Chapter 34 - Alexei
I let him go alone.
That was the thought that wouldn’t leave me. That was the thing that had taken root in my chest the moment I received Dimitri’s call.
He said he wanted to spend some time with Rei.
He said he felt guilty.
So I let him.
Why the fuck did I let him?
I shouldn’t have, because now I was here, rushing through hospital doors.
I was already broken. Snapped, like a wire under too much tension, the last thread of composure I had been maintaining since the phone call severing cleanly and leaving nothing but directionless rage.
I felt like killing everyone in here.
And no, it wasn’t a figure of speech. I felt an impulse to do violence to every single person in this building because why the fuck weren’t they struggling? Why wasn’t it one of them in pain like Marco? Why did it have to be him?
Dimitri caught me.
His hand came down on my shoulder. “Wait,” he said. “You can’t go in. The doctors are with him.”
I breathed like an animal.
That was the only way to describe it. My vision narrowed, the edges blurred, the world reduced to a tunnel with the door at the end of the hallway as its only focal point. Everything else existed only as obstacles.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked.
Dimitri pressed his lips together. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean you’re not sure?”
“He seemed fine. They were studying. He was sitting on the couch, he was fine, and then he wasn’t.”
He was fine and then he wasn’t.
That was the story of Marco’s life. That was the story of his body. Fine and then not fine. Okay and then not okay. Breathing and then not breathing.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“Alexei—”
“Where. Is he.”
“Room four. They’re working on him. They said to wait—”
“I’m not waiting.” Dimitri’s grip tightened on my shoulder, holding me in place. “Alexei,” he said. “If you go in there and disrupt them, you could make it worse. Let them work. You going in there like this helps no one.”
I turned and looked at him properly. I could see the understanding in Dimitri’s face - the recognition that I wasn’t operating on logic right now, and that was ironic because I was always using logic, not my feelings, to act.
“What is it to you how he is?” The voice came from behind me.
I turned my head.
It was Rei.
He was standing a few feet away, near the row of plastic chairs against the wall. His silver hair was a mess and his face was wet. Tears tracking down his cheeks in continuous streams, his mouth pressed into a trembling line that was trying very hard to be a glare.
It was a glare.
Directed at me.
I directed it right the fuck back.
“None of your business.”
“I think it is my business,” his voice was shaking. “My best friend is in there and I don’t know why. And something tells me you know.” His gaze shifted from me to Dimitri.
The glare intensified, and something accusatory, something that said you knew too - made Dimitri lower his head. Just enough to confirm what Rei was suspecting without saying a word.
Then his eyes came back to me.
“And you,” he said, stepping closer. “He called your name. Did you do something to him? Why did he call your name?”
His voice was shaky. He was distorted. Wrecked. But all I could think of was - he called my name.
Not his mother’s. Not his father’s. Not Rei’s, who was right there, who was holding him.
Mine.
He called for me.
And I wasn’t there to answer.
“I’m his boyfriend.”
Rei’s face contorted. “You are what?”
His voice pitched up, cracking on the word. “He’s scared shitless of you,” he said, stepping forward again. “Did you force yourself on him?”
I was one minute away from grabbing him.
One minute.
Sixty seconds.
That was the distance between me and killing Rei Kurosaki in front of Dimitri and every witness in this hospital, but I couldn’t bother to do any of that.
Because I was suffocating.
“I know Marco,” Rei continued, his voice breaking and rebuilding and breaking again. “He would never look at you willingly.”
I looked at him with deadpan eyes. “You know him?” I asked in mockery. “Did you know he is sick? Did you know he is not doing okay? Did you know he is struggling?”
Rei’s mouth opened but nothing came out.
“What the fuck do you know, huh?”
That shut him up.
The anger on his face crumbled and what replaced it was worse.
Guilt.
“I…” Rei started, but didn’t finish. Dimitri stepped forward, placed himself between us and said, “Enough, Alexei. Just go sit down.” I didn’t move.
“Sit down,” he repeated. “They will come out. They will tell you something. But you can’t go in there, so sit down.”
I gave him a look and then I walked to the row of plastic chairs against the wall.
Behind me, I heard movement. I didn’t turn around to look, but I heard it - the sound of arms opening, of a body being pulled against another body, of Rei’s composure irreversibly breaking.
He started crying harder and Dimitri held him.
I could hear him murmuring something against Rei’s hair while I sat in my chair and stared at the closed door at the end of the hallway.
My hands were shaking.
I pressed them flat against my thighs and willed them to stop.
They didn’t stop.
I pressed harder.
They didn’t stop.
For the first time in my life, I understood what people meant when they said they were praying.
I never prayed. I didn’t believe in anything that listened.
But sitting in that hallway, with my hands shaking and my chest hollow and the love of my life behind a closed door, I would have begged anything. I would have dragged every god from their heavens and fallen at their feet. I would have offered them every piece of myself if they would only listen.
Just keep him alive.
Please.
Just keep him alive.
I will do anything.
Just let him live.
When the doctor came out, he led us all inside and I sat on the chair nearest the wall.
“He’s not responding very well to the medication.”
“We stabilized him,” he continued. “He’s stable now but the medication isn’t doing what we need it to do. The function isn’t improving. If anything, the episode today suggests it’s declining faster than we anticipated.”
The buzzing in my arms started.
I didn’t know what else to call it. Not numbness - I could feel my hands, my fingers, the chair beneath me.
