CARL BENEDETTI HAD SPENT A DIFFICULT AFTERNOON. After saying goodbye to young Tommy, he went out to look for his squire, Tony, without knowing where he had been taken by the henchman to whom he had assigned this mission.
After the terrible incident on Fifth Avenue, everything in New York stopped working. Business, transportation, and the most basic public services were out of reach, and transmission networks and cell phones were no longer useful for communication. It was hell for the citizen of the globalized world. He deduced that the reason for the phone not working was probably because the communication towers had been turned off. The problem was that he was out of reach, which made it very difficult to find his boss.
I would have to improvise...
The most natural thing in the family , for all those years, was to take care of their wounded in hidden places. Specialist doctors were paid well to remain available to attend to any emergency in any place that was not public. With this scheme, those shot in shootings or suffering any other setbacks would not have to face police investigations after receiving the necessary care. Benedetti wished that the henchman he had trusted had called the game's doctors to take Tony out of the hospital, but he no longer had any hope that this would have happened.
Even so, before going out into the city to look for Tony in the now overcrowded hospitals, he decided to go home and use his home phone to contact anyone who knew his whereabouts. He spent part of the afternoon making and more calls, but he got nothing, except to let time take its course.
After the frustration of his attempt and anger at the incompetence of his subordinate, he went looking for his boss wherever he could be. He visited the main medical care centers in the city and watched the afternoon give way to night when he was finally able to hear Tony's name being said by the lips of a receptionist, in a medium-sized New York hospital.
— Is he here? — he asked excitedly.
— Second floor, wing B, bed 5. — replied the receptionist, cold and tired.
The old man eagerly followed the receptionist to the spot indicated, without even remembering to thank her. The chaotic state of the hospital gave him the opportunity to enter there armed without being noticed. He climbed the stairs as if he were a young man and soon found the bed where his boss was resting. As soon as he entered, his hopes of being able to fulfill the promise he had made to Francesco almost disappeared.
Tony didn't look well at all. He was lying on the bed, breathing with the help of machines, leaving Benedetti in a terrible doubt as to whether he was in a coma or just asleep. The bandages were thick and showed that there had been a long procedure to look for shrapnel. His vital signs were so weak that the machines became even more tedious around him.
Carl Benedetti walked to the edge of the bed and looked at the dying man. He was aware that his remorse for failing to keep his promise was much stronger than the compassion he felt for the worthless man his boss had become, but the oath of loyalty and care insisted on echoing in his tired mind, endlessly.
— Ah! So you found us. — Benedetti heard someone say behind him.
When he turned around, he saw the henchman who had been given the mission.
"Are you crazy?" he exclaimed, trying to keep his voice low. "Bring him here? And now, what will happen with the testimony?"
— Hey, hey! — the man replied, putting his hands in front of him, defensively. — I had no choice! Besides the fact that he was already being treated by paramedics, which didn't give me many options, the phone wasn't working anymore and I couldn't call anyone to pick him up!
— There is always a way! Always! — he insisted, disappointed.
— Maybe there would have been, if you hadn't run away... — the man replied with a condemning air.
Benedetti frowned, huffed a little in his anger, but he couldn't justify his departure to that man, he wouldn't understand.
— I wouldn't have left if there wasn't something very serious to resolve...
— I know, I know... — said the man, despising him, already appearing to be delirious with gratitude towards his family, due to the rescue.
For a moment Benedetti wanted to tell him how wrong he would be if he thought that what he had done would guarantee him nothing, but he resisted.
Under the malicious henchman's accusatory mood, he remained there, monitoring Tony's condition. He didn't want to leave him for another moment, and only when the nicotine withdrawal became unbearable, he went to a coffee machine and brought a cappuccino in his hands, which he drank in front of Tony's bedside door, looking at the street through the glass wall of the corridor. If there was any reaction from the injured man, he would be there to help and to blame himself less for his failure.
Hours passed and age showed clearly how it could weaken his legs, forcing him to look for a seat. He found a plastic chair in the corner of the bed, where he could ease the pain in his bones while he rested. He leaned back, caressing the pockets where the pack of cigarettes and the lighter were in his jacket. He raised his right hand to his face, noticing with a caress the growing beard on his aged skin.
Boredom is a poison...
Amidst the obligatory inertia he experienced in those hours, he observed Tony, pale and barely alive, his respirator, the intravenous that maintained his metabolic levels and the devices that helped monitor his decrepit state.
It was your fault... — he thought.
Each surgical stitch that closed his boss's wounds was a sign of his failure to protect him, but deep down, all that hurt was the promise from years ago. Seeing Tony in that state, his thoughts could only bring Francesco to him.
