the bedside, his chest tight with the emotions that swelled and grew as he looked at her.

The cover was white, the gown she wore was white and her skin was if possible even whiter, her freckles standing out in stark relief across the bridge of her nose! The only colour was her glorious hair that peeked out beneath the ridiculous cap they had put on her head.

He closed his eyes. His silent prayer was interrupted by the sound of a slurred voice.

‘You look terrible.’

He opened his eyes and saw her looking up at him. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

She shook her head and made a weak flailing gesture, which he correctly interpreted as an effort to catch hold of his hand. Francesco caught her hand between the two of his.

‘They gave me something. I feel a bit drunk … do I sound a bit drunk?’

Francesco smiled into her glazed eyes. ‘A little,’ he admitted.

‘Thought so … Did they tell you?’

He nodded. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he promised.

‘And the baby will be fine?’ She looked at him with total trust that pierced him like a knife. He didn’t deserve her trust–if it hadn’t been for him there would have been no accident.

‘Absolutely,’ he said, hoping with all his heart that he was right.

Erin gave a sigh. ‘Good. Do you know that you have the most incredible … no, better than incredible mouth?’ she slurred. ‘Thank you.’ ‘I like your eyes, too.’

Before she had commented on any other parts of his anatomy two porters and a nurse arrived with a trolley.

They let him walk with them as far as the entrance to the anaesthetic room. She lay with her eyes closed, her small hand tightly curled over his.

He bent and kissed her lips before they wheeled her inside, resisting the urge he had to yell at the person who removed her hand from his.

As they closed the door the last thing he heard was a slurred, ‘And great legs, too!’

The first thing Erin became conscious of was voices, male and female; she couldn’t understand what they were saying.

‘Go away,’ she said crankily. ‘My head hurts. I’m thirsty.’ She lifted a hand to protect her eyes from the strong light shining in them. ‘Where am I?’

Someone spoke, Erin heard them say, ‘She’s back with us,’ and there was a click and light filtering through her fingers vanished.

The next thing that Erin was conscious of was fingers,
cool on her forehead. They stilled for a moment. She tried to say don’t stop but her vocal chords did not respond. She struggled to open her eyes but gave up—her eyelids felt too heavy, and besides the soothing, cool fingers were stroking again.

‘If anything happened to
you … per amor di Dio,
I would never have forgiven myself.’ Francesco, his lean face contorted with self-recrimination, looked down at the pale, still-sleeping features of the woman he had married.

The woman he had nearly lost.

His tortured eyes darkened and he tensed expectantly as her eyelashes fluttered against the pallor of her waxen cheek. A sigh escaped him when after a moment they stilled and there was no other sign of returning consciousness.

A nurse materialised quietly at the bottom of the bed.

‘Shouldn’t she be awake by now?’ he asked, anxiety making his manner abrupt.

The nurse gave a soothing smile and promised him everything was just as it ought to be. ‘She’ll probably sleep until the morning,’ she informed him with a lot more cheer than he considered the situation warranted. ‘If she does wake up she’ll be pretty woozy. Maybe you should go home and get some sleep?’

He reacted irritably to the tentative suggestion. ‘I’ll stay.’

After studying his face she did not argue the point. ‘Would you like a blanket?’

‘I do not need a blanket.’ What he needed was his wife to open her eyes.

‘I’ll get you another coffee,’ the nurse offered, before scribbling something on the chart and leaving the room.

Francesco got up and began to pace the room, his expression distracted. Despite the constant reassurances from the medical staff that the operation had been a total success he would not,
could
not relax until Erin woke up. Until he heard her voice.

‘Though when you do wake up,’ he said, dropping heavily back into the chair that was drawn up to the bed, ‘you will probably tell me you hate me.’ He rested his chin on his steepled fingers and shook his head. ‘And I wouldn’t blame you. First Rafe and now you. A man should cherish those who are most precious to him. But no, I had to prove a point, make you choose me.
Dio,
but I am a total selfish bastard! I promise you that when you are well I will … if anything ever happened to you.’ He picked up the small hand that lay against the sheet and lifted it to his lips. ‘I swear I will never let anything hurt you again.’

