Chapter 50 Watching Her Work

Chapter 50 Watching Her Work
Dante's POV

He knew Costa was alive before he got to the hospital because Marco had eyes on the trauma bay entrance and had texted him forty minutes after Costa went in.

Alive. Your surgeon is working on him.

Your surgeon.

Dante had read that twice and then put his phone away and told Leone to drive to Sant'Angelo.

He hadn't called ahead. Hadn't told Aria he was coming. Costa was his man and his responsibility and he needed to know the situation directly rather than through intermediaries, that was the practical reason, and he held onto the practical reason for most of the drive over.

Leone pulled up outside and Dante went in through the side entrance that he'd learned three hospital visits ago was less observed than the main lobby. The corridors at this hour had the mid-morning energy of a place that had already been running for hours and had hours still to go, people moving with purpose, nobody paying attention to one more person walking through.

He found the trauma bay by the sound of it before he found it by sight.

Aria's voice. Not raised. Clear and specific, giving instructions with the particular efficiency of someone who didn't need volume because the words were doing enough on their own.

He stopped in the doorway.

The bay was organized chaos, the kind that only looked like chaos from the outside. Three nurses moving around the table. A resident on one side handling something with the shoulder. Aria on the other side, gloved and focused, working on the damage to Costa's midsection with the complete absorption of someone who existed only in the task in front of them.

Dante stood in the doorway and watched.

He'd seen her work once before, through a window, briefly. This was different. This was the full version, unobstructed, and it was nothing like watching someone do a job. It was watching someone be exactly what they were in the purest available version of themselves.

She didn't perform competently. She just was competent, the way some people just were things, and the people around her responded to it without being directed to. The resident on the shoulder moved when she needed him to move. The nurses anticipated what she'd ask for before she asked. The whole thing had the quality of something practiced to the point of becoming natural.

Costa was going to be fine.

Dante knew this before it was confirmed because he was watching the body language of the room and it had shifted from urgent to controlled fifteen minutes in.

He stayed anyway.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there. Long enough that his presence in the doorway had been noticed by at least two of the nurses, who'd glanced at him and then at each other and then chosen not to make it a problem, which he appreciated.

Aria hadn't looked up.

She was closing now, working methodically, talking through what she was doing for the resident's benefit in a tone that was instructional without being condescending, and Dante watched her hands and thought about the fact that those hands had been on his chest at various points over the past months, checking his heartbeat, adjusting electrodes, and once or twice for reasons that had nothing to do with medicine.

The same hands. Different versions of the same precision.

She stepped back from the table.

Said something to the resident. He nodded. The nurses began the process of moving Costa to whatever came next.

Aria pulled off her gloves and turned to reach for something on the supply cart behind her and that was when she saw him.

She went still for a half-second.

Then she looked at him across the trauma bay with an expression that moved through several things quickly before settling into something he couldn't entirely read.

He waited while the rest of the bay finished its business around her, the organized dispersal of a team after the immediate work was done. When most of them had moved out she crossed to the doorway where he was standing.

"Costa," he said.

"Stable. The shoulder is straightforward. The side was more involved but nothing that won't heal properly with time." She looked at him steadily. "He's going to be fine."

"I know. I could tell from the door."

She registered that. "How long were you standing there?"

"A while."

She looked at him for a moment. "You watched the whole thing."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Because you were busy," he said. "And because I wanted to watch."

Aria looked at him with the expression she used when she was deciding whether to push on something. She decided not to.

They moved out of the trauma bay doorway into the corridor, which was quieter, two people standing against the wall while the hospital went about its business around them.

"You never stop," he said.

"Stop what."

"Being exactly who you are regardless of the situation." He looked at her properly. Scrubs, hair pulled back, a small streak of blood on her cheek she probably didn't know was there. "Costa is my man. He came in because I sent him here. You knew that the moment he told you my name and you operated on him anyway."

"He needed surgery. That's not complicated."

"It is for most people."

"I'm not most people."

"No," he said. "You're not."

She looked away for a moment, watching a nurse cross the corridor with a medication tray. Then back at him. Something in his face had changed while she was looking away because she looked at him more carefully when she looked back.