It was in a moment of forced total abstraction that Carl Benedetti noticed something different. A signal that was beeping softly on some device changed rhythm, and when he looked at the patient, he noticed that his breathing was not as it had been before. On his not very flushed face, he saw a slight movement under his eyelids as he approached.
He's reacting!
Benedetti looked at that scene without really knowing what to do. He thought about calling the henchman who was eating something in the cafeteria, but as he didn't like him, he decided to wait alone.
Tony opened his eyes.
— Oh, boy! — he exclaimed hopefully, very quietly.
Tony strained his gaze, trying to regain his vision, which had probably been blurred by the darkness he had experienced in the last few hours. He looked in all directions until he saw old Benedetti's face, above him, blocking the strong light from the lamp above, smiling and saying:
— Calm down, boy, you need to rest!
Still anxious after waking up, a little breathless and anxious, Tony closed his eyes again and let himself be overcome by tiredness again and fell asleep.
A few hours and two cappuccinos later, the old man insisted on staying awake, even though he was shaken from sleep by the faint flickering of the fluorescent light. He had dozed off once, but after being woken by his own snoring, he could not sleep again. The henchman was missing; the man must have left, unable to resist the boredom of that vigil.
These are the things he doesn't know, nor will he learn... — He grumbled to himself, bitter about his bad company, when he noticed Tony looking at him, out of the corner of his eye, lying on his bed.
— Hi, Tony. — he said quietly, making sure no nurse heard and scolded him from the hallway.
The gangster just stared at him, breathing with some difficulty.
— You worried me, boy. I thought I'd never see you again with my eyes open... — the old man continued. — Everything happened so fast on Fifth Avenue, you have no idea of the chaos that...
— Enough... — Tony interrupted him, his voice weak, almost inaudible, muffled by the inhaler.
Benedetti paused in his speech, astonished by his boss's effort in speaking to him, and puzzled by the brief interruption.
— Enough... — Tony repeated with a demanding tone in his almost hoarseness. — Useless! I... I really can't trust...
— Who are you referring to?
Carl Benedetti knew he should advise him not to speak any more due to his critical condition, but he did not dare to reprimand him, but rather because of the curiosity that bothered him, he needed to know what he was talking about.
Tony prioritized breathing for a few moments, he had a lot of difficulty making any effort, but as soon as he felt able he resumed as best he could:
— You're the first to blame! A whole life with me, and because I trust you I end up in this bed like this ...
— Why do you think I...?
— I want him dead, Carl! — Tony exclaimed louder than before.
Benedetti could see a red spot growing under the sheet covering the young man, at the height of his abdomen. His effort to speak was opening the wounds. Even seeing the serious condition of his boss, Tony felt like he no longer cared as before, something seemed to have dulled inside him.
— Rodman is dead, Tony. — He gave him the news with satisfaction.
— Tommy...
Upon hearing the name of who Tony was referring to, he clenched his teeth, his eyebrows furrowed, feeling the warmth of the blood that filled his veins like it hadn't happened in a long time.
— Tommy? — he asked incredulously.
— He abandoned me... — Tony answered him. — And that was thanks to you, Carlos. You brought him to me, you made me trust him, you told me he was like you, but he's not, he's nothing more than a coward... An idiot, blind because of some random woman. I want that whore dead too! It was because of her that he left me alone. I wanted to go back and get her...
Hearing that, Carl finally found the certainty he needed. Tommy really was right about Tony... he still needed to decide how much he could put up with him.
—So he wanted to save his own wife? — he asked the dying man.
— He abandoned me for some whore! He's no good for the family , Carlos, and you're going to cut him out of our group yourself. I won't accept that kind of betrayal! He could find a woman anywhere in the city for twenty dollars an hour... He traded me for a woman! He's a traitor... While you're nothing more than an old man to me who can barely tell the difference between cowards and traitors. I wonder what he's still using me for...
Carl Benedetti thought that this would hurt him, he thought he would feel some pain when those words reached his ears, but his heart taught him nothing but indifference. He felt inside him the promise he had made to Francesco crumble like rusty chains and free him from any and all feelings he had for the man he had raised as a son since he was little, and today nothing reminded him of his father anymore.
— It's amazing how sometimes even time changes meanings... — he whispered.
—Did you say something? — Tony asked.
Its aqua-green sheet shone scarlet.
— Something about the weather... just.
Tony's brows narrowed, his gaze questioning. The muscles in his neck twitched with an anger his body could not show, due to its weakness.
— Time? What do you mean? That time has already passed for you?
Carl Benedetti looked sideways, grave and oblique. He got up from his chair and began to walk towards the door:
— In fact, time teaches us to tell shit to happen.