Chapter 28
Anya
Idon’t like hospitals. I don’t like the tiny little gowns that they put me in where my ass is always exposed and cold. I broke my arm once when I was a kid, and I think that was the worst part. I remember asking my mom at least a dozen times why I had to be in a hospital gown when it was my arm that was broken. At the time, she said it was because of the blood that had gotten on my clothes or something, but I still think it was weird.
The place that Nikolai brought me to isn’t a hospital—not exactly. I think the building might have once been a hospital, or it had once served as one. Now it seems to be a collection of pristine operating rooms and hospital beds collected inside of a room better suited to be a morgue.
Blue screens stretched over white PVC pipe partitions are placed between my bed and the one next to me. There are four beds in total, and a large metal table in the center of the quartet.
The far wall seems to be a collection of doors that I’ve seen on TV where people can slide cadavers in for storage. The man who treated my wrists and mouth earlier is leaning over the metal table like it’s his desk. He looks world weary, and not at all concerned by the fact that I’m watching him intently scribble something onto the white papers inside of the manila folders. The room is freezing, but I have thick blankets over my legs.
I don’t know who is in the bed beside me, but I want to. Nikolai gave me exact instructions to stay put when the Doctor finished looking me over. He bandaged my wrists and ankles and put some sort of thick, gloopy cream over the abrasions on my face that I desperately want to wipe off.
Every few minutes, the monitors on the bed next to mine begin to beep, and the Doctor will stop writing to attend to it. Part of me wants to offer to help him, but I wouldn”t know what I was doing anyway.
I bring my knees up to my chest, snuggling as far under the thick blankets as I can. I don’t know where Nikolai is, or how long he’s planning on leaving me here, but I am grateful to not have to wear the paper blanket. I hope that whenever he does show up, he brings me clothes because this, freezing in my underwear under blankets alone, with my thoughts and a silent stranger? It isn’t my favorite thing ever.
An old black phone mounted to the wall across the room rings and the Doctor wearily crosses the room to it. He makes no effort to hide the conversation from me, and I doubt that it’s because he assumes I can’t understand the Russian he’s speaking anyway. Somehow, I feel like he’s the sort of doctor that is paid more by being on the Bratva payroll to work in this rundown building than he ever would have been above board. I also have the distinct impression that nobody phases him. Not anything, not any wound, not ever. Perpetually exhausted and even more bored. It is both soothing and very strange at the same moment.
“Da, the weather is fine. I still plan on going fishing this weekend. I think the waters will be more than calm enough.” The Doctor says in Russian. He nods to whoever is speaking to him.
“Da, you can take the boat out this weekend. I shall have it refueled for you.” The Doctor pinched at the bridge of his nose, and yawned deeply. “But bring lunch, will you? I am starving and if I have to eat the damned pesto pasta one more time, I might blow my brains out. I want pierogies… bring me some.” The Doctor smiled, just an upward tug from the corner of his mouth but it was enough for me to know that everything other than the lunch comment was likely code. Probably talking about me. I don’t know how I feel about being referred to as a boat… or a fish, whichever one I am.
Focusing on the Doctor’s every move is better than thinking about everything else that’s happened today or yesterday. I don’t know exactly how long I have been here—I was in and out before Nikolai left me to get patched up. I vaguely remember the Doctor prodding at Nikolai’s bruise covered ribs and whispering about fractured bones and the fragility of lungs.
Anything is better than dwelling on the fact that I am now an orphan.
Both of my parents are dead.
The guilt over not doing more to save my father will consume me, so I push it to the very back of my mind, as far as it will go. What happens now? Where do I go from here? Will Nikolai still want to keep me? I have no idea if my father has a current will or where it is kept. I”d like to say that I know where all of our properties are, but I”m not sure what”s in each one or if he has anything else in his private life that I”m not aware of.
I feel like maybe I never really knew him.
The Doctor hangs up the phone and pulls a mint from the front pocket of his white lab coat. “For the coffee breath,” he explains and lifts it in a gesture of explanation. “I drink a lot of coffee.” He grins, revealing his stained, slightly crooked teeth but somehow, he manages to still look charming. I smile back. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.”
He nods and pulls a stethoscope from around his neck and gestures for me to lean forward, listening to my breath as he presses the cold disk against my back. “In your body or in your heart?”
“My heart is in my body… so both,” I hadn’t meant it as a joke, but he laughs anyway.
“Is good, you need hot soup, good food—that will make everything better,” he grins, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. His accent is even thicker than Ivan’s but he speaks slower which is slightly helpful.
He speaks as if it is the simplest thing in the world, that no matter what your ailment might be, you just need a good bowl of hot food.
“Mr. Volkovich will be return shortly—he feed you, then you get strong.” He nods, and sits on the end of my bed, yawns again, and then drags himself to the next bed over.
“Can I help?” I ask softly. He peers back at me for a moment.
“Hm?”
“Can I help you? Make coffee? Clean something maybe? I can’t…” I feel stupid for even asking now. “I can’t just sit here anymore.”
He looks at me with pity. “Mr. Volkovich would skin me. He says to keep you in bed…” he pauses, and taps his fingers against his chin for a moment, then shrugs. “So, we don’t tell him,” he winks, and points toward a dirty, well-used coffee pot inside of a small alcove on the other end of the room.
Gingerly I rise from my bed. I want to ask whereNikolai went or if he can tell me what he”s up to, but I don”t dare. My ankles are swollen and heavy. My wrists are sore, and it”s difficult to move them because of the bandages, but having something to do makes me feel better.
