37. Ofelia
Ofelia
I know I should probably go and see Mickey and Lourdes. But I don’t want to leave Benny alone, and I’m not entirely certain I’m able to face either my brother or my father with any degree of composure.
In the end, my father comes to us. Seeing his unsmiling face through the glass window, I tense, but to my surprise, he gives me only a cursory nod before going straight to Benny.
Gripping my friend’s shoulder, Papa virtually pulls him upright, then embraces him.
“I’m relieved to hear Lars is out of surgery,” he says, meeting Benny’s eyes directly.
“But I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. ”
“Thank you.” Benny is too shattered to show surprise at my father’s uncharacteristic display of empathy. “I hope Mickey is doing okay?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine.” Roman brushes off his concern. “We all need a decent scar or two. He got off lightly, all things considered.”
His tone is light enough, but I don’t miss the hard set to his mouth, nor the way his eyes rove from one side of the room to the other. My father is deeply pissed—and more than a little worried.
I stifle yet another urge to roll my eyes.
Here we go. Off for another ride on the bratva roller coaster.
I’ve lived too much of my life on that particular ride to feel either exhilaration or fear.
“They won’t let me in to see him.” Benny speaks directly to Papa, his face white and set. “Is it possible—”
“Leave it to me.” Papa grips his shoulder again, then turns away. Gesturing for Jack to join him, he goes to the reception window.
“I’ll say this for your men,” Benny murmurs. “They do know how to make shit happen.”
“Ha.” I do my best to keep the cynicism out of my tone, but I guess some of it leaches through, because he gives me a sideways glance. “You should go and see your brother.”
“You heard Papa.” I avoid his eyes. “Mickey is fine.”
Besides, he has Lourdes with him. And the last thing I can face right now is being around a happy couple. Even two people I love.
“I know you’re pissed at Mickey about what he said,” Benny says. “But I doubt there’s anything you can say to him that Lars didn’t cover already.” He stares at the floor with distant eyes. “I’ve never heard Lars speak like that to anyone,” he says quietly. “Ever.”
I remember the cold fury in Lars’s eyes when he walked into the salon, the slight chill I felt when he told me to go after Alexei. “He was furious.” I close my eyes briefly. It hurts to remember Lars’s face. “He even looked at me like he wanted to kill me.”
Benny’s huffed exhalation makes me look sideways at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” He puts his head in his hands. “It just hurts talking about him, I guess.”
“God, Benny.” I put my arm around him again. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t look up, just shakes his head. Papa comes back over to us with the nurse from reception, and we both leap to our feet. She shakes her head resignedly, then addresses Benny in faltering English. “Your friend sleep now,” she says. “Not sleep, but—” She waves her hand.
“Coma,” Benny supplies.
“Si. This.” She gives him a rather stern look.
“He sleep like this for many hours. This night, the day . . .” She rolls her hand to indicate the future.
“Not wake up soon.” She glances at Papa, then, when he folds his arms and eyes her grimly, rolls her eyes in a way that I completely sympathize with.
“You can see through—” She indicates the glass window over reception. “But not visit,” she says sternly to Papa. “Only see. Understand?”
He looks at Benny, who nods. “I understand,” he says quietly.
“Bene.” Giving Papa a final resentful look, the nurse gestures for Benny and me to follow her into an anteroom. “You must wear these.” She hands us sterile suits.
We don them, then I slip my arm through Benny’s, and the nurse ushers us through into a sterile corridor with highly polished floors, silent but for the hum of machines and softly spoken conversation of staff. We pass opaque glass-walled rooms.
So many, I think, my heart juddering. I wonder how many other people are sitting behind those sliding glass doors, terrified it is the last time they’ll see their loved one.
“Here.” The nurse stops outside one room. “Not inside,” she warns Benny. “Just to see.” She presses a button on the wall, and the opaque glass clears, allowing us to see in.
He takes one look at the long figure beneath the white hospital blanket and makes a noise like a wounded animal in a trap. I hold him tightly, struggling not to cry, and we stare through the glass.
Only the familiarity of Lars’s lean frame betrays who is on the bed.
The upper part of his head is entirely bandaged, covering his eyes and most of his face, down to where a tube snakes out of his mouth. He is utterly unrecognizable—and utterly still.
“Oh, God.” Benny leans against the glass, his eyes wide and stark, fingertips white as he presses against it. He turns to the nurse. “Please,” he says brokenly. “Please let me sit with him.”
