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thirty-three

M A S S I M O

Everything happened so fast after that. One minute I'm in the base with Christopher, Dominic, and Lucien. The next minute I'm in a hospital waiting room, patiently waiting for my baby to get out of surgery.

"We rushed Miss Young into surgery. She came in with extreme internal bleeding as well as a neck fracture."

That's what one of the surgical team members told me after they received word that her guardian arrived.

"Sir, I am not going to sugar coat this for you. Miss Young's neck fracture could potentially lead to paralysis. We will do everything we can to preserve her mobility."

"Is it fatal?" I asked the young doctor, my voice trembling and tears dripping down my cheeks.

"We will do everything in our power, sir."

She left after that. She left us all alone, with no indication whether or not Flo will be okay. We were left to wait in a room filled with people exactly like us. People who has their loved ones laid on an operating room table. They pray and wait. They pray—to whichever God they believe in—that the head surgeon won't walk up to them and tell them that they did everything they could and that they are so sorry for their loss.

They are me.

I pray to God for the first time in my life. How pathetic I feel, not believing all my life that there is a greater power somewhere out there. Someone or something watching over us and answering our prayers. I've never spoken to a god, prayed, or believed, but I would turn the world upside down for my baby Florence. Even if it means praying to a God I never wanted to believe existed. I have done bad things. I couldn't stop, it was my job, it was how I kept my family alive. And if I believed in a God somewhere out there, I knew that he would look down on me and see a pathetic sinner. A murderer who was "forced" into the vile job. A sinner who only prays when it's convenient for him.

Now here I am, a non-believer pulling at strings, just desperate to know, hear, feel, see, anything, that would tell me that Florence will be okay. A sign would be nice, but all I am met with is silence.

My brothers all sit close by. They look like they are thinking. They try to keep up this facade that they aren't scared, like our sister isn't currently in a life threatening condition. Yet we all sit here, thoughtful on the outside, and a crumbling mess of overthinking, self-hatred, and just pure misery.

God isn't answering my prayers. Probably because I left our frail father in the middle of the street after threatening to kill him.

After we stepped outside the base the clouds shifted so fast, faster than a snap of my fingers. A low rumble broke out across the sky, a strong gust of wind shaking the leaves high up in the trees. It started off with little drips of rain. We had watched the ambulance pull away, and I looked to Christopher. And I erupted, just like the thunder erupted across the fast moving black clouds.

"This is your fault," I snapped, as soon as the ambulance was out of sight. "You, you started all of this."

"Massimo stop, I am your father," Christopher raises his voice, he gets defensive.

"Oh really? It's not your fault?" I laugh. Not a happy laugh, but ones of those laughs that you are just broken, hiding the pain, trying not to believe what you're hearing.

"Yeah it's not," the old man stands up to me, pointing his finger. "I didn't know Florence was here! I didn't know anything! I thought you were all safe."