Page 65 of Precious Hazard (Perfectly Imperfect #11)

Voices. Several. Distinct. Everyone is speaking at the same time. It’s hard to decipher what they are actually saying. Everything sounds muffled, as if veiled by a dense fog. Their energy, though, is unmistakable. Alarm. Haste.

Where am I? What’s going on?

One voice in particular rises above the others.

It’s loud. Way too loud. Booming out commands.

I know that voice. I’ve heard it angry. Soothing.

Turned on. But now, there is a quality to it that’s unfamiliar.

It’s shaky. Breaking on certain words. That’s…

odd. My husband’s voice never shakes. Dear God, is he alright?

“Fucking floor it, Nino! Faster, or I swear I’m going to fucking kill you with my own hands!”

Oh. He’s spitting out multiple curses in the same breath.

Something bad did happen. There’s no way he’d cuss this much otherwise.

Not with other people around, at least. At me, because I’m awesome at driving him bonkers, that’s normal.

I guess I have a way of bringing out the devil in him. With others, he always refined.

“Shit. The bleeding won’t stop. Fuck, baby, hang on.” A hand strokes my cheek. “Don’t you fucking dare leave me, gattina .” A hard press of lips to mine. Quivering lips. Yet, still, so familiar. Except for the salty taste they leave behind. “Get us to that fucking hospital already!”

Images start flashing through my mind. Short clips, like brief scenes from a movie trailer.

The sounds are so jumbled that I can’t connect them to the plot.

Gunfire. Running. A ringing phone. Glass, breaking over and over.

The overwhelming smell of smoke. Flames.

Flashing, twisting, climbing. Over drapes, the floor, up the walls.

So mesmerizing, but frightening at the same time.

Then, darkness. A man. A man with a gun in the window. Pain.

How strange. I don’t feel it anymore.

Not the pain. Not the heat. Not the— Wait, was that real?

“How much longer, Nino?”

“Less than ten minutes. Keep pressure on the wound.”

My husband. My husband in the midst of the flames. Like Satan himself, unfazed by the fire, he runs to me through the raging storm. Did he really barge into a burning house? To save me? Nah. Must be another dream.

“Ten minutes, baby.” His lips are on mine again. “You need to hold on. Ten more minutes and we’ll be there. Please, please hold on.”

His voice sounds strange. The tone is… pleading. I’ve never heard Arturo plead for anything before. As I crack my lids open, my vision blurs, but I make out my husband as he leans over me. His hair is beyond disheveled, and there are black and red smears all over his frantic-looking face.

He looks like shit.

“ Gattina ?” he chokes out.

Mmm, I love it when he calls me that. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and purr. That would be nice because I’m so, so cold. And my eyelids feel so heavy. A little nap would be so good right now.

“No. No! NO!” Fingers spear through my hair at the back of my head. “Stay with me. Open your eyes, baby!”

I want to. I want to so much. But it’s hard.

“Please, Tara. Look at me.”

Damn, he’s persistent.

“I’ll kill Drago!”

What?

“I swear, if you don’t open your eyes, I’ll kill your brother.” His voice shakes so much that it’s definitely breaking. Kinda puts a damper on the threatening vibe.

“You’re… full of shit, Arturo,” I whisper, lifting my lids just a crack.

“I know.” He nods.

His face is so close. Right in front of mine. Swaying a little. I must be imagining things because his eyes are red and puffy, and it looks like there’s moisture on his cheeks.

My hand feels as if it weighs a ton, but with the last speck of my strength, I raise it. Trace my fingers across the whisker-roughened skin. It is wet.

“Why are you crying?”

He smiles. A sad smile. A smile that never reaches his dark, glossy eyes.

“I can’t imagine my life without you, gattina . Please, don’t leave me,” he rasps.

My fingers feather over his lips, over that soft little smile. A smile that I wanted to be part of my very own happily ever after.

“Your shiny armor is showing,” I whisper just as the lights go out.

One minute and forty-seven seconds.

Eternity.

That’s the span of time I burned in hell as my wife lay dead on the operating table after she flatlined. Until CPR and epinephrine restarted her heart. Until mine resumed its beating.

