CHAPTER 6 #3
The bay was quiet. The hiss of the regulator was the only sound.
The fluorescents held their steady honey at the diffuser's edge.
Alexei was bent over me with his right palm on the gurney rail beside my hand and his forehead at the place above my sternum where the medallion lay.
His breath was on the chain. He was still inside me.
The medallion was warm. My pulse was warm.
I had counted, in the last sixty seconds of the night, six rails, twelve, fourteen breaths between my own and his, three ceiling tiles, the second hand on the clock at the head of the gurney making one complete sweep around its face.
I touched his hair with my right hand.
"I am going to clean you. Saline, warmed.
I learned the trick at Shock-Trauma. After I clean you I am going to put the ring against the bone here.
" He tapped my sternum with the back of one knuckle through the chain of the medallion.
"One breath. Then I pick it back up. You are not going home tonight.
You are going to my place. We are going to do that again.
And again. And then I am going to feed you. Color."
"Green."
"Good. Stay."
He pulled out. He stepped back, his face still toward me.
He went to the supply cart at the bay's wall and he ran a procedure cloth under the warm-water tap at the sink and he rinsed it in sterile saline from a hundred-mL bottle and he warmed the cloth between his palms for ten seconds with the care of warming a stethoscope before he puts it on a patient.
He came back. He stood between my thighs again.
My ankles were still on his shoulders; he lowered them gently to the gurney.
He cleaned me with the saline-warmed cloth.
He did it as he had stitched the kid's heart.
Three throws. He went slowly. He took his time.
His eyes stayed on his hands for the entire ninety seconds it took and that was because he was working and his work, for the moment, was me.
He used a fresh corner of the cloth. He used a fresh corner again.
He rinsed the cloth. He cleaned me a second time. He set the cloth in the soiled bin.
He took the ring off his right thumb. He held it between his thumb and forefinger.
"Here."
He set the knurled steel ring on my sternum, just above where the medallion lay.
The metal had been on his hand all night and the metal was warm.
He held it there with the pad of one finger.
The knurling pressed faintly into the skin between my collarbones.
I felt the pattern — the same pattern that had been against my clit ten minutes before — printing itself on the bone at my chest. One inhale. One exhale.
"Such a fucking gift," he said.
He picked the ring up. He put it back on his right thumb. He turned it twice. He stopped.
The skin where the ring had been was still warmer than the skin around it for a long time.
---
He brought me my scrub bottoms. His eyes stayed on my face while I put them on; he had already looked at the rest.
I sat up. The bay was steady at my edges.
He picked the pediatric pin off the floor where it had fallen at some point I had not registered, came over with it between his right thumb and forefinger, and asked me with his eyes.
I nodded. He pinned it to my scrub top, level, two inches below the collarbone, as I would have pinned it on a child.
"Nikolai is going to want to know about Hayes. I will tell him in the morning. Tonight is mine."
"All right."
"He is also going to want to know about you. That part stays with me. He will know without my telling him."
"All right."
He took my hand. He turned the lock on the bay door. He walked me out. The corridor was empty. The night-shift charge nurse was at the station with her back to us. The OR-3 surgical lamp had gone dim.
In the parking garage his black F-150 was at the third spot from the freight door. He helped me into the cab and buckled my seat belt with his left hand on the strap. He turned the engine over.
"Yuri died in a room like that. He was eleven. I was fourteen. A hospital wouldn't take a Volkov. He bled out across the street from the ambulance bay. Don't think about it. Stay on my face, krasivaya."
I looked at him.
"That's all I am going to say tonight. Tonight I told you because the room was the right shape and because you said green."
"All right."
He put the truck in gear. He drove. The rain was on the windshield.
He kept the ring turning on his right thumb, once, twice.
At the garage ramp my head went heavy against the seat belt and the world slipped sideways before I could choose another room.
Instead of taking me to his place while I could not answer him, he turned the truck back toward Floor 11 east and carried me to the call room, where the lock opens from the inside and Beatriz knows the door. That is the line I keep coming back to.
I touched the medallion at my sternum with the back of one knuckle and put my head against the cold of the window. The metal taste was gone from my mouth.
The skin at my sternum was still warmer than the skin around it.
It stayed that way for a long time.