16. 16
Elias interviewed me on the floor until the helicopter came.
He’d tap my face when my eyes closed or I took too long to answer, refusing to let me sleep.
I was under the impression that the body healed when it slept, but he kept me talking.
We talked about things he already knew, some he didn’t.
He asked me about the books I read, the music I listened to.
Relentless, he inquired about our home, if there was anything I wanted to redecorate to make it feel more like mine.
He suggested that I sell my car and get one without his influence.
When Elias struggled to find something to ask me, Misha hopped in, offering another topic for discussion.
I hated him in those moments. I wanted to shut my eyes.
Our allies found us at last, and Elias carried me to the helicopter.
The sun was still high in the sky, but that gave me no idea of what time it was.
The soldiers they sent packed our gear up, and I tried to shout to them, to make sure they got the virus samples, but my voice was hoarse.
Elias shushed me, assuring me that everything was taken care of.
Misha came with us, and he sat quietly in his seat across from me.
I was spread across a few seats, not allowed to sit upright by anyone in the aircraft.
They’d wrapped the blanket tightly around me, and Elias sat close, my legs in his lap so he could keep an eye on my wound.
My bloody hand snaked out of the blanket and found Elias’s, and he held it, finally letting me close my eyes.
We touched down in Norway, and I was greeted with a gurney.
They wheeled me around, each bounce of the cart over a rock or a chipped tile sent another ache through my leg.
I drifted in and out as they worked, partly due to the morphine drip, and as my eyes closed for the final time at the NATO base, I couldn’t find Elias. I was too tired to worry about it.
Another helicopter, strange hands feeling me, poking me, examining me.
Lights so bright they hurt my eyes while they were shut.
Beeping, murmurs, whispers, sterile smells and hands cold enough to sting through their nitrile gloves.
A million things were happening to me and I did nothing to stop it.
I laid there, letting the world do whatever it wanted with me.
Until it all stopped. Just a blink.
Just a blink and I was awake, my eyes glazed over, the world a blur.
I blinked and blinked, tugging a heavy arm to my face to rub at my eyes.
An IV was taped tightly to my hand, I noticed as I brought it up.
My head lolled to the side to see a small plastic cup of water on the table.
I tried to reach it, but I didn’t have the strength to hold my arm out and grab it.
My fingernails scraped against the table top as I let my arm fall.
Elias was seated next to me, sleeping upright in a hard hospital chair. He’d showered and put on fresh clothes. Fresh to me; I didn’t know how long it had been since we left Russia. The lines on his forehead were pressed together, his face tight. It wasn’t a peaceful sleep for him.
I tried to whisper his name, but I couldn’t find my voice. My throat was sore, and I cleared my throat weakly before I attempted to speak again. He stirred as I cleared my throat, smiled, and hopped out of the chair to stand next to me.
“Hey, pretty girl.” He kissed me softly on the lips, pulling away to look over me. “It’s really good to see you awake.”
“Water,” I mouthed.
He grabbed the plastic cup that I couldn’t reach, holding the straw to my lips. Leaning forward, I sucked at it greedily, draining the cup. Elias refilled it from a small pitcher, and I drank that too.
I sighed, setting my head back down. “I don’t feel like a pretty girl right now, I feel like shit.”
“I still think you’re pretty,” he murmured.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re in Norway. The world’s northernmost McDonald’s is only a mile away.
They have a burger with lingonberries on it if you want me to go get you one.
” He pushed the hair out of my face, fluffed the pillows around me, and straightened the blankets on the bed.
Fussing over me, he kept his hands busy.
“My throat is killing me.” I grabbed at it, rubbing it with my fingers.
“You were intubated,” he said. “The pain will pass.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I had surgery?”
“Oh, yeah.” Elias grabbed my hand, bringing it to his lips. “You had a hole in your leg. The bullet went all the way through.”
He hadn’t let that on at all. Elias just held my leg, calm and collected, and reassured me that I would be fine. Flabbergasted, I stared at him, mouth open.
“How were you so calm? I could have died.”
He spoke quietly, looking down. “That wasn’t my first time dealing with a gunshot wound, Cassie.”
A part of me felt lucky that I had him there with me, but I knew that he was the reason I was there in the first place. If we’d never met, if he hadn’t saved me the year prior, then I wouldn’t have been in the position to be shot.
“It was probably the first time your girlfriend was the one who was shot,” I said. “You really held it together. I would have been screaming if I were you.”
“I may have seemed calm,” he started. “But I didn’t feel it.
I thought you might’ve had a fifty-fifty shot, if I’m being honest. I couldn’t let you see that, and I couldn’t let myself think about it.
I did what I was trained to do and just held onto the hope that I could pull it off.
” He paused, looking down at my hand in his.
“If things turned out differently, I would’ve gone with you. ”
I gave him a pointed look. “Don’t say things like that.”
