The Mafia's Babies by Kaycee Romano (little readers TXT) 📕

"Alright!" Adam clapped as Mateo finished running on the treadmill for an hour straight at a very impressive speed.

"Are you sure you felt absolutely no pain?" The physiotherapist asked him, taking down the data on to her clipboard.

"Yes. I felt like my old self." Mateo flashed her his brightest smile. He normally never smiled like that. He normally never smiled, but today he was feeling extremely optimistic, excited and like his old self so he decided to grace everyone with his million-dollar worthy smile.

The doctor felt her heart skip a beat but she kept her professional front, congratulating him and informing him that he would be discharged that day evening.

Mateo felt like he was reborn as he walked out of the gym and towards his room. His last few weeks had been dry. He couldn't meet River except for a couple run-ins at the cafeteria, garden or corridor and he couldn't call her without any particular reason as well. He wasn't that desperate. Maybe he was. Maybe it did take his entire willpower to stop himself from making a fool of himself. It helped that Adam stationed him in his hospital room with his laptop.

Mateo would die before he gave his best friend a reason to make fun of him.

As he walked through the corridors, his eyes scanned the garden downstairs and the park benches that were placed there, for a certain curly-haired brunette who ate her croissant with black coffee on one of the benches from time to time. She hadn't seen her anywhere in the last two days and he was starting to get restless.

But then he realized that he didn't have to stop himself anymore. He was completely alright now, and completely capable of looking after her if Mona Petrov was to do anything, and he didn't have to worry about Dr. River Johnson's reputation either. It would have been a problem if he was seeing her while he was a patient at the hospital because patient-doctor relationships were prohibited, for reasons he did not understand. But he was no longer going to be a patient at the hospital that evening and then he would be free to ask her out. And he really really hoped she would agree to go out with him.

"So what do we do till evening?" Adam asked as soon as they entered the room, taking out a pack of cigarettes.

Mateo smirked as he took one himself before Adam could stop him.

"I am not hospitalized anymore, remember?" Mateo pointed out before Adam could protest.

"Ugh!" Adam whined as Mateo smirked, taking the lighter from him.

He took a few puffs and said, "Well, you sit here and rot for all I care. I have some things to do."

He moved to the cabinets to get him a suit. He was done with the hospital clothes. He had to dress up because he had a certain hot-headed surgeon to charm, and a date to make her agree to.

.

.

.

It was the summer holidays.

River's darling twins were at their grandmother's while she rotted away in the hospital. Even Mrs. Marley had went away to spend her holidays with her daughter and grandchildren so the whole house was empty and dead on the rare occasions that she did go home.

As for River, she spent the days and nights like a zombie in a daze, either performing surgeries or convincing stubborn patients to undergo surgery as she was doing at that exact moment. It was fifteen minutes into her lunch break and she was still in her cabin, busy trying to convince a stubborn old man that he had to get his knee caps replaced.

And he was busy trying to convince her that prayer is the answer to everything. And that he just had to pray on his knees for Jesus to fix it.

'Jesus, if you really are going to fix him, fix his brain first.' River thought to herself, fed up though she did put on a sweet understanding smile as she continued to drone and drone about the same things that she had been telling him for the past one hour. She had learnt very early into her practice that she really didn't need to add in new arguments to convince the patients and only need to repeat the same thing over and over again like a fucking parrot until the patient got over their internal dilemma and fear and agreed to the surgery.

River gave her intern a side-glare when he snorted quite preposterously at something that the old colonel had said. Thankfully, the man had hearing trouble as well and didn't catch on.

Ten minutes later, she waved grumpy old Mr. Sanders good bye as he walked out the door, leaning on his cane.

Eric let out his laughs as soon as the door closed behind him.

River turned fully to face her stupid childish intern. Why did she always end up with the idiots? Oh wait, she knew why – because others would have murdered them if they had to spend even an hour with them, that's why!

She gave him a full-blown senior doctor glare.

"You gotta admit some of them are just hilarious." He threw his hands up in surrender.

River rolled her eyes. There was no use arguing with him nor advising him. He was going to do as he pleased. Just like she used to when she was an intern.

There was a knock on the door.

What now? River internally whined. She was not feeling well. She was feeling lazy and restless and irritated and all things unhappy. She wanted to go home and eat Pringles dipped in chocolate ice cream. But before that, she wanted lunch because she hadn't had anything since yesterday's McDonald's take-out dinner because she had quite effectively burnt her French toast.

"I thought he was the last of the patients." She muttered to Eric who just shrugged.

Dr. Johnson sighed knowing that there was no way out of this and said loudly, "Come in."

The door was pushed open and entered none other than the Italian work of art, Mateo Adesso.

River blinked. What the fuck!

The man in his hospital gown was already a work of art. Him in the sweats he wore for his physiotherapy had made him quite irresistible. But the motherfucker in a black Armani suit had her heart going 'cuckoo-cuckoo' inside her chest.