Page 16 of The Mad Don
“The pain management —”
“The pain management,” I repeat, turning from the window, “is not managing the pain. I can see that from here. So what I’m asking you, and I’d like you to understand that I’m asking only once, is whether the treatment you are providing is making my sister better?”
The doctor’s hands tighten around his bag. He is a small man, competent on paper, with six years at Milan’s top surgical program and two fellowships. The confidence is mostly gone now. It has been for several weeks.
“There are limitations,” he begins, “to what medicine can —”
“I pay you forty thousand euros a month,” I say pleasantly. “I’m not paying you to explain limitations to me.”
Lucia coughs.
The sound of it feels like a blade. Every time she coughs and I see the way her whole thin body braces for it, something in my chest drops.
The doctor is talking again. Something about nerve blockers, about surgical options previously discussed, about how the original injury at the growth plate created a cascade that —
“I think,” I say, “that you might be a fraud.”
He stops. I reach under my jacket.
“The medication you prescribed last month,” I say, turning the gun over in my hand, “she said it wasn’t working. I told you that three weeks ago. You prescribed the same medication at a higher dose. She told me last week it still wasn’t working.” I look at him. “Are you hoping the problem goes away before you admit that you can’t solve it?”
“Don Mondi, I assure you —”
“Giovanni,” Lucia calls.
I fix my face, and I put the gun away. I turn and look at her.
She is looking at me from the bed with eyes that are too old for her face. Twenty-six years old, my sister, and she looks at me sometimes like she is watching something from a very far distance.
“Angel,” I say.
I whistle once, and Fabiano appears in the doorway with the soundlessness that is one of the few things I genuinely respect about him.
“Escort the doctor out,” I say. “Show him something about what happens if he doesn’t bring better news next time.”
“Please —” The doctor takes a step forward. “Don Mondi, I have a family —”
Fabiano takes him by the arm and moves him toward the door, and the doctor is now pleading. Outside the door, there is a crack, a thud, the acoustics of a body meeting a wall, and the doctor screams before he is quiet.
I sit on the edge of the bed carefully, on her good side, and I take her hand in both of mine. Her fingers are cold. They are always cold now; she runs cold like a candle that is almost out of wax.
“How are you?”
She looks at me.
“Don’t do that,” she says. Her voice is thin, but her eyes are completely present. “Don’t do the voice.”
“What voice?”
“Killing that man is not going to cure me, Giovanni.”
“I wasn’t going to kill him.”
“You had a gun out.”
“I was holding a gun. That’s different.”
“Giovanni.”
