Chapter 18: Say It

The monitor beeped twice before I could answer him.

"Stay," I said.

Matteo didn't move.

"Say the rest," he said. "I want it clear."

"Take my hand."

He did, slowly, with both of his.

His palms were hot and rough, and they shook around mine.

I looked at our hands on the white sheet and I let myself have it.

"I'm still angry," I said.

"You should be."

"I'm going to be angry for a long time."

"I'll be here for all of it."

"I know." I turned my head on the pillow. "I knew that on the sidewalk."

He bent over the bed and put his forehead against our joined hands.

I felt him breathe in and out against my knuckles.

"There's something else," I said. "The doctor."

"What about her?"

"Tell her yes. Tell her I'll take the blood."

He lifted his head.

"Yours, not mine," I said. "His. If it's good enough."

"Nora. You said you'd die first."

"I changed my mind. It's allowed."

"Why?"

I thought about Fiorenza's kitchen and the thermometer, and the nurse who had said it twice.

"Because I want to be here," I said. "And because Nonna says a debt is only a book somebody keeps."

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half something else.

The gray-braided doctor came in an hour later with a tablet in her hand.

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