The Don's Doctor

You Have Shaped My Entire Life

Chiara's POV

My eyelids are fluttering, but the tiredness is difficult to break through, and the dull ache behind them is making me wish I could drift back to sleep. Flashes of unfamiliar colours and objects seep into my awareness. Black with gold flecks of pattern on the bedside table shines with expense, and my hands brush against a suede headboard. The quilt feels weighted, as if I have been insulated with a protective layer, but nothing is more surprising than when I roll on to my back only to find my reflection staring back at me. A mirror is fixed to the ceiling. Reactively, I scoff at the crudeness of it, the self-absorption that would compel a person to place a mirror in such a position, but my ethical objection to it is soon overtaken as my vision focuses. I stare at the thick purple band of bruises around my neck, and the horrors from the hospital drip through my memory like a fluid bag restoring images I wish I could forget. I’m gasping. My recall of the attack is so vivid and sharp that with each fractured snapshot I can feel the lanyard cutting into my skin. Scanning my eyes across the room, I look for something to focus on. I’m halted by the feline-like eyes that somehow keep me fixed on the present. The unforgiving glare pushes the fear to the side, a shimmer of being held in his arms stops my panic. We are suspended somewhere between possibility and reality, and at this moment his control over both realms keeps me from falling into the hysterical realisation that I nearly died today. I’m safe while being in the presence of the most dangerous man in New York.

He stalks across the room to the bed, perching on the edge of it. His face is contorted with anger, guilt and pain. I want to tell him that it is OK, but I can’t. If I hadn’t come to his house last night, that man would never have hunted me down. I can’t forgive that. Pausing in my anger, I remember the words ‘we didn’t know he had a daughter’, and it occurs to me that Vincent might not be directly to blame.

“I’m sorry this happened. You weren’t followed, so I’m not sure how he connected you to me.” He sounds apologetic, and I wish I could console him, but I need to know one thing about him before I share what I know.

“Did you smash the glass into his face?” I’m horrified by my croaky voice, and the pain that cuts into my throat.

Silence.

I’m about to give up, when I see his one quick nod. Gulping, I recognise that I don’t want to associate such violence with the man who has clearly been watching over me all night, with a man that is so capable of concern. Logic tells me I have to handle the facts, surgeons don’t operate on emotion. I look away from him, indicating my opinion of him.

“I don’t think it was your fault. The patient was fine with me until he saw the name on my security card. It happened because I am my father’s daughter. That was why a man that I was helping decided to kill me. However, you made him the doctor to the Don, and that is the start of all this, so you are right: you should feel sorry. I hate that you convinced my father to join you, I hate that I filled his place from a sense of loyalty, and I hate that every patient I have ever lost has come from a feud between you and the other ‘families’ of New York. I blame you for my father needing to send me to boarding schools as a child, because he must have realized that he was in too deeply. I thought my childhood came from my papa’s insistence that I had a good education and my success made him proud. Today I learnt it was a handy solution for him to continue his dealings with you. Indirectly, you have shaped my entire life, and I only met you yesterday.”

His expression goes from concern to crestfallen, then to immediate anxiety when I start to cough and splutter after straining my vocal cords so forcefully. Gently, Don Vincent takes the burden of my weight, cupping the back of my head, and brings the glass of water to my lips. Our eyes are pinned on each other, but I don’t feel like his prey, I feel like his equal and that thought is the scariest one of the night.

“Are you in pain?” He asks.

“A little, it’s a heavy ache mostly, but it’s sharp when I swallow,” I answer.

Offering me two painkillers, he drops them into the water to dissolve.

“Your father said these would be easier for you to take.” He pushes the glass in my hand, urging me to end my discomfort.

“You brought my father here?”

He nods, as if it should have been obvious, and for a fraction of a second I look at him as if he is a hero. Funny how focusing on different stages of the story can warp your opinion. I’m looking at him like he’s saved us from a fire, while ignoring the fact that he lit it.

“Why did you put me in your bedroom?” I ask, instantly regretting it as the flame in my throat roars.

His long pause before replying makes me nervous. It seems he doesn’t know how to answer, and for a while I watch all the reasonable and unreasonable justifications flitter across his changing expressions. The dichotomy between how guarded he was the first time I saw him and how open he was being now astonishes me.

“I don’t know. At the time, I wanted to take you to the safest place possible. On reflection, I think being responsible for your death in any way will be one of the few atrocities that I could never recover from, so I needed to keep you near.” His moment of honesty is too short-lived. “How did you know it was my room?” He questions me sharply.

I simply point to the mirror on the ceiling.

His cheeky smile is ovary shattering. I’m shocked, as if I have just seen the rarest comet shoot across the sky only to be seen once in a lifetime by a lucky few. He stands up to leave the room, but his scowl has resumed when he looks back to check on me one more time, before gently closing the door.

Pulling the blanket over me, I turned on to my side, having seen enough of my reflection. On the side table is an old photograph. A young Vincent, with a younger Viviana and their father with the exact features as his children. Next to them, covered in sand, stands a beautiful woman, her head thrown back, laughing. It was with sorrow that I realised that the love and joy in his life was trapped in the photo frame, frozen in an unreachable time. On closer inspection, their faces seemed so familiar. They were younger versions of the man and woman who had died in my care eighteen months ago.