CHAPTER 7
Nikolai
◆
Heart rate too high. Breath too short. I am thirty-nine years old and have not been afraid since I was sixteen. I am afraid.
For her, never of her. The distinction is the only distinction, and mercy has always lived in that thin blade-space.
The treadmill belt slows. My left-wrist Patek reads five fifty-eight. Six miles in forty-six minutes. On the cooldown my pulse drops in clean increments, exactly as expected. The body is a system to maintain.
The phone on the towel rail rings.
Volkov rings on the second and Volkov rings late. I press the green.
"Alexei."
"Brother."
He is in his truck. The cab acoustics are wrong for the garage. He has been at St. Jude's since two at least.
"She is asleep in the call room," he says. "Floor eleven east. She stayed asleep when I left."
"Vitals."
"Pulse steady before dawn. Respirations even. Color good. The medallion is at her throat. I left it where it was."
"You stitched."
"No stitches. There was no laceration tonight. I am going to tell it in order or I am going to fuck it up. Pakhan."
"In order."
"Hayes came to the trauma bay six corridor just after twenty-one hundred with the chart as cover.
Voice low enough to call it professional, staged loud enough for me to answer.
He asked whether she was being utilized appropriately.
She held. I was at the charting station.
I moved when he crossed the mouth of the bay. "
The cooldown clock reaches zero. I step off the treadmill onto the rubber mat. My breath is at six in, eight out.
"At twenty-one fifteen in bay six," Alexei says.
"The empty one. The one with the regulator that hisses.
I asked her color. She told me green. Glove-snap on my wrist as signal.
Gurney. Her wrists held my forearms. Her ankles on my shoulders.
The ring stayed on. She took it. She asked color back twice.
I gave it green twice. She came twice. She said please before she came.
No tears. She asked me Yuri's name halfway through and I said it once. No flinch. Suka. No flinch."
Gospodi.
The word forms behind my teeth and stays there. I don't say it aloud. I press my palm into the rubber mat for four beats to make the body continue its drop toward calm. I straighten.
"Aftercare."
"Saline-warmed cloth. The Shock-Trauma habit.
The ring on her sternum for one breath after.
I carried her to eleven east. She slept in ninety seconds.
I sat in the chair at the door for forty minutes.
I left at oh-six. Eighty-two. Sixteen. The blanket was tucked at her left shoulder.
That is the side she sleeps on. Mikhailov will want to know. "
"He knows already. Standing order."
"Standing order."
"Understood. The intelligence has been doing the work."
"It has. Alexei."
"Pakhan."
"You did not engineer the bay-six hour."
"I did not. The page brought her there; the case kept her there. Hayes came with a chart and left with his hand off her. Afterward she was at the warmer with the regulator hissing and the room too quiet around her. I asked color before I touched her."
"Good. Sleep. I will see you at the loft at nineteen hundred. Bring Castellan's request list for the suite."
"Pakhan. One more. Brother."
I take the call off speaker and put the phone to my ear. The phone is warm against my temple where the eight-millimeter scar sits. The silver at my temple covers half of it. The other half I leave alone.
"She said Yuri's name to me," Alexei says, soft. "Yuri. Like a man’s name at a graveside. No other voice has said it since my mother. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that."
"You record it. Do not operate on it tonight. Do not cauterize it into anger. Put the fact where you can name it and keep working. Brat. You understand."
"Brat. Yes."
"Sleep."
"Sleep, Pakhan."
The line clicks off in my ear.
I stand a full minute in the gym. The decision is old. The phone call is the last piece of information that was missing from the case note.
She has been claimed by Volkov now.
Volkov could not have claimed her without the standing order I issued in my head on day four when I read the line on page two of Sister Mary Catherine's letter.
The line was in pencil. She sees what others miss and she does not look away.
I read it three times. I closed the dossier.
I poured the kettle for the Earl Grey that would be the prop for a clinical claim I had not yet decided to make.
By the time the kettle had whistled I had decided. The clinical claim on day four was the door of the procedure. The procedure has been running since.
A procedure has a surgeon. The surgeon is the one who decides where the cut goes.
The four of us are the surgeon. There is only one cut.
