The baby’s head is crowning. My husband tells me to push it back in. Because his dead brother’s widow is having a son next door, and only a son inherits in the Russo Family. “Hold on, amore,” Dante says, squeezing my hand. His eyes are soft. They’ve been soft for nine months. “Just a little longer.” I’m screaming. Sweat in my eyes, blood on the sheets, and I know — I have known since the second contraction came thirty seconds after the first — that something is wrong with this delivery. The pain is too sharp. Too fast. A nurse walks in with a syringe. I think it’s the epidural. Then Dante lets go of my hand. Steps back from the bed. The needle goes in. He checks his watch. “Adjust the dose,” he says, calm as ordering a drink. “She has to wait until Bianca delivers.” The room tilts. “Bianca’s at six centimeters,” he tells the nurse. “Buy me two hours.” I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Whatever’s in that syringe is already in my blood — my contractions stop mid-clench, like a hand closing around my uterus from the inside. The pain doesn’t stop. The labor stops. The baby — my baby — is stuck. I look at him. The man I married. The man who put his hand on my belly every night for nine months and whispered to her through my skin. His face is blank. I don’t cry. I don’t beg. I memorize his face exactly the way it looks right now — and I start counting every single thing I’m going to take from him. — They wheel me out of the delivery suite and down. Down past the lobby. Down into the basement of the Russo Family’s private clinic in Brooklyn. Gia is waiting at the door of what used to be a storage room. Dante’s little sister. Twenty-three years old, manicure fresh, holding a scalpel between two fingers like a cigarette. “Don’t blame Dante, cara,” she says, smiling at me. “Bianca’s carrying Marco’s son. The first male Russo of this generation. You understand.” I do understand. I’ve understood since the syringe went in. But I let my face do what they expect — wet, weak, terrified. “Even if you popped her out first,” Gia goes on, “she’d still just be a girl. The bylaws are the bylaws. No daughter wears the ring. So the boy comes out first.” She crouches in front of me and taps my cheek with the flat of the scalpel. “Get the doctor,” I rasp. “Please. She’s coming.” “She’s not coming for another three hours, sweetheart. The drug holds that long. Bianca’s already in the OR.” She stands, brushes off her knees. “Be a good girl. When her son is breathing, you can have yours.” To the soldier at the door: “If she screams, gag her.” The door shuts. One bare bulb. Concrete floor. My dress is already soaked through. They took my phone at admissions. Radiation, Dante said. Bad for the baby. I curl onto my side and breathe. In. Out. Counting. Three months ago, Dante’s older brother Marco wrapped his Maserati around a guardrail on the Belt Parkway. Left a wife three months pregnant. At the funeral, old Don Salvatore Russo — Dante’s grandfather, the Nonno, the head of the Family — gripped Bianca’s wrist with both hands and wept. The Russo name cannot die. You give us this boy. I remember standing there in black, twenty-six weeks along, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. Nonno, our baby will love you too. He didn’t look at me. I should have known then. I did know then. I just didn’t want to. Another contraction rips through me — the drug is fighting it, but my body is fighting back. I drag myself to the door and pound on it. “Help me — please — the baby’s coming —” A bored voice on the other side: “Shut up. Miss Gia said wait.” “My baby —” “If she dies, she dies. Shouldn’t have been a girl.” I slide down the door. I am not crying. I am making a list.