‘Mr Romanelli …’

He started at the sound of the nurse’s voice and, first laying Erin’s hand gently back down onto the bed, turned his head.

‘I’ll leave the coffee here, shall I?’ she said, placing the cup on the bedside table.

‘Thank you,’ he said, turning back to Erin and covering her small hand with his. The wave of emotion he felt as he looked at her was like a physical pain.

‘I can’t lose you.’

‘I’m not lost.’

‘Erin?’ Relief flooded through him as she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

‘Hello,
cara
,’ he said thickly.

‘Francesco?’

Her blurry vision cleared and Erin found herself looking into his unmistakable features. His face, his fallen dark angel face, looked drawn and almost haggard, he hadn’t shaved and there were deep lines bracketing his mouth that she couldn’t recall seeing before.

‘We got married, didn’t we? That was so stupid.’ She closed
her eyes and did not see the spasm of pain that contorted his lean features. ‘You make a much better lover than I make a wife. Did something happen?’

Francesco swallowed, seeing in his head her fall down those steps. ‘Yes,
cara,
you fell.’

‘I’ve got a sore throat, too. Fall? I don’t remember,’ she complained crankily.

‘That doesn’t matter now; you sleep.’ He reached for the buzzer to summon a nurse. Where was the damned woman?

She sighed as she felt his cool fingers on her forehead. She smiled sleepily. ‘That’s nice. I had a dream someone was stroking my head. It was nice; was it you?’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘Will you be here when I wake up?’ ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

She smiled, expelled a deep sigh and almost immediately fell asleep.

‘When can I go home?’

‘I’m beginning to get the impression you don’t like us,’ teased the doctor who had just declared the puncture wounds on her abdomen, the only external sign of the emergency surgery she had undergone, were fine.

‘You’ve only been with us forty-eight hours.’

‘It feels like longer.’

The doctor laughed. ‘We just need to monitor the baby overnight. I don’t foresee any problem there … tough little beggar, that one,’ he said, peering at the heartbeat tracery in his hand. ‘As for you, young lady …’

‘I feel fine,’ she said.

‘No need to look so worried—that was my diagnosis, too.’ After scribbling something on her chart the doctor left, two
nurses in tow, and she settled down to read one of the magazines from the stack on the bedside locker.

She was unable to concentrate, and her eyes drifted around the private room, which still resembled a florists’ shop even after she had sent a pile of flowers to the oncology ward. A frown of discontent furrowed her brow and pulled down the corners of her mouth as she heard the sound of voices in the corridor outside.

Being in this room resembled being stranded on a desert island, albeit a desert island with room service. The fact you could hear the rest of the world getting on with its collective life made the sense of isolation all the more intense.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t
grateful,
but she was dying of boredom.

When she had said as much that morning Francesco had responded with a very unsympathetic and pretty brutal, ‘Well, that is preferable to being dead!’

He made it sound as if she didn’t know how lucky she was, which she did. But a person couldn’t go on getting misty about being alive. They had to get on with living! Though she sensed she might have a fight on her hands on that score, Francesco was showing some dangerous signs of wrapping her in cotton wool.

That first night it had been around four in the morning when she had come to properly. She had some dim recollection of wakening earlier but the memory was confused and tangled up in her dreams.

She could remember the relief that had swept over her when she had opened her eyes and seen him.

Her first thought had been for the baby and even before she had asked the question uppermost in her thoughts Francesco had told her what she had needed to know.

‘The baby is fine and so,’ he added, smoothing the hair from her brow, ‘are you. Shall I call the nurse? Do you have pain?’

She lifted a hand that had a drip attached to it to her forehead. ‘I’m not sure. I feel a bit … spaced.’

‘That is probably the injection they gave you a while back.’