The cut is the offer. The offer is the structure — the four-share-her structure the three of them and I will lay out for her in two days, in the foyer of this house, with the ledger in her hands.
I shower. I dress: charcoal merino crewneck, dark jeans, Chelsea boots.
The Patek has ridden my left wrist for twenty-three years.
My right thumb finds the crown. I feel the notches I have worn into the strap.
Seven. Seven in three years on the third strap.
Two are deeper. One on the day my father did not come back from Naples.
One on the day I read Sister Mary Catherine's letter for the first time.
There will be a third deep notch. I don't yet know which day.
The morning light through the study window is the cold-front light.
The puddles on Brighton Eighth Street have the autumn east light in them at a flat angle.
The plane tree's leaves are wet and bright.
The gallery glass in the foyer is faintly visible from the landing if you stand at the rail.
I have written four of the volumes behind it in my own hand. My father wrote fifteen.
The arithmetic of thirty-six years is in those volumes and the arithmetic does not know yet that it is going to be read by a woman with auburn hair and a yellow pencil in her knot.
Kostya knocks at six forty-five. He sets the brief on the desk.
"The night."
"Volkov at the trauma bay until oh-six. Mikhailov in the cath-lab annex until oh-three. Castellan at the loft; courier from Naples at oh-one fifteen, the package was a calendar, he sent it to the Lab A safe. Hayes is at the Plaza Athénée. He has a meeting at the bar on day twelve."
"Day twelve. Whom."
"Stefan lacks the name. Stefan has the table."
"Send Stefan to the office at eleven. Tell Volkov to sleep until fourteen. He will sleep if you tell him. He refuses if I tell him."
"Yes, Pakhan."
He goes.
By eight I am at the hospital. Kostya keeps the car silent, as always.
The chief's office is the southeast corner of Floor 10. The walnut desk. The credenza with the Earl Grey loose-leaf tin, the small electric kettle, the two Royal Doulton cups with the thin gold band, the silver tea spoon. My father's spoon. The only object of his at the hospital.
At eight oh-three I open the security console.
I key her badge. Rossi, Elena. RN. ID #41552.
The Sub-basement 2 corridor field is blank.
I check it. The screen asks for a reason.
It always asks. I type TEMPORARY RESEARCH OBSERVER / PI CASTELLAN / NO PATIENT CARE / EXPIRES 23:59.
Gabriel’s authorization is already scanned; IT will see my key, Facilities will see my key, and neither will ask because both have seen my key for three years. The console accepts it.
This remains with me. I handle it myself.
I open the case-note dossier. The record is private and encrypted to my key alone. I have been keeping it since day one.
> Patient has passed every count I have been keeping.
She caught Hayes’s reach and his chart-cover lie and held steady.
She caught Volkov’s ring at the bay’s open chest and ordered him to set it down.
She caught Mikhailov's stethoscope at her sternum and held his gaze.
Castellan remains ahead of her. Castellan will be slow with her. Slow is the most dangerous.
> Volkov claimed her at twenty-one fifteen in bay six. Color was given. Aftercare per protocol. He told her Yuri's name during the procedure. Her gaze holds. The decision is therefore made.
> We will offer her the structure on day nine in the foyer. The gallery glass ajar at oh-eight. Kostya drives her here at eleven. I will speak first. She lies badly to no one. I refuse to pretend the offer is a request.
I close the file.
At ten thirty the southeast light catches me still standing at the desk.
I had stayed on my feet all morning. The light is low and east and clean, and it falls on the third shelf of the bookshelf where the small leather roll of the surgical kit is displayed as decoration.
The roll was a gift from my father at sixteen.
The kit has stayed closed for nine years.
My right thumb at the crown of the Patek. The crease at the crown is shaped like a small thumbprint, because it is a small thumbprint, twenty-three years of the same thumb. I run my thumb across the crease three times. Three decisions made.
Volkov has claimed her. The standing order is in effect. The lock-in is scheduled.
I sit.
At eleven Stefan comes in. Hunter-green scrubs, white attending coat, the cord on his left wrist at the cuff. He sits in the leather club chair and angles his right palm open as he speaks. The midline scar on his palm is faint silver. He doesn't hide it.