The nurse shakes her head, her expression sympathetic as she puts a hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow, you come back, and maybe then you can see him. Tonight, no.” She shakes her head. “Tonight, go. Eat. Sleep.”
“Who will sit with him?” he whispers, pressing futilely against the glass. “Who will be there if he wakes up?”
“He no wake up,” the nurse says quietly. “Not yet.”
“The surgeon said he was in an induced coma.” I use the same soft tone everyone seems to here. “That means he can’t wake up, Benny, not until they decide to wake him.” Maybe not even then.
But he doesn’t react to my words, just stares at the long figure on the bed, his entire body stiff.
“We can’t stay,” I say finally, when the nurse starts to look uncomfortable.
“No.” He grips the glass, shaking his head.
Tears prick my eyes. “We have to leave, Benny. And we have to trust them.”
Eventually I manage to gently pry him away from the glass, and it slowly fades back to opacity. I guide him down the corridor, Benny stumbling like a sleepwalker, until we get to the waiting room, at which point he pushes past me and only just makes it to the bathroom before I hear him retching.
“So I won’t ask how that went,” Papa says, frowning after him. His eyes swivel to me, then soften when he sees my face. “Christ, baby.” He pulls me into a hug that I have no inclination to fight. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs against my hair. “None of this is okay.”
“Who will they call?” I step away from Papa, wiping my eyes. “If he wakes up?”
“Me.” Jack smiles at the nurse, who blushes. “They’ll call me, and if they can’t get ahold of me, they’ll call Luca.”
I go into the bathroom to wash my face. When I emerge, Papa is gone, and a white-faced Benny is swaying on his feet where he stands. Dimitry, coming through the doors, takes one look at him and says, “You need a drink.”
“Dimitry’s right,” Jack says gently to Benny. “You need to rest. I’ll take you back to Luca’s villa.”
Benny looks blearily around. “Not yet. I can’t—I don’t want to meet anyone just now.”
“I’ve got you.” Jack puts an arm around Benny’s shoulders. “There’s a bar a block from here. We can take some time there first.”
“No,” Dimitry says, when I move to accompany them. “You need to see your brother, Ofelia. And don’t bother arguing.” He gives me a warning look. “Roman and Mickey are waiting downstairs in the car. I promised Roman that we’d be right behind them.”
I glare at him. “I thought you didn’t take orders from my father these days.”
“I don’t.” He meets my glare with one of his own. “But in this case, I happen to agree with him. And if Alexei were here, I’m pretty sure he’d agree, too.”
Jack and Benny are still waiting, and I’m about to argue, when a soft voice interrupts.
“Go with him, Ofelia.”
I turn to find a very tearstained Lourdes in the doorway. She isn’t looking at me, but rather at Benny, whose head comes up at the sound of her voice. As soon as she sees his face, her own crumples, and she rushes forward, wrapping her arms around him.
“Oh.” He collapses against her. “Oh, thank God. Lourdes—you should have seen him—”
“I know,” she stutters. “I heard—oh, Benny, I’m so sorry—”
Then they are sobbing in each other’s arms in a mass of incoherent phrases.
It takes me a few moments to realize that their best comfort is each other—and that the best thing I can do is leave.
This isn’t their world. The thought is oddly lonely. They are victims of it, while I—I belong in it.
I’m no stranger to the violence, or the grief it brings. I wish I was.
But this is my life.
It always has been, just as it has been Alexei’s.
I wish with all my heart that the darkness of our world had never touched the lives of our friends.
And I wish that Alexei was here to face the darkness with me.
But he isn’t. And without him, even standing so close to my two closest friends, the loneliness is like lead inside me.
Turning, I quietly follow Dimitry out, leaving Lourdes and Benny alone with a grief that I feel I have no right to share.
In some weird parody of our childhood, Mickey and I find ourselves sitting in the backseat of the sedan, while Dimitry and Papa sit in the front, Dimitry driving while Papa has a short, terse conversation with someone on the phone.
I glance over to find Mickey looking at me with a wry expression. He holds up his phone so I can see the screen, the same way we used to communicate as kids.
I miss the button, he’s written.
Despite the gravity of our situation, and my recent tears, I bite my lip to stop an involuntary giggle.
The button is what we used to raise the glass screen between us and the front seat, a pointed but passive childhood act of defiance against the adults who so frequently ignored us or simply ordered us around.
I meet his eyes, see the dark pain in his, and our smiles both fade.
I’m sorry, he mouths.
I shake my head. It’s okay.