Page 158 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
We slide in.
I put one hand on the dash, one hand over hers.
She squeezes like she’s remembering I’m made of bones.
“Breathe,” I tell her.
“I am,” she says. “You breathe.”
We take Henry to Atlantic to the bowels under the bridge.
Block after block of wreaths and last-minute shoppers with bags that say they made promises at the checkout.
It starts to snow like it heard the date and decided to commit.
At a corner by a church, a pageant spills into the crosswalk, three kings in bathrobes, a shepherd in sneakers, a baby doll wrapped in a towel and the proudest eight-year-old Mary I’ve ever seen.
A cop holds up a palm, his other hand occupied with a coffee that has a halo.
He looks at me, at Elisa, at our face of “don’t do this to us.”
He waves us through.
“Merry Christmas,” he says and then adds to Elisa, “You got this.”
“I do,” she says like a threat.
We slide into the St. Adrian’s bay with the kind of grace that means someone upstairs still likes me a little.
The guard on the stool—same one who has seen too much and not enough—takes us in with his eyes and stands like he remembers he can.
“Elevator’s clear,” he says. “And the volunteer choir is on ‘Silent Night’ if you believe in irony.”
Inside, the lobby is a crime scene of poinsettias and tinsel.
The volunteer Santa in the corner looks like he fought a snowblower and lost.
The nurses at the desk wear antlers like they’re a union.
Rizzo appears in a scrub top with a string of battery-powered bulbs blinking around her neck.
“About time,” she says, and then to me, “Don’t pace like a tragic husband from a black-and-white movie. It makes the interns cry.”
She wraps an arm around Elisa, already counting, already watching.
“You tell me if you need to sit. Or throw something. Preferably, not Nicholas.”
“Big target,” Elisa says through her teeth.
Dr. Conte materializes like she stepped out of a coat and into a mission.
Small woman, eyes that cut the nonsense away. “Merry Christmas,” she says. “Let’s have a baby before the choir hits the high note they can’t hit.”
Rafe presses a kiss to the top of Elisa’s hair and backs away like a man stepping out of a sacred circle.
Tino appears long enough to hand me a black coffee he knows I won’t drink.
He nods at Elisa with a solemnity that would be funny if I weren’t busy watching her face.
