Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Terrible Soup

The pathology report was worse than anyone had hoped.

The surgeon had taken out most of what she could see, and the bleeding had stopped.

But the cancer had already spread along the nerve fibers.

I would need six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy before the doctors could decide whether I qualified for a vaccine trial.

I heard all of it with a bandaged head and a plastic cup of water in my hand.

Adriano heard it standing at the foot of my bed.

He didn't speak until the surgeon had gone.

"Six weeks," he said. "Then I'll be here for six weeks."

He canceled every appointment he had in New York and handed the daily business to Bruno.

He rented a plain apartment across the street from the hospital and came to my room every morning at seven with breakfast.

The first morning, it was oatmeal.

I took one spoonful and put the spoon down.

"It's salt," I said.

"It's not."

He tasted it. His face did not change, but he set the bowl on the tray with great care.

"It's salt," he agreed.

The second morning, he brought chicken soup with a whole uncut onion floating in it.

On the third morning I lost patience and told the nurse to inform him that there was a cafeteria downstairs.

The next day he arrived with a brand new cookbook, a yellow note stuck to the cover.

"A Don can be trained."

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, and it hurt my stitches.

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