Page 4 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

His breathing stays steady even when I probe the wound.

It's the kind of steadiness that is not learned in yoga.

“What is your pain at?” I ask.

He considers the number system like It's a trick. “Four.”

“Optimist,” I say, and the corner of his mouth moves.

The cops are still there when we wheel him to imaging, and they are still there when we bring him back.

They hover just enough to catch names without hearing context.

They ask a nurse who is not me whether the John Doe bracelet is necessary.

She points at the policy sheet taped to her desk and smiles with all her teeth.

In Trauma Two, I set up to redo what someone did with less light and less training.

The lidocaine has taken hold. I dress the wound with the kind of neatness the back room deserves even if the world outside does not.

The needle slips through flesh with a small resistance.

My fingers move.

My brain hums.

The room falls away to the quiet where I live most peacefully, the single task of putting something back together that wishes it could stay broken.

“You are very calm,” the patient says, almost under the sound of the machines.

I tie a knot and cut it clean. “I'm drinking coffee that has been reheated three times. Calm is my only option.”

He huffs a small breath that might be a laugh if he did it when the cops were not watching.

He turns his head to look at the ceiling, then back to me.

For a second, his gaze drops to my name badge.

The name catches there like it's familiar.

Maybe he has bought bread from my Uncle Sal’s bakery.

Maybe we stood on the same sidewalk for the Feast of San Gennaro and watched the saints go by.

In this neighborhood, you can be strangers for twenty years and still know the shape of a person’s back.

“Thank you, Elisa,” he says.

My name on his tongue is gentle.

It should not be.

“Don't thank me yet,” I say. “I still plan to make you walk before I let you leave. If you faint, I'm putting a sticker on your discharge papers that saysDramatic.”

The tech laughs out loud behind his mask.

The patient’s eyes warm by a fraction.