Vincent's POV
I am at a complete loss. I know she is crying about more than the cat, she has just seen two men killed, and part of her processing that trauma is to purge the emotion, but that doesn’t mean I am unable to react to it: I feel really guilty. Thinking back, I know that I had let the red cloud take over again. This time was so much different, I didn’t even see the rage bleed into my vision, it appeared immediately, and I know that was because I was afraid for her safety. The moment I felt the comforting weight of her on my back, the red mist instantly disappeared. There was no ebbing away, or blinding headache to follow, the peace of having her near put a stop to my lack of control.
When we park in front of the house, Chiara swings the door open and storms towards Renzo’s car. Pointing to the medical facility my father had built, it was clear what direction we were all heading in. Regimental in her approach, she scrubs her hands and I do the same, so that I can snap the gloves on her without contaminating them. It is strange how much I love that this is my ordained role, as she begins her miracles.
“Look up!” She orders Renzo, who closes his eyes against the bright light, but is clearly mad at her for telling me that I had hit him.
Using her small tweezers, she grips the thread and begins to suture. Her method is precise, and her stitches are small, far more accurate than her father’s technique. Above the injury, her hands rhythmically dance, and I am fixated on the beauty of them. Eventually, she reaches out for the scissors and cuts the thread.
“It shouldn’t scar, and it will be hidden by your brow line, so you won’t notice it. I’ll take the sutures out when they're healed. I’m just going to sterilise the surgical forceps and suture needle. I would have used the dissolvable ones, but there aren’t any left.” She explains, before pushing the stool away.
“Thank-you.” He responds with very little sincerity.
I was about to intervene and insist he be more respectful, but she turns as if she were the Goddess Juno herself.
“I know that you are mad at me for telling him the truth, but by not telling him, you are hurting him more. He is leaving reality to cope with the trauma he is both inflicting and harbouring. When you are ‘protecting’ him, you are supporting this dangerous coping mechanism. He needs to fight back against the rage he feels, he needs to build up mental walls that will stop him reverting to this habit. He is a man, not a beast. If you are his friend, you would remind him of that!” She shouts at him, before turning her back and slamming her instruments into the steriliser.
Renzo looks frozen. I don’t think he has ever been spoken to like that before, but beneath the shock is the beginnings of a deep respect for her. They may have been helping me from different angles, but their agenda is the same. I indicate that he should leave us, and he walked towards the door, but we both smiled in mutual agreement, remembering our vow to protect her.
Watching her throw her equipment in the bin, and bang the surfaces as she cleans up reminds me of when my mother would be angry with one of us, and would create a percussion ensemble in the kitchen when we were children.
“Why are your stiches so different from your father’s stitches?” I asks her in the hope it will distract her, but to my surprise, she only becomes rougher with the items closest to her.
“He is a GP, and I am a trauma surgeon, mostly it’s to do with practise.” She answers, shortly.
“What made you want to be a trauma surgeon?” I try again, keeping her father out of the conversation.
“Well, when I was a resident, I got the chance to have a ride along in the ambulance. We pulled up at a multi-collision pile-up. Panic was clouding everyone’s judgment, but for some reason efficiency was my dominant response. I triaged as many people as I could, arranged for those who were critical to be taken to the hospital first. Being on scene is the worst part of the treatment process, because there’s no pain relief yet, people are screaming and begging for help, and the ones that scream loudest are usually the ones you see last. The silent patients are the ones who need help first, they are nearer to death. Anyway, some of the people were hindered by vehicles, and rather than notice the bleeding and the screaming, all I could see were the solutions like a jigsaw, ways to free them and help them. When I returned to the hospital, my attending pointed out that it was a specialism that I had thrived in. Since that day, it has always been my aim to be a trauma surgeon. All my other specialism rotations didn’t grip me like I had been enthralled that day. The thing is, when I help someone, I keep them alive, and have to accept that my time with the person will never look like the end result. Patients are usually transferred to other specialist surgeons. I stop them from bleeding out. I pull them from the jaws of death, but isn’t that life in its most honest presentation, to stand-by and accept someone at their most vulnerable point, rather than celebrating them at their best?” She explains, and I am shocked by her candour, but realise she finds it easy to talk about what she loves.
I wonder how she knows so much about the mind. Had it been part of her psychiatric rotation? The thought that she is looking at me like one of her patients, doesn’t sit comfortably with me and I can feel myself withdrawing.
“You know that accepting that you need support with your feelings and anger isn’t a weakness. I learnt about disassociating when I killed my first patient. It was an accident, of course, and she was in a terrible condition, but I had cut before I was absolutely certain I knew what I was looking at, and my overconfidence made all other attempts to save her futile. I was a second year resident. I don’t remember telling her family. I don’t remember how I got home that night. What I do remember is the psychologist that helped me and gave me strategies that I still use. If you want my help, I could share them with you. Maybe if they work, you would be able to confront the blood on your hands.”
She turns her back to me and walks to the sink, scrubbing her hands clean. My father had always cautioned that actions that were made based on emotions were always bad decisions, and that a leader had to distance himself from a situation. In complete contrast to everything he had taught me, I have been letting the emotion overwhelm me, like a wave that is too high and ferocious to break free from. Emotions are so dense that it cuts off my ability to reason. Since my father and mother died, every decision I have made comes from the fear of loss. Retrospectively, I wonder if my dad had felt this, and was giving me the advice he knew I would need one day. He was risking his wife, children and empire every time he acted, and the fear must have plagued his thoughts, but he still made decisions looking at the entire chessboard, and not just the king and queen. He would be ashamed of the man I had become in my grief. He had sent me help, and I knew Chiara was the angel I needed.
“I would like your help, if you would be OK with that. I can’t tell you what I have done though.” I explain.
“I know you’d be worried that I would tell someone, but…”
“No, that’s not the reason. I don’t think you would ever look at me the way you did when we were pressed against the wall in the flat if you could see me for the monster I have become.” I confess, and it is one of my first fears that I have spoken aloud in a very long time.
Strangely, she smiles at me, before holding on to my hands, and pointing at my white shirt.
“I did see the monster in you today, and I am still here. Let me help you find who you are supposed to be.” She whispers.
I brush my thumb against her cheek bone, forgetting that I’m not supposed to show her how much I care for her. Stopping myself, before the need for her is too addictive to turn back. I rip my bloody shirt off, and throw it in the medical waste bag. She turns away, but not before I see her lips part in undiluted desire. If I was to make one more decision purely based on reason rather than emotion, it would be to have her not as a lover, but as my reason to strive for a better future.