Chapter 11: Forty Percent

I didn't lose consciousness, which was the worst of it.

I felt Ciro's arms go under me and lift me off the dock.

I felt the sun on my face, and then the dark of a car, and the leather seat under my back.

"Drive," he said to someone. "The county hospital. Go."

"Not the county," my mother said.

She was in the back seat with me.

I hadn't seen her get in.

She was kneeling on the floor with my head in her lap, in her black dress, with my blood soaking through it.

"The Aurelian on the east side," she said. "It's twelve minutes. The county is thirty."

"Who runs it?"

"I sit on the board."

Ciro looked at her for one second.

"Aurelian," he said to the driver.

The car leaned into a turn.

My mother pressed a handkerchief to my mouth.

Her hand was shaking so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

"Don't you dare," she said.

I tried to answer and couldn't.

"Don't you dare, Serafina. Do you hear me? Don't you dare do this to me."

She said it over and over, in a low fierce voice.

I closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew there were lights over my head, and hands, and a man in blue saying numbers.

A woman cut my shirt off.

A needle went into my arm.

Ciro's face came into the lights, upside down, and I tried to smile at him.

"Stay with me," he said. "Stay."

"I'm here."

"Good."

They wheeled me into a small room.

A surgeon waited there with gray at his temples and a mask pulled down around his neck.

He looked at the scan for a long time.

He looked at me.

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