Chapter 23Ana #3
I swear I’m going to die of a heart attack in the hour it takes me to fly to Flagstaff, and I’m lucky Maria manages to arrange the flight for me so I don’t have to spend an extra two hours at the airport.
Maria gave me two fifty-dollar bills, and I’m just praying that will get me through to whatever the next step is.
I’m so far away from deciding where I stand with Vasily, but I can’t fathom a future that he doesn’t have some role in.
The cab driver is silent, no surprises since I’m clearly upset and being driven to the hospital. I make a rash decision and don’t even look at the change he gives me when he drops it off. I just wave it away.
When I get to the front desk, I don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know where he is, I haven’t had an update on his condition. I don’t know if he’s alive.
He has to be.
But I don’t know if he is.
I blurt out, “Vasily Baranov,” to the receptionist.
Before she even starts typing, she says, “Your relation to the patient.”
“He’s my husband.” No hesitation, no self-doubt. He is my husband.
I’m not a widow.
I’m not, but when she takes my name and somehow accepts that I don’t have any proof of identity and has an orderly escort me to Vasily, the floor the orderly takes me to is identified as the morgue.
I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I don’t know how to act; I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I’m expected to start planning things, if I’m supposed to know what Vasily wanted done .
The room is cold, sterile. There’s a lingering odor that defies description, something that warns to stay away but isn’t as unpleasant as I want it to be, but it’s so cold in here that it’s more an idea than actual scent.
Everything is clean, though, bright lights and metal walls, the drawers I know have bodies inside them and a tile floor that’s easy to hose down.
No one’s working right now, not in this room I’ve been led to, but it’s clear someone has worked in here today.
The top note of that indescribable scent is fresh bleach.
In the center of the room, there’s a stretcher. The sheet on it is white, pristine. But then, Maria said Vasily overdosed, so there wouldn’t be anything, if it’s even how he ended up down here. It’s empty now.
I don’t know what to do with my hands.
The orderly looks around as though he was expecting something to be happening here or someone should be here to take over. “You just hang tight, I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute.”
And then he leaves. Just walks away from a wife waiting to be told she’s now a grieving widow. But he’s an orderly. I suppose he probably doesn’t know any better than I do what to do with my hands.
There are a couple doors in the back of the room. One has a placard on it, identifying it as an office. The other has the standard set of icons of a handicapped-accessible family restroom. There’s water running. The sink? Or maybe there’s a shower in there. I imagine things get messy in this room.
There’s going to be an autopsy. That’s what happens when someone of Vasily’s age and health dies, even when the cause is obvious.
They’re going to cut him open and put his internal organs in a bowl, and when they’re done examining, they’re going to stuff everything back in his chest and put his ribs back in place, like a pumpkin that’s been gutted and carved, only for the cap to be set back on like it hasn’t been—
My brain goes woozy, my knees lock, I start to dip.
I attempt to catch myself on the gurney Vasily’s body was brought here on, but my weight’s wrong and the wheels aren’t locked. It begins to slide. I’m going to fall onto the tiles that have been splashed with the blood of a thousand, a thousand-thousand corpses.
My hands had one thing to do, and they failed.
“Ana!” an impossible voice yells, and I’m scooped up before I ever hit the ground.
Warm arms go around me. A big, firm body holds me tightly. “Ana, Ana, zvyozdochka,” is chanted in a panicked whisper. But it’s the sweet-tart, grassy scent of blackcurrant that hits me, that has the entire onslaught of emotion finally sweeping through.
“Vasily?” I sob, my voice barely making it out as I throw my arms around his neck and hold him like he’ll never be able to pry me off him.
“Oh Lord, I thought you’d died! Why are you in the morgue?
What’s happening? Why did you do that?” I’m a squeaky, warbly mess, my words barely make any sense, and I’m all over him.
He’s alive.
He’s here.
He’s warm and strong, and he smells good and he’s hugging me as tightly as I’m hugging him.
