That made him laugh, and I cried for my mother but she couldn’t hear me. When he finally put me down it was on something hard, not my bed. “Mio letto,” I sobbed. “Voglio mio proprio letto.” He slapped my face and shut the door on me, and I remembered it hurt his feelings when I spoke Italian, because he didn’t speak it himself. “I want my own bed,” I repeated in English, but it did me no good, he started shaking the room from side to side so that my sore ribs and stomach bounced against the hard floor.

I kept passing out. I would come to when an extra–fierce jolt flung me against the floor. At some point the jolting stopped and the door opened. I had another brief moment of clarity: I was in a panel truck, lying on packing cartons. A couple of men approached me. I couldn’t protect myself as they seized me. They tossed me on the ground and slammed the van door shut. Polsen called me a stupid cunt and said this would teach me to mind my own business and then they left me on the ground and returned to the truck. The back door swung open as they drove off and several boxes bounced onto the road.

I saw now how Nicola Aguinaldo got out of prison and made it back to Chicago. And died.

Chapter 42: Slow Mend

42 Slow Mend

I looked up and saw the machine that made decals ready to push into me. My arms were manacled to the bed and I couldn’t lift them to guard my face. A man leaned over me. I didn’t want CO Polsen to know I was scared, but I couldn’t help crying out. The man called me “cookie” and seemed to be weeping. I shut my eyes and fell back asleep.

The next time I woke I realized the machine was the arm holding an IV drip. I wasn’t wearing manacles but had lines running into both arms and an oxygen tube in my nose. A woman was feeling my left wrist. She had on a yellow sweater and smiled when she saw me watching her.

“You’re all right, you know. You’re with friends, so don’t worry: you’re not in prison and you’re going to recover.”

I looked at my wrist. It was empty. I didn’t have my watch, my father’s watch that he’d worn for twenty–five years.

I croaked something and she said, “Your watch didn’t come over from the hospital with you. I’ll ask Dr. Herschel about it.”