40. Thayor Milo Gavros Home
forty
Thayor Milo Gavros: Home
The smell of antiseptic and sodium chloride filled my nostrils when a man with a thick mustache hung a bag of blood over my head.
“Call Second Presbyterian and alert them we have two gunshot wounds coming in. Tell them to have GI and cardiothoracic on the floor. I’m almost certain they are both fatal, and if this girl doesn’t get a heart soon, she won’t make it.”
Was my girl’s heart dying?
My eyes drifted to the body next to me, to the way her pretty fingers fell over the side of the gurney.
“Hey,” I tried to speak, dragging my hand down Mustache’s arm with what little strength I could muster.
“You are in the back of an ambulance,” he said, as if it were Tuesday. “We are going to get you help.”
Lying to a dead man? If I could punch him in the dick, I would.
“My name is Thre...” I stopped myself cold. “Thayor.”
“Try to rest.” He tapped something on the screen next to me and scribbled on his pad.
“Listen, fucker,” I ground out, and his eyes shot up. “My name is Thayor Milo Gavros, and Daphne is my wife.”
He had to know what I was. If not by the tattoos, then by the fact they pulled me out of an Underworld clubhouse after a shootout. That was fine. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want them to think she wasn’t worth saving.
“She is a midwife and not one of us.”
“Mr. Gavros, I don’t judge.” He smiled, pointing to the tattoo of a wolf on his forearm. It was old, but still there, and I couldn’t tell if Karsten’s man was about to kill me or if this motherfucker actually got out.
Because no one gets out. No one.
“My birthday is October 27, 1998. My Social Security number is 555-31-0000, and I am of sound mind when I tell you that I understand my wounds are fatal.” I coughed, trying to catch my breath. “When I go under, don’t bring me back. I want you to put my heart in Daphne’s chest.”
Mustache blinked, his Tuesday turning into Wednesday with a violent shove.
“Mr. Gavros.”
“Do you understand me?” I went for his scrubs and yanked. “Give Daphne my heart. You save her.”
“I bear witness,” the young man nodded, the salt in his eyes looking something like tears before he wiped them away.
“Me, too,” the driver called from the front of the ambulance when I reached over to Daphne on the gurney beside me, squeezing her hand tightly.
“Her pulse is up,” another paramedic said, and I smiled, because of course it was. I had touched her, and even between worlds her body knew when mine was close.
“I will do everything in my power to make this happen, Mr. Gavros.”
“Thank you,” I breathed, feeling the rush of sleep pull me under. “And when they remove her heart, tell the doc to put it in my chest. Don’t sew me back up without it.”
Mustache stilled, the quiet in the cab seeping into every available space before he nodded.
I collapsed onto my pillow, listening to Daphne’s heartbeat on the monitor.
“Turn it up,” I whispered. “This is my favorite song.”
It was a slow row into the Undying Lands, a strange peace settling warm in my chest. All the things I had been afraid to feel rushed through me, flooding my veins with Daphne’s light. And then I remembered every moment I had ever loved her.
The sly smirk she gave me the first time I crawled through her window and onto her mattress, taking my hand before she even knew my name.
I saw her shivering in the winter, pressing a kiss to my cheek and twirling under the stars.
I felt her toes curl into the backs of my legs, the way her fingertips traced circles along my spine when we slept.
The feeling of her mouth, the slick of her skin, the break in her body when we came together.
Daphne guided me deeper. The sound of her heart filled my ears as it fought to keep beating.
“I am coming, Daph. Hold on.”
Flashes of her smile broke for me, a montage of her life unfolding in the prettiest fragments. I saw her in every moment, from her knobby knees to the day she took my last name.
And then came the dream that would never happen, but I loved it anyway.
The swell of her belly when she danced in the kitchen, singing nineties songs into a potato whisk.
The way our little girl scampered in on Christmas morning, holding a present in the dim light.
A streak of silver falling across Daphne’s face as I leaned in to kiss that freckle on her neck, I loved so much.
And the best part?
I wasn’t a monster anymore, or something broken that we would both have to carry forever.
Here, the Underworld couldn’t touch me or ask me to break for it. The things I had done to survive washed away in images of Daphne sitting in the garden, twirling a piece of licorice between her lips.
This was permission.
Here, I was Thayor. Safe. Hers.
“Look, when she wakes up, she is going to flip the fuck out. She’ll tear at her scars, maybe even try to burn the world down.
But I need you to tell her something for me.
” I grabbed the paramedic’s collar and pulled him so close our faces nearly touched.
“You tell my girl not to pray. Tell her I am not going to heaven or hell. Tell Daphne I am coming home.”