The Girl Who Needed My Blood

At 11:47 on a bitter Tuesday night in Chicago, a dying seventeen-year-old girl needed blood, and I was standing in a hospital corridor planning a murder.

"If we can't get more compatible units here, she won't make it," the nurse said.

Until that moment, I had been thinking about Enzo Caruso. Two bullets. An ambush near the river. My oldest friend on an operating table while the men responsible disappeared into a city that knew better than to hide them from me.

Then Hannah Cole stopped beside me, holding a phone against her chest.

"Sir, do you know your blood type?"

"AB negative."

Her eyes sharpened. "Have you donated before?"

"Regularly. Through the regional blood center."

Enzo called it my annual attempt to confuse God. I called it something useful to do with an hour.

Marco Vitali stepped forward. "Mr. Mancini isn't here as a donor."

I looked at him.

He stopped.

"What's happening?" I asked Hannah.

She explained quickly. A crash on I-290. Internal bleeding. The hospital was already using its emergency supply. The blood bank needed additional units, and a shipment was delayed by the storm. Her call concerned possible donors for the girl's continuing treatment, not a bedside transfusion.

"She has a complicated compatibility history," Hannah said. "The blood bank makes the decisions. Matching the letters on your donor card doesn't settle it."

"Then let them decide."

"It won't be immediate."

"I didn't ask you to skip anything."

Snow battered the glass entrance doors. Beyond them, a plow crawled through the emergency lane, its yellow light turning behind a white curtain.

"Where's the shipment?" I asked.

She hesitated. "The blood bank coordinator knows."

"Marco. Our transport office. Put them in touch. If there's an approved courier sitting somewhere without a vehicle that can get through this weather, give them one."

He was already making the call.

Hannah watched me for a second. "What's your name?"

"Luca Mancini."

Recognition reached her eyes. People usually took a step back when it did.

She stayed where she was.

"All right, Mr. Mancini. This way."

The donor arrangements took calls, questions, and an assessment by people who had no interest in my reputation. A technician checked my identification and donation history. Someone from the transfusion service asked about medications and travel.

I answered everything.

Enzo's surgeon still hadn't come out. Each time my phone vibrated, I looked for Marco's name and hoped for news I wouldn't have to survive.

"You can change your mind," the technician said.

"About giving blood?"

"About being considered for a directed donation. You'll need to follow the blood center's arrangements."

"I'm not changing my mind."

She collected a sample. The rest would happen through the proper service if they accepted me. I had spent my life surrounded by men who thought urgency gave them permission to do anything. Here, for once, someone else's rules mattered more than mine.

Hannah waited near the door.

"Her name is Elena Vasquez," she said.

"Elena."

The name caught somewhere in my chest.

Not because I knew it. Because I suddenly wanted the girl who belonged to it to live.

As Hannah led me back toward the surgical waiting area, a set of doors opened. Staff moved a patient through the corridor, surrounded by equipment and people speaking in clipped, practiced voices.

I stood aside.

For a moment I could see her face.

Dark hair. Bloodless lips. A small crescent-shaped scar beneath her left eye.

But it wasn't the scar that stopped me. It was the line of her brow, the shape of her mouth, the terrible familiarity of a face I had never seen.

"That's Elena?"

Hannah nodded. "They're taking her back in."

The doors closed before I could ask anything else.

For one second I was twenty-five again, standing in my apartment while Sofia Bennett held the strap of a canvas bag so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

She had always looked straight at me when she was angry.

That night, she hadn't.

I remembered rain on the windows. A kettle boiling dry. My phone ringing on the counter, my uncle's name on the screen.

I remembered choosing to answer it.

Seventeen years later, that small movement still had the power to make me sick.

"How old did you say she was?" I asked.

"Seventeen."

My hand closed around the paper band the technician had given me.

After a serious injury in my twenties, a doctor had told me fatherhood would be unlikely. I had heard impossible because impossible was easier to organize a life around. No children. No one waiting at home. No one who could be taken from me because I loved them.

Then Sofia had left, and I had called that proof.

"Mr. Mancini?"

"I might know her mother."

Hannah's expression changed. "Might you be related to the patient?"

The question was simple. My answer wasn't.

"I don't know. Possibly."

"Then I need to tell the transfusion service."

"Is that a problem?"

"It changes what they need to consider. Related donations require special handling, including irradiation of the relevant blood components. They won't use anything merely because you want them to."

"Good," I said, and meant it. "Tell them everything I told you."

She made the call in front of me.

I stood against the wall while a family passed, a father carrying a sleeping little boy whose mittened hand rested against his neck.

Something I had never allowed myself to envy suddenly looked unbearable.

Marco returned with snow melting on the shoulders of his coat.

"Transport is working with the hospital," he said. "Their courier has one of our vehicles. The city's clearing the route."

"Enzo?"

"Still in surgery."

I nodded. "Find out about Sofia Bennett. Don't approach anyone. Just find out."

He looked at the closed doors, then at me.

"Luca, what's going on?"

I had no answer that belonged outside my head yet.

Hannah came back. "The surgeon's team knows the blood is on its way. That's what they need right now. Your donation arrangements are a separate matter."

"Understood."

"And you should sit down."

"I haven't even donated yet."

"You still look terrible."

I almost smiled.

Then Marco's phone rang.

He answered, listened, and moved away from the nurses' station. His expression hardened in a way I recognized from places where people had already died.

"What?" I asked when he returned.

"The men who attacked Enzo know you're here."

"Let them come."

"There's more."

His eyes moved toward the doors through which the girl had disappeared.

"They're asking who Elena Vasquez is."