He just shrugged.
“Elias, I’m serious. Don’t even think about it. What about your dad? Or your sister?” He didn’t speak to them often, but they were still his family.
“I struggle enough as it is. I don’t think I could handle it.”
“I guess I understand, but it’s just so crass to say it out loud.” The weight of what he’d said would follow me for a while. It made me feel just as responsible for his safety as my own, though I knew he already felt that way about me.
“I think you’re the one person I can be a little crass with. In fact, you like a lot of the dirty little crass things that I say.” He beamed at me, his free hand coming to my face. His thumb brushed my bottom lip.
I rolled my eyes, it was about all I could do. “I’ve been awake for a few minutes and you’re already being a horny freak.”
“Am not,” he argued. “I have never felt less horny than I have the past day. You were shot, had emergency surgery, and have been sleeping for hours. I had to shower at that shitty base and put on clothes that smelled like our house. That made me even more depressed than I already was. I’ve been sleeping upright intermittently for almost twenty-four hours.
And now, we have to fly home and it’s going to take forever.
Zero horniness. I just really missed you. ”
“I wish I could say I missed you, but almost no time has passed for me.” I glanced down at my leg. “Oh my god, my tattoo is going to be destroyed.”
“I mean, I guess. I peeked during your last dressing change and the surgeon did a really nice job of lining your skin up. It’s obviously going to have a big scar, but it’s not going to be as wonky as you think.”
I sighed. It was expensive. “How long do I get to stay home from work?”
“At least a month. That really depends on how you heal and how eager you are to go back to the lab. They won’t be sending you anywhere for a few months, not until you can fight.”
At that point, I didn’t think I ever wanted to take a work trip again, but I had a feeling that they’d be eager for me to chase viruses around the world, especially when I seemed to be so effective at dispatching who those viruses infected.
Elias had ultimately taken this one down, with Misha’s help, but I’d been there.
Misha. They’d find out what he knew, what he did. He was probably safer in America with us, but we needed to protect him. I knew that much. If I hadn’t had Elias intervening on my behalf, I’d be much worse off.
“By the way, I finished that book. Cassie, what the fuck is with the ending?”
I laughed, regretting it when the muscles in my leg tensed. “Did you not like it?”
“Did I not like it? I liked it before the kids–” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “That was weird. I get it, but I don’t get it, and I’m glad that’s not in the movie. You’re very uncool for the recommendation, thanks.”
A small knock sounded at the door, and a few nurses trotted in.
Elias was reluctant to let go of me now that I was awake, but he had to step back to let the nurses work on me.
Polite, but they didn’t speak much English.
One of them was fluent enough, and told me what they were doing as they worked so as not to surprise me.
Their hands were cool on my bare thigh, and I was embarrassed to discover my lack of underwear as they pulled my gown up. Not that I was completely exposed in the room for them, but the breeze I felt down below told me what I needed to know.
I regretted watching as they changed my dressing, and while I would have to do it at home and see the carnage for myself, it made my stomach turn. Elias would have to help me until I could handle it on my own. As if I would have to ask.
The nurse who could speak English gave me instructions. “You will be leaving us soon. We have a wheelchair for you, and we will help you dress.”
“I can help her change,” Elias said. “I think she’d be more comfortable with that, anyway.”
The nurse nodded. “You look like you can get her into the wheelchair, as well?”
“I can.”
After pulling out my IV, she wheeled the chair into the room, setting it near the door. She exited without a goodbye, closing the door softly behind her.
Elias leaned down, picking up a duffle bag I’d never seen before. He pulled out a small pile of my clothes. “I normally take your panties off, so this will be weird for me.”
“That’s what I was–”
“Zero horniness,” he interrupted.
Setting my clothes at the end of the bed, he peeled the scratchy hospital blanket off me until it was a pile at my feet.
He picked up a pair of modest underwear and worked it up my legs, his fingertips featherlight over my injury.
Getting them around my butt was difficult, but not impossible, and he repeated the process for my sweatpants.
He left the gown alone until my pants were on, not forcing me to be completely bare in the unfamiliar room.
The shirt was much easier, and I had to protest when he tried to put it on without a bra underneath.
If I was meeting the President, no matter how casually I was dressed, I was definitely wearing undergarments.
I wasn’t ready to act professionally again, to put on that mask. I had too much on my mind. Elias and I would need to have a long talk about our feelings. Mostly mine. I’d needed to sort them out, and a near death experience had a way of clearing my head for me.
An impossible ask, now that I would need help with the most basic of tasks, but I needed him to loosen up on the protection detail.
I needed him to act like he trusted me, instead of just saying that he did.
He’d shown signs that he was capable, but he had a hard time fitting into a role that wasn’t the lead.
I couldn’t expect him to change for me, but he couldn’t expect me to be someone else, either.
He would try. That was Elias.
He was it.