Chapter 35
ELENA
It looks like a private practice, the kind with a discreet sign and a buzzer entry and no walk-ins, and then Viktor pulls up to the curb. Roman gets out and opens my door. I sit there for a moment looking at the entrance, and I think about Mara.
“I want to see Mara first,” I say.
Roman looks at me.
“Before anyone examines me, before anyone does anything, I want to see her.” I look at him. “Please.”
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he tells the doctor standing at the entrance to give us a minute, a woman in her fifties with short gray hair who has been waiting at the door since the car pulled up, and she nods and steps back inside.
Roman helps me out of the car, and I let him because my legs are not entirely reliable, and we go inside.
They bring Mara in on a wheelchair twenty minutes later.
She has her left arm in a sling, an IV line running into her right, and a hospital gown under a blanket someone has draped across her lap.
Her hair is everywhere and her face is the gray of someone who has lost significant blood and been put back together on a table.
When she sees me she opens her mouth and closes it and opens it again and what comes out is not words, just a sound.
I cross the room and I crouch in front of the wheelchair and I take her right hand in both of mine.
“You got shot,” I say.
“I noticed,” she says. Her voice is thick and slow, the anesthesia still in it. “You got kidnapped.”
“I noticed.”
She looks at my face with the attention of someone checking for damage. I let her look the same way I let Roman look in the car, because I understand the need, and when she has finished looking, she says, “You are okay?”
I say, “I am okay,” and she closes her eyes for three seconds and squeezes my hand.
“Danny is going to lose his mind,” she says.
“Danny is going to be fine.”
“He called six times while I was in surgery, apparently. Six.” She opens her eyes. “I’m going to have to tell him I love him now, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” I say. “You are.”
She makes a sound that is almost a laugh and winces, and I squeeze her hand, and I do not let go for a long time.
The examination room is white and clean, and the doctor, Reyes, moves through it with the focused efficiency of someone who has seen complicated situations before and has learned not to let complications interfere with the medicine.
She checks my blood pressure, my pulse, the baby’s heartbeat with an ultrasound wand that she presses against my stomach, and the sound fills the room, fast, steady, and I close my eyes and breathe.
Roman is standing at the far wall with his jacket still on and his arms folded, and he’s watching the Doppler with an expression I have not seen on his face before, concentrated, stripped of the usual control, just a man listening to a heartbeat.
“Good,” Dr. Reyes says. “Strong.” She moves the wand slightly. “Now let’s do the full scan.”
She runs the ultrasound in silence, the screen angled toward her, and I lie on the table and look at the ceiling and think about the room in New Jersey and the frosted window and the man with the wire-rimmed glasses and his word on that.
Dr. Reyes goes quiet.
Not the quiet of moving from one thing to the next. A different quiet, the quiet of someone looking at something that requires a second look. She adjusts the probe, looks at the screen again, and then she looks at me.
“Mrs. Petrov,” she says. “Are you aware that you are carrying twins?”
The room goes completely still.
I look at the screen.
Two. Two distinct sacs, two distinct shapes, two heartbeats that she turns the audio up on now, one slightly faster than the other, filling the room together in a rhythm that is not quite synchronized, and I lie on that table, and I listen to both of them, and I cannot speak.
I turn my head.
Roman is no longer at the far wall.
He’s standing at the side of the table, close, and he’s looking at the screen with both hands loose at his sides.
His jaw is set and his eyes are doing something I have never seen them do.
I watch his face and I watch him hear both heartbeats and I watch something move through him that he doesn’t try to hide, doesn’t have the resources to hide, and he doesn’t say anything for a long time.
Then he puts his hand over mine on the table.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t need to.
Dr. Reyes confirms both babies are unharmed.
No signs of placental disruption, no bleeding, cervix closed, everything measuring correctly for twelve weeks.
She tells me the pain I felt this morning is consistent with round ligament strain, common with twin pregnancies, and common when the body has been under stress.
She tells me I need rest, fluids, and monitoring overnight.
I nod at everything she says, and I watch Roman across the room, pacing.
He can’t sit still. He tries twice, pulling a chair from the corner and lowering himself into it. Both times, he’s back on his feet within three minutes, phone in hand, moving to the window, to the door, back to the window.
He takes two calls in the corridor, the door half-open, and I hear his voice through it, low, clipped, the voice he uses when he’s directing things that need to be directed.
He comes back in after the second call and stands at the foot of the bed and looks at me.
“Your father is on the way,” he says. “I called him. He knows you are safe.”
I look at him. “Thank you.”
He nods. He looks at the window. He looks at the door.
He puts his phone in his pocket and takes it back out.
I watch him pace the length of the room twice, three times, his jacket still on, his jaw still set, and I think about the corridor in that building and his hand covering mine in the car and both heartbeats on that screen and the expression on his face when he heard them.
“Roman,” I say.
He stops.
“Sit down,” I say.
He looks at me for a moment. Then he pulls the chair from the corner, sets it beside the bed, and sits down.
He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely clasped, and he looks at the floor, and I look at the top of his head, the silver of his hair under the fluorescent light, and neither of us says anything, and the room holds both of us in it.
His phone goes off.
He looks at the screen. Something in his face shifts, immediately, a different kind of focus moving in. He stands up. He goes to the door and steps halfway through it, and I hear three words of his side of the conversation before the door narrows.
He comes back in.
He looks at me for a moment, then at the door, and I watch him make a decision.
“I have to go,” he says.
“I know.”
“Your father will be here within the hour. Mara is two doors down. There are eight men on this floor.” He looks at me steadily. “You are safe here.”
“I know,” I say again.
He crosses to the bed, and he stands over me, and he looks at my face the way he looked at the screen during the ultrasound, without the control he usually keeps over his eyes. Then he leans down, and he presses his mouth to my forehead, and he stays there for a moment longer than he usually does.
He straightens.
He picks up his jacket from the chair.
At the door, he stops and looks back at me once, and I look at him, and I think about two heartbeats filling a white room and his hand over mine and the expression on his face that he did not try to hide.
“Go,” I say.
He goes.
I lie in the white room, and I listen to the building around me, the eight men on the floor, Mara two doors down, my father on the way, two heartbeats somewhere inside me that I didn’t know existed this morning, and I look at the ceiling, and I breathe, and I wait for whatever comes next.