Page 58 of The Mad Don
Yana
Lucia’s leg is trembling under my hands.
I work the ointment into the muscle along the back of her calf, slow and firm, following the line of the old injury up toward the knee. The water in the basin beside the bed is still hot. I have wrapped the joint twice already and let the heat soak in. Now comes the part she dreads.
She is crying as she holds onto my forearm with both hands, and she cries the way people cry when they are trying very hard not to, in small breaths, biting down on the worst of it. The two maids stand at the foot of the bed with the towels and the basin, and they are not much better off. Both of them are silently sobbing. Three days in, I have learned that these two love her. Genuinely, the women who tend Lucia would lie down in the road for her.
“Almost done,” I tell her. “Almost. Breathe.”
I work the last of the tension out of the muscle and ease her leg back down onto the cushion.
“There. It’s over.”
The maids come forward and take away the basin and the towels, sniffing, trying to hide it. Lucia wipes her face with the heel of her hand and laughs at herself.
“There, there,” I say.
She sits up, wraps both arms around my waist, and presses her face against my side.
I freeze.
In three days, I have been hugged more than I have in my entire life. The first time she did it, I nearly put her on the floor on instinct before my body caught up and remembered how frail she is. Now, I have learned to hold still and let it happen. To endure it. It is not the worst thing.
I pat her back slowly.
“Do you think you can stand?” I ask. “Without the pain. Do you want to try?
She nods against my side.
I step back. She gathers herself, plants the good foot, pushes up off the edge of the bed, and gets to her feet.
I nod.
She takes one step. Then another. Her face changes.
“It doesn’t hurt as much,” she says. “Yana, it doesn’t hurt as much.”
I clap, with a smile, and help her sit back down before her leg tires.
“It’s only been three days,” I tell her. “But your leg was never as bad as they made you believe. The muscle wasted from disuse. The joint stiffened because no one moved it. With the physio, properly, every day, in about four months, you’ll walk without pain at all.”
She swallows. Her eyes well up again, a different kind this time, and she hugs me.
I pull her gently off me.
“Have you been doing what I told you?” I ask.
“Yes.”
She glances at the door.
I go and lock it. There is no maid in the room now; they have taken the basin to the kitchen.
Lucia lifts her pillow. Underneath it is a small pile of pills, three days’ worth, the ones she has been pretending to swallow and palming instead. Then she leans over the side of the bed and pulls out a hidden ridge in the frame, a gap I showed her how to use, and shows me the small capsules tucked into it. The injection ampules. The ones I have been swapping for saline before the nurse loads the syringe.
I help her sit back up.
“How do you feel?”