But something was happening in my arms, in my shoulders, in the muscles of my back.
A vibration. As if my body was processing something too large for its systems and was trying to distribute the excess somewhere, anywhere.
“He needs a heart transplant,” the doctor said.
“The sooner the better. He’s no longer a candidate for medical management alone. The window is narrowing.”
Rei choked on a cry and Dimitri’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
“What do you mean, narrowing?” My voice was flat.
The doctor held my gaze.
“I mean that he is going to get weaker. The episodes like today will become more frequent. The heart will struggle more with each one. Each crisis will leave less function behind than the one before. The medication can slow this, but it cannot stop it. Without a transplant, we are looking at a trajectory that is…” he paused, choosing his words “…months rather than years.”
Months.
Rather than years.
The buzzing in my arms intensified.
“I suggest keeping him in the hospital. We need to monitor him closely. Adjust what we can. And notify his parents.”
Rei stood up, unsteadily, Dimitri’s hand falling from his shoulder. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I…” he started. “I’ll call them.” Dimitri put his arm around him.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “I’ll go with you.”
They left and the door closed behind them.
I was alone in the room with the doctor. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Mr. Morozov, I understand this is—”
“Test me.”
“Excuse me?”
I lifted my eyes to his.
Dead eyes. I knew what they looked like. I had been told many times, by many people, that my eyes were the coldest thing they had ever seen. Empty. Hollow.
“If I’m compatible,” I explained. “If my heart can be given to him. Test me.”
The doctor stared at me like I was an alien.
“Mr. Morozov, you… you know that would kill you.”
“I’m aware,” I confirmed. “So test me.”
His face was doing something complicated. He was a doctor. He had sworn to save lives. He was being asked to determine whether one life could be exchanged for another, and the person asking was the life that would be lost.
“Mr. Morozov, I can’t just—”
“Test me,” I repeated as I leaned forward. “Or I’ll rip your heart out instead.”
He swallowed. He was visibly shaking with fear now. “Okay, go to room seven in three hours,” he said. “Down the hall, second door on the left. They’ll run a few tests there.”
I stood up and then I walked toward the door.
My heart for his.
A trade.
***
Marco’s parents came.
His mother came first.
She was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe she had always been this small and I hadn’t noticed because I had been too busy watching Marco to see her properly.
His father was behind her and Luca was with them.
They were met at the door by a nurse who directed them to a consultation room.
I watched from the corner of the hallway.
A few moments later, I could hear his mother cry and when she came out she was being held up by her husband. Luca was behind them.
He was crying too. He was signing through the tears, the gestures coming fast and frantic, the same sign over and over and over.
Is he going to die.
Is he going to die.
Is he going to die.
His father’s hands were shaking too badly to sign back.
They moved down the hallway toward Marco’s room, and I stayed in my corner until his mother stopped when she saw me. I waited for the yelling but she just came close and she hugged me.
I didn’t know how to react. My arms hung at my sides, unresponsive. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
I didn’t understand how she could be sorry. She was the one whose son was dying. She was the one who had been lied to. “This must have been hard,” she continued, her voice muffled against my shirt, her arms tightening around my waist. “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of him.”
She patted my chest once.
Then she turned and walked back to her husband, who put his arm around her again.
I left a bit after.
Not because I wanted to. Because I had somewhere I needed to be. The doctor from room seven was waiting.
The tests took hours and by the time I stepped out of the room, the hallway was quieter.
Rei was standing outside Marco’s room.
He looked up when he heard my footsteps.
His face was different than before and he gave me a weird look. “He’s… asking for you.”
I released a breath, feeling air in my lungs. That means he woke up.
I went inside immediately. I opened the door and saw him.
He looked weak.
That was the first thing I registered. His face was pale. More pale than I had ever seen it. The olive tone of his skin had drained to something closer to grey. His arms were thin on the sheets, the IV line running into one wrist, the tape holding it in place the same shade as his skin.
But his eyes were open.
And he was crying.
Wait, why the hell was he crying?
“Alexei…”
I reached the side of the bed and caught his hand. “What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying? Does it hurt?”
He shook his head. “Alexei,” his voice cracked on my name, “Please take me home. Okay?”
He cried harder. “Mom said I have to stay here,” he whispered. “I don’t want to. Alexei, please. Please take me home.”
He was begging.
The word please came out of him over and over, each repetition more desperate than the last. “Please. Please. Please take me home.”
I crawled onto the bed, adjusting my weight so that I wouldn’t disturb the IV or the monitors, then I wrapped my arms around him.
His face pressed into my neck. His tears soaked into my collar. His body was curled into mine, like it was trying to crawl inside me and hide from the world that was trying to kill it.
“You need to, baby,” I whispered against his hair. “The doctors need to watch over you.”
He cried harder. “Please,” he said, his voice breaking into pieces against my throat. “I don’t want to die here. Please. Please. Please.”
He begged.
And begged.
And begged.
Please take me home.
Please don’t let me die here.
Please.
I don’t want to die here.
Please.
I don’t want to die here.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay,” I said again, softer. “I’ll take you home. Alright?”
“Take a deep breath for me, don’t cry, okay? I’ll take you home.”
I held him and rocked him, whispered promises into his hair that I had no right to make and no power to keep.
I would take him home and hold him and count his heartbeats and fight for every single one, and if the universe tried to take him from me I would drag it down and demand it to give him back.
“I’ll take you home.”