I don’t know how long I’m down there. Long enough that the blood under me goes from warm to cold to warm again with the next contraction. Long enough that I almost stop fighting the drug. Then the door opens. Not Gia. Not the soldier. Dr. Marino — the Russo Family doctor, the one who delivered Marco, the one who’s been my OB for nine months. He sees me on the floor and his face goes the color of paper. “Mrs. Russo? Madonna — Dante told me you were upstairs in the VIP suite —” I can’t speak. I point at my stomach. He drops to his knees and his hand goes between my legs and I hear him suck in a breath through his teeth. “You’re fully dilated. Your water broke God knows when. We need to move now.” He tries to lift me. The second I move, blood pours out of me in a hot rush and he almost drops me. “Help!” he shouts down the hall. “Hemorrhage —” Nothing. This whole clinic belongs to the Russos. Tonight they cleared it for Bianca. Every nurse, every doctor, every orderly is on the third floor, holding her hand while she pushes out the future of the Family. His phone has no signal in the basement. He hauls me up. “Stay with me. Stay with me, cara.” The stairwell is endless. Each step jolts the baby further down and not out. The drug is still in me — contractions come and go like a stutter. This is the worst possible way to deliver. I can feel her wedged. “Doctor —” My voice is air. “Save the baby. Promise me.” “You’re both walking out of here. Don’t talk.” He kicks open the first-floor OR. We both freeze. The room is empty. Not unstaffed. Empty. The surgical lights are gone. The table is gone. Monitors, anesthesia cart, crash cart — gone. There are bare outlets on the walls where machines used to be plugged in. Marino makes a sound like he’s been punched. “I checked this room six hours ago —” Heels on tile. Gia rounds the corner with two nurses. “Doctor. What are you doing down here? Bianca’s on three.” He points at the empty room. His hand is shaking. “Where is the equipment.” Gia’s face is innocent. Beautifully innocent. She’s good at this. “We moved it up. Bianca’s having a C-section. She needed the best of everything — what if there’s a complication? You can’t do major surgery in a regular OR.” Her eyes drift to me. She smiles. “Oh, is she in labor? She’ll have to wait. Bianca’s not done.” I look up at her. This girl I bought a twelve-thousand-dollar Birkin for last spring. This girl who linked her arm through mine on Madison Avenue and called me the sister I never had. I file her face away with Dante’s. The list is getting longer.
Marino runs into the nurse’s station and starts ripping open cabinets. Empty. Empty. Empty. “Hemostats — anything — gauze —” A nurse whispers, “It’s all upstairs. Mr. Russo’s orders. Everything goes to Mrs. Bianca.” He punches the cabinet. His knuckles split. He turns to me, and he’s crying. “Mrs. Russo. I’m sorry. I have nothing —” Gia pats his shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up, doc. She hasn’t even delivered yet. As soon as Bianca’s done, the equipment comes back down.” She glances at my belly. “And honestly? Even if the baby doesn’t make it — it’s a girl. The Family doesn’t lose anything.” I lift my head off the floor. I look her in the eye. I use the breath I’ve been saving. “Animal.” Her smile drops. She crouches down. Puts her mouth right next to my ear. Lowers her voice so only I hear. “Curse all you want. After tonight you’ll be too weak to lift a glass. Bianca’s taking your seat. Dante keeps you alive as a maid because he’s sentimental. Be grateful.” She straightens up. Beautiful again. Marino can’t take it. “Miss Gia, this is murder —” “Murder?” She laughs. “Doctor. Women die in childbirth all the time. It’s tragic.” She turns to the soldiers behind her. “Take Dr. Marino somewhere quiet. I’ll watch cara myself.” They drag him out. He’s fighting them, twisting back to me, shouting — “Mrs. Russo — press here — above the ankle bone, hard — it can bring the contractions back — don’t give up —” The door slams. Gia turns the lock. Pulls out her phone. FaceTime. “Fratellone — your wife’s about to deliver. Want to watch?” Dante’s face fills the screen. He’s outside Bianca’s OR. Behind him, doctors in scrubs sprint past. “Sera, not now. Bianca’s heart rate is dropping. The baby’s in distress.” Gia tilts the camera at me. The blood. The dress. The floor. “Look how much she’s bleeding, fratellone. I think she might die.” Dante glances. Looks away. “Tell her to hold on. The doctor comes down when Bianca’s done. Cara, I can’t leave.” The screen goes black. Gia pockets the phone and shrugs. “Hear that? In his heart, Bianca comes first. You’re a brood mare, amore. The mare doesn’t outlive her foal.” I close my eyes. She thinks I’ve given up. My right hand slides behind me, finds the inside seam of my dress. My father stitched a button in there the day before the wedding. Sera. The Russos are deep water. If anything goes wrong, press this. I’d laughed at him. Papa. Dante loves me. I dig my thumbnail under the cap. I press. No light. No sound. But my father’s soldati are thirty minutes out. Maximum. Thirty minutes. I look down at my belly, where my daughter is fighting to be born and dying in the trying. Hold on, baby. Hold on for Mama.
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