CHAPTER 28 #3
"I will carry her up to the on-call surgeon's couch," he says.
"Take her to the chief's office. The cashmere blanket. You did the work tonight. You take the bed."
"Yes."
He lifts her again. He turns toward the gallery door. He pauses. Over her shoulder, the pale gray eyes hold the warm of the pilot from the glass behind him.
"Castellan."
"Romanov."
"I will not say it again. Stay with her at the chair for a count. I am coming back to walk to the office with you."
"Yes."
He carries her out. The door clicks behind him.
I stay at the rail for a minute. The architecture is empty.
I cross to the chair. I sit on the arm beside her. I take her left hand from her lap and turn it over and trace the faint pink curve of the rail's pattern on the inside of her wrist with the pad of my right index finger. Three times. The pattern is barely there. By dawn it will be gone.
The medallion at her throat catches the warm coin of the pilot from the glass.
My hand keeps off the chain. The medallion remains its own thing.
The medallion stays. I bring my mouth down and I kiss it once through the chain at the hollow of her throat.
The silver is warm from her skin. The hairline crack on the angel's wing presses into the corner of my lower lip for half a second. I straighten.
Nikolai comes back at twenty-three-thirty. He has the chief's-office key in his right hand and the cashmere blanket folded over his left arm. He stays silent. He bends and lifts her again.
He carries her up the private staircase to the chief's corridor.
The fluorescents are off. The night cleaning crew has finished.
He lays her on the leather couch behind the credenza and tucks the cashmere blanket up to her chin and lifts the medallion off the inside of the chain so it lies flat against her sternum.
He sits beside her on the floor with his back against the couch.
He puts his right hand on her sternum over the cashmere and the medallion and he holds.
I sit on the leather club chair across the room. We stay silent.
After eleven minutes he stands. He bends and kisses her forehead. He nods at me. We close the door behind us. He turns the key in the lock — the chief's office locks from outside on the chief's key; the inside has a thumb-turn she can use to leave if she wakes.
We go back down to the gallery.
The pilot is still warm in the glass. The brass rail is at our waists. Nikolai stands at the rail beside me. He looks down through the glass into the dark of OR-3 below. I look down beside him. We stand a long time.
"He died on a Wednesday," I say. The sentence comes from a long way back.
"He left you his books."
"I will read them."
"Tonight you did not need them."
"Tonight I did not need them."
Nikolai puts his right hand on the brass rail. The Patek is at his wrist. The strap with the gallery-glass key is at the inside of his wrist where his pulse is. His eyes stay on the dark below.
The first flurries hit the gallery glass at twenty-three forty-five. The flakes are small. They hit the glass and slide and are gone. The OR is dark. The lamp pilot is warm. The brass rail is at our hands.
I have decided what to do with the rest of my life.
I have decided to do it with the woman asleep in the chief’s office.
I will tell her last. I am still setting the spans between us.
Stefan has gone. Nikolai has gone tonight.
Alexei is the third. I am the fourth. The room I built tonight is the last room I will build in this hospital.
Nikolai holds at the rail. The flurries keep coming.
"Castellan."
"Romanov."
"I will sleep tonight. In the chief's office. With my hand on the back of her neck."
"Yes."
"I have not had a thing of my own that I did not take."
"You did not take her."
"No."
He turns from the rail. He picks up the SIG from the film-board. He holsters it. He walks toward the gallery door and stops with his hand on the handle.
"Castellan."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
He goes. The door clicks. The corridor swallows his steps. I stand at the rail alone.
I look down at the dark of OR-3 below. The three articulated brass arms are quiet. The center bulb is the warm coin in the glass over my shoulder. The chairs behind me are three. The architecture leaves the fourth empty. The architecture has been telling me the truth and I am finally in it.
I close my left hand around the silk in my pocket. The Naples notebook is under it. The capo's hand is on the page through the leather. Sii il muro, he wrote. Be the wall.
I have been the wall tonight. Nikolai sleeps in the chief's office with his hand on the back of her neck and the medallion at her sternum because I built a room for him to say a word in. I will build another room for the next man. The wall is mine.
Elena.
I keep the word inside the chest.
I stand at the rail. The breath goes uncounted. I hold.
The flurries come. They slide off tonight. The first snow proper is two days out.
I turn from the rail. I look at the chairs. There are three.
I stand the count and walk out.