17. Zoya #3
Karina opens the back door, and the girls climb in, wide-eyed and silent now that the cold and sirens have made everything feel too real again. I help Ruslan into the passenger seat because getting him into the back would require physics none of us have time for.
He grips the doorframe, face gray with pain. “Hospital.”
I freeze.
Karina says from the driver’s side, “You want a hospital?”
“For them,” Ruslan says, nodding toward the girls. “They need to be checked.”
“They’re not hit,” I say.
“Shock.”
The word is blunt and correct.
I hate him for being correct.
Karina looks at me over the roof of the car. “We can take them to urgent care.”
Ruslan says, “No hospitals with police yet.”
“Of course,” I murmur. For one second, I had forgotten that the man in front of me was a murderer, and a possible sociopath. Then why is my heart racing like this at his proximity?
I look at the girls in the back. Mila’s lip is trembling. Nadia is holding her sister’s hand so tightly their knuckles are pale.
My apartment is fifteen minutes away. Safe enough. Familiar enough. A place to breathe, check them over, call someone I trust, figure out the next step.
“My apartment,” I say.
Ruslan turns his head toward me. “No.”
“My apartment,” I repeat.
His eyes search my face. He wants to argue. I can see it. Then pain cuts through him, and he presses his hand harder against his thigh.
Karina gets behind the wheel. “Apartment it is.”
I climb into the back between the girls because I can’t bear not to touch them. Mila crawls into my lap immediately, too big for it and still small enough that I make room. Nadia leans into my side, silent.
Ruslan sits in front, breathing carefully.
Karina pulls out of the side lot with the headlights off until we reach the road, then turns them on and drives too fast.
For several minutes, nobody speaks. The girls’ breathing slowly steadies against me.
My hands move over their hair, their shoulders, their arms, checking and rechecking what I already know.
My girls are safe. That’s the only thing that matters.
Not the other thing… where Ruslan brought death to my door again.
In the front seat, Ruslan’s head rests back against the seat, eyes closed, one hand locked around his wounded thigh.
Karina glances at him every few seconds in the rearview mirror. Finally, she says, “You look like hell.”
Ruslan’s eyes open slightly. “You always talk this much?”
Karina says, “Only when I’m transporting bleeding criminals with my goddaughters in the back.”
I say, “Karina.”
She says, “What? We’re all thinking it.”
Ruslan says nothing.
Mila lifts her head from my chest. “Mama, is he a criminal?”
The car goes very quiet. I close my eyes.
Karina whispers, “Fantastic.”
Ruslan turns his head slightly but doesn’t look back.
I answer carefully. “He has done dangerous things.”
Mila thinks about that. “But he said we should be checked for shock.”
“Yes,” I say.
Nadia says, “Bad people can know first aid.”
Karina makes a choked sound.
Ruslan’s mouth moves faintly, though his eyes remain closed.
I look out the window because laughing, crying, and screaming all feel equally possible.
When we reach my apartment building, Karina parks in the back where the security light flickers and only one neighbor’s cat judges us from a wall.
Getting Ruslan upstairs is a nightmare. He refuses to let me call anyone. Karina refuses to let him bleed on her upholstery any more than he already has. Nadia insists we should make a “blood plan,” and Mila starts crying again because she thinks Ruslan will die in the elevator.
“I am not dying,” Ruslan says.
Mila sniffles. “How do you know?”
Ruslan pauses. “Experience.”
“That is not reassuring,” I say.
Nadia says, “It was a vague answer.”
Karina mutters, “Welcome to the club, kid.”
Somehow, we get him into my apartment.
The place is small, warm, and painfully normal after the last hour.
The girls’ drawings are taped to the fridge.
Two schoolbags sit near the couch. A laundry basket waits by the hallway because I forgot to fold towels.
There are glitter stickers on the coffee table, a half-dead basil plant near the window, and three library books stacked beside the sofa.
Ruslan takes it all in from the doorway. I see it happen. His eyes move over the shoes, the drawings, the tiny raincoats on the hooks, the framed photo of the girls at the beach last summer.
His face changes.
Not much. Enough.
He knows now.
Not everything, maybe. Not the details. Not the years. Not the pregnancy test I took alone or the night I screamed into a pillow because both babies had fevers and I was terrified.
But he knows enough to understand that this is not just my apartment.
It’s theirs. His daughters are everywhere. But the cruel irony is that he doesn’t know who they are, what they are to him. And I’m not going to let him find out.
“Sit,” I say sharply, because if I let that silence grow, it will swallow the room.
Ruslan looks at me.
I point to the kitchen chair. “Sit down before you fall down.”
For once, he does what I say.
Karina locks the door behind us, then checks the chain, then looks at me. “First aid box?”
“Bathroom. Under the sink,” I say.
Karina takes Nadia with her because Nadia refuses to let go of her hand. Mila stays glued to my side, watching Ruslan with worried eyes.
I kneel in front of him and look at the makeshift bandage around his thigh. Blood has soaked through. My stomach turns.
Karina comes back with the first aid box, towels, and the expression of a woman barely holding back questions that could set the apartment on fire. She hands me the box and says, “Zoya.”
“I know,” I say.
“No,” Karina says quietly, eyes flicking toward Ruslan, then the girls. “You don’t.”
My hands still over the bandage.
For one second, the unfinished sentence from the kindergarten returns.
There’s something you should know.
About that number.
Ruslan’s gaze lifts to Karina.
Karina’s mouth closes. Whatever she wants to say, she swallows it. “Bathroom sink had the good towels.”
I take them from her. “Those are not the good towels.”
“They are now blood towels,” she says.
Nadia, standing near the doorway with her arms wrapped around herself, says, “That is an upsetting category.”
Karina closes her eyes briefly. “You are correct. I apologize.”