A Love That Never Existed Chapter 40
Damiel felt as if his chest had caught fire.
The heat seeped down into his stomach, and his whole body began to shudder.
A moment later he coughed, and a spray of blood splattered across his hands.
“Damiel!”
Cordella’s face went bloodless.
Her hand spasmed shut, the rosary snapped, and the beads scattered across the floor.
She rushed to her son’s side, her voice trembling.
“Someone call a doctor!”
Damiel’s vision started to swim.
Cordella’s face wavered in front of him.
He could hear footsteps and shouting, but it all sounded far off, as if it were coming through water.
As he toppled forward, the last thing he saw was the chandelier above him.
In the haze, he thought he caught a glimpse of Yvosha.
She was looking back at him, smiling.
He stretched a hand toward her.
“Yvosha…”
His fingers twitched once, then went slack.
When Damiel surfaced again, it was raining.
The drops tapped softly against the window.
He moved his fingers.
The IV line in the back of his hand reminded him he was still, somehow, alive.
“You’re awake.”
Cordella was sitting beside the bed.
In the span of just a few days, it looked as if her hair had gone completely white.
Damiel tried to push himself up but had no strength for it.
He sank back into the pillow, taking a moment to gather enough breath to speak.
“What did the doctors say?”
“Rejection.” Cordella’s voice was thick with tears she refused to let fall. “And your old illness is back. They said… the kidney inside you is failing.”
Damiel stared up at the ceiling, the corner of his mouth pulling into a bitter line.
Yvosha had given him this kidney.
Now that she’d cast him off, it seemed even the kidney had lost interest in staying inside him.
“Good.” He closed his eyes. “Don’t bother trying to save me. I’ll take whatever time I have left.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
Cordella shot to her feet.
“The Vorretti family has money. I’ll bring in the finest doctors in the world. I’ll buy you another kidney. You’re going to be fine.”
Damiel didn’t reply.
He simply turned his face toward the wall.
Cordella looked at her son, who seemed to have surrendered all will to live, and the dread in her chest swallowed up her grief.
“I’ve already reached out to Father Brennan.”
Damiel frowned and opened his eyes.
“Mom, this isn’t the Middle Ages.”
“I believe in it.” Cordella’s voice was insistent. “I should have believed in it eight years ago. If I’d made you marry properly back then, maybe none of this would have happened. It’s no different now. There has to be a way.”
A weary look settled into Damiel’s eyes.
He had never believed in any of it.
But looking at the white that had crept into his mother’s hair, he didn’t have the heart to argue.