“I thought you died!” I wail, anger suddenly hitting me over how he’s been here the entire time and I didn’t deserve any of this. I punch right down on his shoulder, but there’s so much muscle there, all of it busy holding my weight, that he doesn’t even flinch.
He rubs my back and makes those soft, soothing sounds he’s so good at, but then he chuckles hoarsely and says, “I think I did for a minute, but I’m back.”
My legs are wrapped around his waist and his arms are steel bands around me, so I can’t escape him when I rear back, but I make enough space to shove him hard with the heel of my palm.
“This isn’t the time for jokes!” I scream, but my sobbing only stops long enough for me to get the words out before I’m hysterical again.
It didn’t hurt nearly this badly when he told me Artom was dead, but I was still so confused then that I didn’t have time to process it until he was already making up an excuse for why he told me that.
“I hate you so much,” I spit out even though my diaphragm is spasming so hard I can taste bile at the back of my throat. I cover my face, forcing myself to not look at him because I know it will be hard to stand by that if I give myself a second to actually look at him again.
He manages to adjust his hold so I’m tipped onto him, no choice but to rest my head on his shoulder and neck, to curl up there against him. “You don’t, zvyozdochka. Ty menya lyubish.”
“Ya tebya ne lyublyu,” I counter, but it’s weak and I’m sniffling, so I don’t know that it’s very convincing.
Definitely not when Vasily responds with a laugh and, “Oh, ho, ho, look who suddenly understands Russian.”
Oh. I guess I do know a bit of Russian. At least enough to understand when Vasily accuses me of loving him and to tell him I don’t love him. “All you do is hurt me,” I pout, my adrenaline waning enough that I want to simply curl up here, even if the fight hasn’t left me.
“I’m sorry,” Vasily says. “ Do you forgive me?”
“Forgive you? What—how—Vasily, you overdosed on heroin!” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things he’s done wrong that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness for, but this? With everything going on? The tears well again. “You have a son!”
“Shh, shh, shh,” he rushes out quickly, and I don’t know if I weigh too much or if he’s just exhausted from the day, but he walks me back a couple steps and rests my butt on that gurney that I’m now hoping was his because otherwise I’m sitting on a sheet a dead body was just on.
It’s also his way to put the space between us that I didn’t want. I’m forced to look at him.
I hate him.
I hate him for all the times he’s hurt me, whether I remember them or not.
I hate him for abandoning me. I hate him for not being there for my son.
I hate him for his lies and the lies I must have told Artom.
For taking me to that empty apartment and making me question if I was going to ever get my memories back and for leaving me there because he knew what he was doing was wrong.
I see that now. I see the way he hid from me.
But he’s alive.
He’s in a hospital gown, ass out to the world behind us, and there are wads of cotton taped to his arm, where blood must have been drawn or medicine administered.
He has a bruise under his eye and a butterfly bandage on his neck.
His complexion is sallow and his eyes are bloodshot.
His hair is damp— I’m thinking now that he was doing the best he could to wash up in the sink in the bathroom— but it’s sticking up stubbornly where I can see he attempted to finger comb it forward.
He’s an absolute mess, and no matter how many men I’ve seen before and how many I’ll see again, no one will ever be as handsome.
But that doesn’t matter either. Not after everything .
“I didn’t overdose, I swear,” he says, his eyes pleading for me to believe him. “Or, not deliberately. Not on heroin.”
“That’s what Janson told Maria.”
He blinks at that. “Wow. I don’t like that chain of command.”
“Maria’s nice.”
“I don’t want you to get opinions of her.”
“Because you had sex with her and then lied and said the condoms were ours because we didn’t want kids but I wasn’t on birth control, which was the dumbest lie ever, just so we’re clear?”
Vasily grimaces. “Yeah, that about sums up why I don’t want you to get too friendly with Maria. The doctor said the same thing, that it was heroin, when I woke up—here in the morgue, I might add, which fucked with me in new, exciting ways.”
