THIRTY-SIX
ARSENY
I sit in a plastic chair in the hospital with Vladimir asleep against my neck. He’s heavier than he looks when he goes loose with sleep. One fist is knotted into my shirt near the collarbone, his fingers flexing now and then as if he is checking I’m still here.
He doesn’t know where Niko is. Part of me is slightly grateful for that, another part wants to tear the building down around everyone in it because he shouldn’t have to know, but one day he will anyway.
A nurse approaches slowly and looks at me with the sort of pity people in hospitals get very good at wearing in situations like this. She says something soft, I’m not sure what. My name, maybe. Then she gestures toward the far end of the corridor.
I nod, understanding immediately what she was trying to tell me. Vladimir shifts in my arms and lets out a small, unhappy sound without really waking. I adjust my hold automatically, my hand at the back of his head, and the other spread over his back until he settles again.
When they come to take him from me, I know it’s temporary, but I also don’t want to let go.
The same nurse kneels a little to make herself less of a threat, which I dislike on principle but understand.
She explains it carefully. Just for a little while.
Just while they finish the paperwork. Just while I identify—
She stops there.
I hand him over reluctantly, fixing the blanket around him first to make sure he’s covered properly. He stirs and protests in that thin, sleepy way children do when they have been moved before they’re ready. Then he settles again once she gets him against her shoulder.
I watch until she disappears through the door of the room next to the one they are taking me to.
They come out to usher me inside and it gets colder the further I get into the room. But none of that matters, honestly. They point me to the back, where a sheet covers something bulky on a bed. I already know what I am going to see, but that doesn’t stop my body from bracing for it.
“Confirm identity,” the doctor says in his quiet professional voice. I step forward and pull the sheet back myself.
Niko looks like himself and not at all like himself at the same time. They’ve cleaned him up by the looks of it. Taking the worst of it out of sight so the living can pretend they are being handled with care. It makes me instantly, irrationally furious.
His face is wrong in the way all dead faces are wrong. For a second, I can’t do anything except stare.
This shouldn’t be him, not after Cassie.
I don’t touch him at first because my hands are still in fists at my sides.
My nails bite into my palms, and anger rushes in where shock starts to ease off.
I force it all away for the minute, stepping closer and taking his wrist. Not because I need the proof he’s gone, more because some part of me still thinks this is some strange nightmare I’m still waiting to wake up from.
His skin is stone cold. That’s the moment it becomes very real. “Yes. Nikorin Ivan Zakirov,” I say.
Someone beside me nods. A clipboard appears in my peripheral vision, and I sign where they tell me to.
I don’t ask what happens next because I already know, and I am furious.
When I’m done, I pull the sheet back up myself and smooth it over him as if that could still count for something, but it doesn’t.
The corridor is louder on the way out, even though nothing has changed. The nurse meets me halfway and tells me Vladimir is asleep in the room next door. I nod and go there immediately.
The room is smaller than the one I’ve just left. There’s a narrow bed against the wall, the rail up on one side, and Vladimir is asleep in the middle of it under a thin blanket, one arm flung out over his head, and that nearly finishes me.
He looks so ordinary. He has no idea that his father is in the next room under a sheet. I go over to the bed, then sit carefully in the chair beside it.
I don’t touch him. I just look. I look at his long eyelashes against his cheeks, his dark, fluffy hair, the little damp crease where drool has dried near his mouth.
Then the way his breathing catches every now and then, then evens out again.
My brother should be here for this. He should be the one sitting in this chair. He should be in this room.
Instead, he’s next door.
I hear steps in the corridor before I see anyone. I know they are his before he reaches the door, because my body has become treacherously good at knowing him.
He stops in the doorway, and I stand.