Page 136 of In Ruins
I’m hoping and praying for a miracle here. I don’t know if any of what I just said is true, and that terrifies me.
The helicopter lands a second later, on the roof of the building where the clinic is. As soon as the doors open, they take her away from me, laying her down gently on a stretcher before rushing with her through the doors.
Luca gets out first, and I follow behind him, stumbling my way out of the helicopter. He grabs onto my shoulder to keep me from falling flat on my face because right now, everything is a blur of lights and voices that sound way too distorted and far away for me to make sense of anything.
“Enzo!” Luca snaps, lightly slapping me on the face to get my attention.
“Yeah?” I ask as he shakes me a bit since he’s standing in front of me with both of his hands on my shoulder.
“Stay with me and keep it together, man! We got her here, and the doc is going to take good care of her. But I need you to snap out of whatever the fuck trance you’ve gone into because you need to be strong for my sister and niece or nephew,” he says. It takes a moment, but his words penetrate through my head.
“Girl. We’re having a girl. So, you’ll be getting a niece,” I murmur.
“That’s it. Stay with me, man. I can’t wait to meet her. Can you?” he asks, talking to me to try and get me out of whatever haze I’m under.
“Hell no! I’ve been waiting impatiently to meet my daughter.”
“Well, I hope it won’t be too much longer,” he says. I look him in the face since we’re the same height, my vision and mind snapping back into focus. “You here with me?”
“Yeah. I’m here. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. If the roles were reversed, I’d be the same as you right now,” he offers.
That’s when I look around and see that it’s just him, Aldo, and me, standing here.
“Where’s my wife?” I ask, desperation coating my voice, after finally coming back to my senses.
“They took her down. Come on, let’s go,” he tells me, heading for the elevator as I follow behind him. He presses the button for one of the floors, and the door closes as we begin descending.
I look down at my hands to see them covered in my wife’s dried blood. Fuck! I hope she’s okay.I could not find a worse time to space the fuck out! And now I’m mad at myself.
When the elevator doors open into the waiting room, I step right up to the nurse’s station.
“Where’s my wife?” I ask.
“One of the doctors will be here in just a moment, Mr. Andretti. If you can just have a seat and wait—” the nurse says, and I cut her off before she can even finish.
“I don’t want to wait!” I snap. “I want to know what’s going on with my wife!”
“Sir—”
“Sorry about him. We’re all just worried, but we’ve got him,” Luca says, pointing to himself and Aldo before he drags me away from the nurse’s station and pushes me down into one of the chairs.
“You know that this clinic is basically running because of us, right?”
“Yeah. What’s your point?”
“My point is that you need to trust that they’re doing everything they can for her, otherwise they all know they’d be dead.”
“You’re right. I’m glad we have highly trained medical professionals working for us.”
Before he can say anything else, I see one of the doctors walking our way, and I stand to greet him.
“Good morning, Mr. Andretti,” he says. Shit! I didn’t even realize it was already early morning.
“Where’s my wife? What’s happening?”
“Dr. Wilson had to take your wife into the operating room. Mrs. Andretti was unconscious and bleeding a lot when she was rushed in, which pointed toward a placental abruption. To avoid further fetal distress, especially with the other injuries she suffered, the doctor is performing an emergency C-section.”
