Russo Blood Debt Chapter 02
The Empty Operating Room
I don’t know how long I’m down there. Long enough that the blood under me goes from warm to cold to warm again with the next contraction.
Long enough that I almost stop fighting the drug.
Then the door opens.
Not Gia. Not the soldier.
Dr. Marino — the Russo Family doctor, the one who delivered Marco, the one who’s been my OB for nine months. He sees me on the floor and his face goes the color of paper.
“Mrs. Russo? Madonna — Dante told me you were upstairs in the VIP suite —”
I can’t speak. I point at my stomach.
He drops to his knees and his hand goes between my legs and I hear him suck in a breath through his teeth.
“You’re fully dilated. Your water broke God knows when. We need to move now.”
He tries to lift me. The second I move, blood pours out of me in a hot rush and he almost drops me.
“Help!” he shouts down the hall. “Hemorrhage —”
Nothing.
This whole clinic belongs to the Russos. Tonight they cleared it for Bianca. Every nurse, every doctor, every orderly is on the third floor, holding her hand while she pushes out the future of the Family.
His phone has no signal in the basement.
He hauls me up. “Stay with me. Stay with me, cara.”
The stairwell is endless. Each step jolts the baby further down and not out. The drug is still in me — contractions come and go like a stutter. This is the worst possible way to deliver. I can feel her wedged.
“Doctor —” My voice is air. “Save the baby. Promise me.”
“You’re both walking out of here. Don’t talk.”
He kicks open the first-floor OR.
We both freeze.
The room is empty.
Not unstaffed. Empty. The surgical lights are gone. The table is gone. Monitors, anesthesia cart, crash cart — gone. There are bare outlets on the walls where machines used to be plugged in.
Marino makes a sound like he’s been punched.
“I checked this room six hours ago —”
Heels on tile. Gia rounds the corner with two nurses.
“Doctor. What are you doing down here? Bianca’s on three.”
He points at the empty room. His hand is shaking.
“Where is the equipment.”
Gia’s face is innocent. Beautifully innocent. She’s good at this.
“We moved it up. Bianca’s having a C-section. She needed the best of everything — what if there’s a complication? You can’t do major surgery in a regular OR.”
Her eyes drift to me. She smiles.
“Oh, is she in labor? She’ll have to wait. Bianca’s not done.”
I look up at her. This girl I bought a twelve-thousand-dollar Birkin for last spring. This girl who linked her arm through mine on Madison Avenue and called me the sister I never had.
I file her face away with Dante’s.
The list is getting longer.