"What," she said.

He reached out and put his thumb against her cheek, the streak of blood he'd been looking at for the past two minutes. Wiped it away gently. Her eyes tracked the movement but she didn't pull back.

He left his hand where it was for a moment.

Her face under his palm, blood smear gone, looking at him with those eyes that had been looking at him clearly from the first week and had never really stopped.

"Go save someone else," he said. "I'll be here when you're done."

Something shifted in her expression. Quiet and significant at once.

"You don't have to wait," she said.

"I know," he said.

She held his gaze for another moment. Then she straightened, the way she did when she was moving back into work mode, and she went back down the corridor without looking back, which was fine because he watched her go and she probably knew he was watching.

He leaned against the wall.

Pulled out his phone. Checked on Costa's room number through Marco. Sent two of his men to cover the corridor there, discreet enough to not alarm hospital staff, visible enough to make the point to anyone who might be considering a follow-up on what had happened to Costa.

The Marchetti situation was not finished.

He'd known that. This confirmed it.

"Mr. Moretti."

He looked up.

Elena Russo stood three feet away, in her white coat, hands in her pockets, looking at him with the particular expression she'd had every time she'd encountered him in this building. Assessment. Caution. Directness held in careful reserve.

"Dr. Russo," he said.

"I'd like a word." She tilted her head toward a door to his left. A small meeting room, the kind used for difficult conversations that needed to happen somewhere private. "If you have a moment."

It wasn't really a question.

"I have a moment," he said.

She held the door and he went in and she closed it behind them and stood with her back against it with the bearing of someone who had decided what they were going to say and had no intention of being talked out of it.

"I've been watching Aria since she came back this morning," Elena said. "She's doing what she always does, which is function at a high level regardless of what's happening in her personal life. She's good at that." She paused. "She's also doing what she always does when she's under serious pressure, which is not to tell anyone how serious it is."

Dante waited.

"I know what her father is," Elena said. "I know enough of what's happening to understand she's in the middle of something that most people wouldn't survive intact." She looked at him without flinching. "What I don't know is what your intentions are. Not in the romantic sense. In the practical sense. When this is over, when Bruno Salvini has been dealt with and the investigation is finished and the dust has settled, what does Aria's life look like."

"That's her question to answer," Dante said. "Not mine."

"It's both of yours. Whether you're willing to admit that or not." Elena held his gaze. "She has a career here that she's built from nothing over five years. A reputation that took the same amount of time and will take considerably less to destroy if her association with you becomes a public problem."

"I'm aware of that."

"Are you factoring it into your decisions?"

"Yes."

Elena studied him. The kind of study that reminded him she spent her career reading people in high-pressure situations and was very good at it.

"She's going to be fine," he said. "Whatever happens. I will make sure of that."

"That's a large promise."

"Yes," he said. "It is."

Elena was quiet for a moment.

"I told her this morning that I failed to protect her from Ricci," she said. "That I had suspicions I didn't act on and that was a failure of my responsibility to her." She paused. "I'm asking you directly so I don't have to have the same conversation with myself later. Are you going to hurt her."

Dante thought about it honestly rather than answering quickly.

"I already have," he said. "Earlier. The way this started." He held Elena's gaze. "I won't do it again. Not intentionally. And if I do it accidentally I won't pretend I didn't."

Elena looked at him for a long time.

"That's a more honest answer than I expected," she said.

"You asked an honest question."

She moved away from the door. "Costa is going to need follow-up care for at least two weeks. I'd appreciate it if his subsequent visits didn't bring armed men into my hospital corridors."

"Two men. Outside his room. They'll be invisible."

"They won't be invisible, but I'll choose not to see them." She opened the door. "Good morning, Mr. Moretti."

"Dr. Russo," he said.

She left.

Dante stood in the small meeting room for a moment.

Then he went and sat in the corridor outside Costa's room to wait for Aria to finish her shift, which by his estimate was another four hours at minimum.

He had four hours.

He got comfortable and pulled out his phone and worked.