I move robotically to the coffee pot and begin carefully washing it in the sink. It must be lonely living here, presumably alone. I don’t think I could do it… Maybe the Doctor would like to have an assistant if Nikolai tells me that things are over.
I begin brewing the coffee and look around for coffee mugs, but only find the one he was drinking from. I cross the room to where the Doctor is seeing his only other patient to ask if there are any more, but my stomach drops.
Ivan is on that bed.
His face is swollen and mottled, he’s got restraints on his wrists and ankles. Why is he being restrained? I move to his side and sit on the edge of his bed, unconsciously taking his hand in mine. The Doctor casts a sidelong glance at me but makes no comment.
This is my fault too.
“Is he going to be okay?” My voice is so thick with emotion I almost don’t recognize it. My stoic little bodyguard is broken because of me.
“He will be fine.” The Doctor sighs again. “He does not tolerate the anesthesia well and he fights.” He puts up his fists in a poor impression of a boxer and chuckles.
“So, I tell him that I will tie him down—he laughs, I stab him with a sedative and out like a light he goes! So then, while he sleeping, I quickly use restraints before he wakes up again. He will be very mad, big mad.” The Doctor shrugs. “If he will rest, and just sleep, then we will be fine. Come,” The Doctor gestures me forward and starts to undo the bandages on the side of Ivan’s ribs.
He snaps his fingers at me, and I help by holding my hands out like a bowl. I zone out while he works because the methodical way he unravels them is soothing.
I”m not sure how much time passes before he finishes the bandages, but the door opening shakes me awake. Before Nikolai notices, the Doctor sweeps all of the bandages out of my hands and into a pile on the bed beside Ivan”s thighand the moment his behemoth frame comes into view, everything inside of merips open.
I had kept it together, I had been functional—calm even. Then Nikolai is there as my knees weaken. As he rushes across the room to catch me, henearly drops all of the takeaway containers in his hands down on the metal table. His strong, capable arms encircle me just as I fall to the ground, and he pulls me into his lap as I sob.
I cry until I can’t breathe. Catharsis pulls me under as I get everything out, every last bit of retained adrenaline and emotion until my throat is raw and my eyes are burning. I am vaguely aware of the Doctor checking my vitals, and Nikolai swatting his hands away from me.
Everything suddenly feels real. Like this little morgue was some limbo area where nothing could touch me and now I’m back to reality and everything hurts. Nikolai scoops me up and carries me back to the bed, but when he tries to put me down again, I hold fast to his neck, so he sits with me.
The Doctor is unphased, already rifling through the takeout containers until he finds his pierogies with a triumphant whoop. He starts eating them while he finds coffee mugs and pours some for everybody.
“All recovering well!” he says with his mouth full. He gestures with his little plastic fork to the coffee. “She must eat Mr. Volkovich. After, perhaps you shall assist me in attending to—” he gestures to Ivan’s bed, and I feel Nikolai nod once. “Good… very good.” The Doctor pulls a partition in front of the pair of us to provide some privacy.
Nikolai tilts my chin up to look at him. He brushes my tears from my cheeks with his thumb and nods once.
“It’s…” I can’t bring myself to finish the question.
“Everything is taken care of. We will return to Vegas this evening if the Doc clears you and Ivan for flight. They are refueling the plane as we speak.”
I nod, not sure what comes next, but I can’t ask him. I can’t.
“I am… sorry… about your mother.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and wiggle my fingers in the direction of the coffee, I need the distraction. “I had no idea that there had been an affair…” my voice doesn’t feel like it’s my own.
“I don’t… remember her ever saying anything about leaving. But it’s like he unlocked all of these memories that I had been repressing. I don’t know if I’m ready to look at them right now, or if I’m ever going to be able to fully process them without—” I shrug one shoulder. I take comfort from the warmth of the mug in my hands as I curl further into Nikolai’s lap.
“I dunno—extensive therapy, maybe? I knew that my mother wasn’t happy, but I thought it was for different reasons. I thought that was why we were alone so much—he was going to kill me.” My eyes flick up to Nikolai’s. “He shot you… he shot you…” I press one hand into his firm chest.
“It will take a lot more than a Kevlar bruise to kill me, Anya.”
“All of the things that he said about Helena…”
“They are more or less true but the motivations are different. What he did not tell you is that she lied to me, for seven months she got close to me—wore my ring on her finger and plotted a future at my side.” He looks away from me as he speaks, and as painful as it is to hear—I know that I need to know. Once and for all.
“I never suspected her, and I shall never forgive myself for what my blindness caused. I did not find out about her personal vendetta against my family until it was too late. She had been aiming for my father all along, and only settled on me because I was next in line. She murdered him the night of our wedding rehearsal.”
I can’t keep my shock off of my face.
“My father wrote her name in his own blood on the carpet. He used his last breaths on this earth to indicate his killer… she never even denied it. She pleaded with me at the end, said that I could just let her go, but I couldn’t. Not after that. She tried to apologize, to say that things had gotten out of control and she would just disappear if I let her live but I was so angry.
I didn’t push her, she fell, but I would have. I was more than angry enough—I could have killed her with my bare hands.”
He looks at me, waiting for me to scream, to judge him. This is a man who just admitted murderous intent to me, who I knew killed my own father just hours ago and he is looking at me as if this might be my very last chance to run, to back away—this is my out.
“I think—” I inhale sharply, because I know that it doesn’t matter, not really. It’s too much for me to process now. “I think I would like to sleep now, until the plane is ready.”
Nikolai nods, and starts to slide out from underneath me.
“Will you stay with me?” I ask softly. “Please? Then, when I wake up… we can talk about everything else.”” He nods, and I fall asleep to the steady beating of his heart.