Chapter 433: Where’s Mama?

"Weight?"

"I don’t know. Light."

"Is she able to swallow?"

"She drinks a little."

"Pulse?"

Dante crossed the room and knelt beside the couch. He took her wrist and counted against the clock on his phone. "Fast. A hundred and twenty. More."

"Her breathing?"

"Shallow."

"Listen to me carefully," the doctor said. "The medicine won’t reach her for some hours. Between now and then, there is a real chance she’ll have a seizure. If she does, this is what you do. You move anything hard away from her. You put something soft under her head. You turn her onto her side. You put nothing in her mouth. You do not hold her down. And you time it."

"Understood." Dante said.

"If it runs past five minutes, or comes back, you call an ambulance. I don’t care who you are or who is looking for you. Do you understand that?"

Dante looked at Isabella’s face, gray against the cushion.

"Yes," he said.

"Good. I’ll stay on the line."

"She hasn’t had one yet."

"I know," the doctor said. "Stay on the line anyway."

...

ISABELLA’S POV

The ceiling was the wrong shape.

She was sure of that, even though she couldn’t have said how it should look. It was too low and too pale, and the light came from the wrong side. In her room at the estate, the light came from the east, through the curtains her mother had chosen.

"Mama?"

Her voice sounded far away. She tried again, and the word came out as a breath.

"Mama?"

Someone was holding her hand. It was a large hand, warm and dry, and it was holding on very tightly.

"I’m here," a man said.

She turned her head, and the room swam. A face came out of it. Dark hair, a shadow of beard, eyes that didn’t look as if they’d closed in days.

"Dante," she said.

"Yes."

"Where’s Mama?"

"She isn’t here, amore."

"I want her."

"I know." His thumb moved over her knuckles. "I know you do."

"I can’t..." Her teeth were chattering. She clenched them and the pain shot up into her temple. "Everything’s too loud. My skin hurts. Why does my skin hurt?"

"It’s the medicine leaving you. It’ll pass."

"When?"

He didn’t answer right away. She watched him decide what to say.

"Soon," he said.

She knew that wasn’t an answer. She was too tired to say so.

A wave went through her, hot and then cold, and the room tilted. Somewhere beyond Dante’s shoulder she heard a voice on the table, small and tinny, saying something about her pulse. She tried to listen and lost the thread.

"Don’t leave," she said.

"I’m not going anywhere."

"Promise."

"I promise."

She closed her eyes. The ceiling, the light, the hand holding hers all went white at the edges, and then went away.

...

DANTE’S POV

It happened at eleven forty-eight.

He was sitting on the floor beside the couch with his back against it, one arm up on the cushion so he could feel her breathing. The phone lay on the rug beside his knee, on speaker. The doctor hadn’t spoken in ten minutes. He didn’t need to. Dante could hear him breathing.

Isabella’s hand, in his, went rigid.

He looked up. Her eyes were open but unfocused, staring at nothing. The muscles of her arm stood out in sharp lines under his fingers. Then her whole body stiffened, her back arched off the couch, and a sound came out of her that he would hear for the rest of his life.

"It’s started," Dante said.

"Time it," the doctor said, calm as a clock.

Dante pressed the screen. The seconds began to climb.

He got his arms under her and slid her off the couch onto the rug before she could hit the edge of the table, and pulled a cushion under her head. She was shaking violently now, her heels drumming against the floor, her teeth clenched. He pushed the table away with his foot, then the lamp.

"Turn her on her side," the doctor said.

Dante rolled her gently toward him, one hand under her shoulder and one on her hip. Her face was gray. A thin line of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth.

"Nothing in her mouth. Don’t hold her down. Keep the space clear."

"I’ve got her."

"How long?"

"Forty seconds."

"Stay with her." The doctor said.

He stayed. He knelt over her with his hand on her shoulder and said her name, over and over, quietly, because he didn’t know what else to do. He had stood in rooms with men dying. None of it had prepared him for this. He had never been so helpless in his life.

"One minute."

"Good," the doctor said. "Keep going."

"Isabella." His voice cracked on it. "Isabella, stay with me."

"A minute twenty."

Her body arched again, then began to slacken. The tremor eased. The drumming of her heels slowed and stopped.

"One minute fifty," Dante said. He stared at the clock. "It’s stopped."

"Is she breathing?"

He put his hand against her chest. It rose, and fell, and rose again.

"Yes."

"Good. Keep her on her side. She won’t wake right away. When she does she’ll be confused and very tired. That’s normal."

Dante let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. His hand was shaking, and he pressed it flat against the rug to make it stop.

"If it comes again...." he began.

"Then you take her to a hospital," the doctor said. "No argument."

"I know." Dante replied.

"You do not hesitate."

"I won’t," Dante said. He looked down at her. Her hair was stuck to her forehead. Her mouth was slightly open. She looked younger than she had in days. "I won’t. If it comes again, I take her. I’ll walk through the front door of the nearest ward and put her in somebody’s hands, and I don’t care who sees me."

There was a pause on the line.

"Then she’s in good hands," the doctor said.