“What kind of sick joke is this?” I cry out. “Why would they—I need to calm down.”
He takes hold of my chin, runs his thumb along my jaw.
Yet again, he leans too close. “Nothing makes sense. I took my migraine shot; that’s it.
I swear. I guess Kostya dropped me off, but he talked to a higher-up, paid him off to make it look like I died.
Mortician is none too happy, but I promised to behave myself. ”
His eyes dip down for a moment in an obvious perusal of my sundress, ridiculously underdressed for Flagstaff. I wasn’t exactly planning ahead when I left my kid with an ATF agent I’ve known for two hours and hopped on a plane.
And then his eyes darken. He shoots me an irritatingly lopsided grin. In the chill of the morgue, I swear I feel his body heat rise between us. “But maybe I could break that promise.”
“Absolutely not,” I snip. “I hate you.”
“I almost died, Ana,” he purrs, his voice going silky as he teases one of my straps. “I still might. You don’t know. ”
God Almighty. He’s like a teenager. I bat his hand away. “Yeah, that’s exactly the reason for you to not... misbehave.”
He leans against me, the jerk, and whispers, “If that’s your only reason, that means you’re thinking about it.”
“Are you crazy? We are in a morgue! And I just told you I hate you!”
“Yeah, but that’s a lie.” Again, his hands go for my straps. “You just came all the way from Phoenix to see me. You looked about ready to faint when you thought I was dead.”
I bat him away yet again, steadfastly ignoring the way the spots his knuckles grazed are left tingling. “There is a whole massive world, a galaxy between being scared that you might have died and wanting to have sex with you.” Which reminds me. “I saw the tapes, Vasily.”
He should be scared about that. Those tapes could be used as incriminating evidence in a court case. But instead, he gets so close his lips brush along my earlobe. “You loved those tapes, didn’t you? God, you were so fucking hot to make those. You practically begged me to make those tapes.”
I gasp in outrage, this time slamming both my hands against his chest hard enough he stumbles back. “I did not!”
That was the wrong response. I knew that already.
I swear I forgot that, though, and I absolutely was not deliberately goading him into pouncing on me the way he does.
His lips slam into mine as his weight knocks me on my back across the gurney.
Vasily doesn’t stop to take a breath, claiming my mouth with his lips and his tongue as I cry out, as he mauls at my dress, tugging it so hard the straps snap and my boobs fly out.
My legs lock around his waist, and he grinds against me as he takes hold of my breasts and squeezes them roughly .
“Vasya!” I whimper, thinking it doesn’t matter how much I hate him right now; I deserve this. I need to take what’s mine. I need to hurt him the way he hurts me, and I think that’s giving him exactly what he wants and then taking it away before he can reject me again.
I think I’m eternally thankful for how short that gown is because if he just pushes my panties to the side and—
“Really, you two? This again?”
I yelp and sit up so quickly I clonk foreheads with Vasily, but then I see the figure standing in the doorway.
A blink of the eye, and then—
Memories.
So many memories. Hundreds of them. Nothing fully formed, but snapshots in 4K with the background filled in, setting the stage of a shiny, new cooktop in a restaurant not yet opened, a cozy living room in a small, tidy home lovingly decorated, a beach on an overcast day, the beautifully ornate hardwood floor of a church.
Carrying furniture, arguing over a TV show, holding a hand out to support Artom’s tiny head.
Stories and quiet nights and silly gifts, promises that everything will work out and updates of a life on the opposite side of the country, whispers soft enough the parishioners in front of us don’t mind when things need to be translated.
Car pool lane.
Security cameras.
Thumbs up at a ribbon cutting.
Artom running to the porch with macaroni art, screaming, “Uncle D, look what I made you!” even though he had no idea there’d be anyone but me here when he got home from school.
“Dima,” I whisper .
“Thank fuck, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says with a buffoonish grin I’ve rolled my eyes at hundreds of times.
But then he ducks just in time to avoid the scalpel Vasily pitches at him.