Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Awake

I had meant to write Philip's name.

The pen stopped above the paper, and I looked up instead.

Through the narrow glass panel in the door, Adriano sat on a hard chair in the corridor.

The Don of the Scalise family never waited for anyone.

He had been in that chair for seven hours, and he had not taken one call.

I wrote the surgeon's name on the line.

He watched the form leave the room, and he didn't ask me a single question.

They came to wheel me out at five.

He got up and walked beside the bed as far as the double doors.

"Open your hand," he said.

I opened it, and he laid something small and worn in my palm.

It was a subway token, rubbed smooth at the edges.

"Where did you get this?"

"You put it in my coat pocket when you were nineteen. The day we went to Pier Seven."

I remembered the pier, and the wind, and nothing about a token.

"What did I say?"

"That a man should always carry one way home he paid for himself."

My throat closed.

"Hold on to it," Adriano said. "You can give it back when you're awake."

The doors swung shut between us.

They had shaved a strip of my hair and numbed my scalp, and they put my head in a frame.

I felt pressure and tugging and no pain at all.

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