From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: OR One, Again
Adriana wakes on the morning she died, spots the taped blood bag before the whole family and refuses it. Tancredi holds a gun on a soldier for her and says: save him, then tell me how you knew.
I woke on the morning the family I worked for burned, and my hands were warm and mine.
The first thing on my phone was a text from the ER director.
"Adriana Pellegrino, OR One, now. The Don is coming in with a gunshot wound. The family is already in the gallery."
I had read that text once before.
Last time I answered it, I was dead four days later.
I was at the scrub sink of the family hospital before the ambulance doors had finished opening.
A man stood beside the sink in a black suit.
He was the Don's son, Tancredi, and nobody stood in a scrub room in a suit unless he wanted the room to know it.
He held out a pair of sterile gloves.
"Six and a half," he said.
That was my size.
Nobody in the building knew it except the woman in supply, and I had never said it to him.
I took them.
His eyes stayed on my face a moment too long. Then he stepped back and let me pass.
The Don lay on the table in OR One with a bullet low in his right chest.
Above us, behind the glass, the family stood in rows. His brother was in the center, with two soldiers at his shoulders.
The chief resident stood next to me in scrubs, my friend for six years.
Her name was Bianca, and she squeezed my arm. "I hung his blood myself. Two units, O negative. All you have to do is cut."
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't second-guess anything today, Adri. I've got your back."
She was warm, and she smelled like the lemon soap we both used.
Last time I had said thank you, too.
Last time the Don's pressure fell four minutes after the transfusion started, and nothing I did brought it back.
By dinner, the family had decided the fault was mine.
I picked up the scalpel and put it down again.
I looked at the blood bag instead.
The label said O negative. The unit was cold and the right color.
There was a ring of clear tape around the port at the bottom.
Our blood bank never tapes a port. A bag that has been taped has been opened.
I felt every face behind the glass.
This was the moment I had to choose, and I knew it.
If I stayed quiet, I was a scapegoat again.
So I unhooked the line.
"Nobody touch the patient's line," I said, loud enough for the intercom. "This bag has been opened. Somebody put something in it."
Bianca's hand fell from my arm.
"Adri," she said softly. "It came straight from the bank. Check the tag."
"I'm checking the tape."
The gallery woke up. The Don's brother, Ignazio, hit the glass with his open hand, and the speaker crackled with his voice.
"Doctor, you stand over my brother and call my daughter a poisoner?"
"I'm calling this bag a poisoned bag," I said. "Marta, get me two fresh units from the fridge. I'll hang them myself."
The scrub nurse, Marta Valenti, was already moving.
One of Ignazio's soldiers came through the OR door with his gun out.
"Step away from the table."
"If I step away, he bleeds out," I said. "You can shoot me after."
"Do it," Ignazio said through the speaker.
The soldier raised the gun.
Then something moved in the scrub room doorway.
Tancredi crossed the floor and put his own pistol against the soldier's ear.
He did not raise his voice. He never did.
"Put it down."
The soldier looked up at the gallery for orders, and nobody gave him any.
He lowered the gun.
Tancredi took it out of his hand and dropped it in the sharps bin.
Then he turned to me.
Up close, his face had no anger in it at all, only tiredness.
"Operate," he said.
"Yes."
He bent his head toward mine, so that the microphones could not take the next part.
"Save him, Dottoressa. Then you're going to tell me how you knew about the bag."
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