‘Have you been here all the time?’ How long that was she had no idea. ‘Injection?’ She struggled to think past the cotton wool her brain appeared to be stuffed with. ‘Should they be giving me drugs with the baby … are you sure he’s all right?’ she croaked, trying to raise herself up.

‘I am positive the baby is fine. Listen, there,’ he said, pressing a finger to his lips to urge her to silence. ‘You hear it?’

‘That’s the baby’s heartbeat?’

He nodded.

She gulped as hot, emotional tears filled her eyes. ‘That is so incredible.’

‘It is, and they would not give you medication that would harm the baby.

Erin sighed and let the tension leave her body. ‘I’d never have forgiven myself if.’ She stopped and closed her eyes with a groan.

‘It wasn’t
your
fault.’

She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him.

His appearance had shocked her. With his normally sleek hair standing up in spiky tufts and his skin tinged an unhealthy grey, he looked a million miles from his sleek, perfectly groomed normal self.

She closed her eyes, temporarily drained of the energy required to keep them open. She had no idea how long she dozed, drifting in and out of sleep, but it was some time and several blood-pressure checks later that she came to fully.

Francesco was
still
there. He was even in her dreams.

‘You do know you look shocking?’

‘You don’t look too hot yourself.’

‘I have an excuse—I’ve just had surgery,’ she teased.

‘And I’ve just spent hours wondering if my wife and child will live.’ The words he had obviously struggled to contain emerged from between clenched teeth.

‘Don’t you think it might be an idea for you to go home, get some sleep?’

‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘Is there anything I can get you before I go?’

‘My mouth is so dry—do you suppose that I could have something to drink?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll ask.’ ‘When can I go home?’ ‘It is as I suspected …’

‘What is?’

‘You’re going to be an awkward patient, the demanding sort that nurses avoid.’

He did go, but returned looking much more like himself a few hours later.

Of course, she had not made the mistake of imagining that she was the draw that brought him back again and again.

It was the baby.

Several of the nurses had remarked on his devotion, and his smouldering Latin looks had come into the conversation on more than one occasion! Though most were too tactful to lust after him in front of her, Erin was pretty sure her husband had caused more than a few hearts to flutter in the hospital corridors.

One young student who was particularly smitten somehow always found a reason to be in her room when Francesco happened to be there. That morning when she had been taking
Erin’s temperature she had wondered why Erin did not have a picture of her husband by her bed.

‘But I suppose you’re not likely to forget what he looks like, are you? He’s always here.’ The wistful envy in her voice made Erin smile.

‘I bet he’ll make a great dad. Italian men are good with children, aren’t they?’

An image of Francesco sprawled on a rug playing with little Gianni popped into her head. ‘Some are,’ she agreed, wondering how this young girl would react if she told her that her marriage, far from being what it looked from the outside, was nothing but a sham!

The only reason Francesco had come back was because he had found out about the baby. And there was no question in her mind that if it hadn’t been for her pregnancy he wouldn’t be refusing to consider a divorce.

He had been experiencing the emotional backlash of his twin’s death when they had met, which totally explained the entire mad, reckless rush into marriage with someone he barely knew. If she hadn’t left when she had he would most likely have woken up one morning and thought,
What the hell have I done?
And then things would have taken their natural course.

She had tried the previous evening to tell him that he could have his freedom. He had stared at her in a particularly daunting manner while she had outlined her, admittedly pretty sketchy, plan of moving to Italy so that he could have easier access to his child.

He didn’t seem grateful for the concession she was willing to make. Neither had he held back when he had expressed his blighting opinion of her plan!

‘No, I do
not
think it is a good idea. I think it is a ridiculous idea. I’m sorry, Erin, if you find the thought of living as my
wife so distasteful, but I suggest you put these wild and impractical notions from your mind. You will be living with me as my wife; we will be a family.’ He effectively silenced further protests by adding, ‘This is something you will do because I know that you have the best interests of our child at heart.’