Chapter 7 - The Emergency Ward
"Claire! Did they touch you?! Are you hurt?!"
Alexander fell to his knees in the dirty snow before me, his hands hovering over my arms, trembling violently, terrified that touching me might break something fragile.
His face was pale as death, his white shirt stained with engine grease and blood from the mercenary's jaw.
The invincible, terrifying Mafia Don was shivering like a terrified child on the pavement.
"I... I'm not hurt, Alexander," I whispered, my teeth chattering from the sheer, paralyzing shock of the ambush.
Then, a sharp, searing cramp tore through my lower abdomen, taking the breath straight from my lungs.
I gasped, my knees buckling beneath my knit dress as a wave of intense, blinding pain shot down my spine.
"Claire!" Alexander caught me before my knees hit the snow, lifting me effortlessly into his arms against his chest.
"Nathan! Call the trauma unit at Northwestern Memorial right now!" Alexander roared, running toward Nathan’s sedan.
"Clear the expressway! Tell the state police if anyone stops this vehicle, I will execute the commissioner myself!"
He laid me across the back seat of Nathan’s car, climbing in beside me, pulling my head onto his lap, wrapping his arms around my shivering frame.
"Breathe, baby. Please breathe," he begged, tears streaming down his face, soaking into my hair.
"Stay with me, Claire. Look at me. Look into my eyes."
I looked up into his face through the tears blurring my vision, seeing the raw, agonizing terror that had completely stripped away his pride.
"Alexander... the baby," I wept, clutching his forearm as another violent cramp gripped my uterus.
"The baby is going to be fine! I swear it on my soul!" he cried, kissing my forehead, my eyelids, my trembling knuckles.
"Take my life, God! Don't take them! Take me!"
Sirens wailed in the distance as Nathan pushed the sedan through red lights, speeding along the shoulder of the Eisenhower Expressway at ninety miles an hour.
Within twelve minutes, the car screeched into the private emergency bay of Northwestern Memorial.
Six trauma physicians and obstetric surgeons were already waiting on the tarmac with a specialized mobile incubator and stretcher.
They transferred me onto the gurney, wheeling me frantically through the double doors toward the surgical wing.
Alexander ran beside the gurney, his hand clamped tightly around mine, refusing to let go until two security officers and the chief of surgery blocked the operating theater threshold.
"Sir, you cannot enter the sterile field!" the surgeon shouted.
"That is my wife and my son!" Alexander screamed, his voice breaking into a ragged, bloody sob.
"If they die in that room, Doctor," Alexander whispered, his eyes hollow with madness,
"There won't be enough earth in Illinois to bury what I do to this hospital."
"Let us save them, Mr. Moretti!" the doctor pleaded.
May you like
The heavy steel doors slammed shut, locking Alexander out in the cold, fluorescent corridor.
He stood staring at the red emergency light above the lintel, dropped to his knees on the linoleum, and buried his face in his bloody hands, weeping alone in the dark.