She died.

My wife died.

“I need a clamp. Now!” Ilaria’s voice booms across the operating room. “Shit. She’s bleeding too much. We’ll need another bag of O neg.”

“That’s the last one we have, doctor.”

My head snaps toward the nurse who uttered those words. “What?”

“We used up our supply on Riggo. He was crashing, so there was no time to get him tested before he was rushed into the OR.”

“Then test Tara and give her the right blood!”

“We already did. She’s O negative. She can’t receive any other type.”

O negative. Like me. “Get the blood extraction kit,” I bark. “You’re going to take my blood and give it to her.”

“Direct blood transfusions are not done, Mr. DeVille. It’s too risky. The donated blood needs to be tested and processed before it can be given to the patient.”

“More risky than my wife dying of blood loss?” I roar. “Bring the kit!”

“Doc?” She throws a scared look at Ilaria.

“Do it,” Ilaria says without taking attention off her work. “Just one unit. He’s wounded too and can’t give more than that.”

I drop into the chair after dragging it to the observation window overlooking the OR so I can continue watching over Tara on the operating table and then start rolling up my sleeves.

A technician rushes in, bringing the necessary supplies for blood collection.

Once everything is set up and she has me prepped, she inserts the needle into a vein in my left arm.

The blood starts flowing, and she’s just about to take off when I extend my other arm.

“Now, the right one,” I order.

“But, the doctor said—”

“Fucking do it!”

She swallows, nods, and rushes off for another extraction kit. I start pumping my fist to make the blood flow faster. Still, the process feels painstakingly slow.

Once the tech has the second needle in me, and another bag is slowly filling, I sit there—desperate—watching the don’s mother as she tries to save my wife.

Minutes feel like hours until the first bag is full and the tech rushes it over to the operating room.

She returns to check my progress and eventually takes the second filled bag away.

“Let’s get you finished here,” she says when she pops back in.

“No. Take two more. And then another round. Whatever blood my wife needs, you take from me. Do it.”

“Mr. DeVille. You’ve already donated twice as much as medically allowed. And that’s ignoring the fact that you are wounded. I can’t possibly—”

“I’m going to take that needle,” I rasp, “and dig it into your fucking eye! Do as I tell you!” I kick the stool the tech sat on while she worked on me, and it flies across the observation room, hitting the nearby wall. “Draw my blood! Right now!”

“Get your shit together, Arturo!” Ilaria snaps from the operating room, her voice carried by the two-way intercom speaker. “I won’t have both of you die on my watch.”

“If my wife dies, Ilaria, I can assure you: no one present will leave that OR alive. You have my word on that.” I give the tech a pointed look. “And that includes you.”

“Hook the idiot up,” Ilaria yells. “You can drain him dry for all I care. Damn lunatic.”

By the time the second set of blood bags is full, the tech is semi-hysterical.

She’s frantic over the drop in my blood pressure, and my elevated heart rate.

I do feel lightheaded, and my breathing is shallow, but I’ll fight all the demons in hell not to pass out.

The stupid woman doesn’t understand that I’d give the very last drop of my blood for a chance that Tara might live.

My vision is getting blurry. Sweat soaks my skin. I hear Ilaria holler to get a Ringer’s lactate solution IV in me. As more people buzz around me, more tubes get connected to my arms, my eyes lock on the OR monitors, and I listen for even the teeniest change in the beat of Tara’s heart.

Each time a machine triggers an alarm, a cold shiver runs down my spine, and my lifespan gets shortened by another ten years. Still, I keep watching, trying to catch glimpses of my wife.

Tara, come back to me.

“Arturo.” Ilaria’s voice pulls me out of my daze.

It’s a struggle to even move my head enough to meet her eyes through the glass. “Yes?”

“There was damage to major blood vessels, and she sustained a shattered rib. The bullet also nicked her right lung. In the end, she needed three and a half units of blood…”

I’m suddenly not able to take a full breath.

Swallow.

Wait for the prognosis.

“If her recovery progresses as planned, your wife will need to endure many decades of your annoying behavior. Unfortunately, I can’t prescribe her anything for that.”