Chapter 28 - Alexei
I did every research possible.
That wasn’t a figure of speech.
I had searched through every diagnosis available, read through every medical paper I could access, and committed to memory every treatment option that existed for heart failure.
Yes, I stalked him now.
I had been stupid enough not to before, and that stupidity would haunt me for the rest of my life - however long or short that turned out to be.
I had watched him for a year before I touched him and somehow, in all that watching, I had never once allowed myself to look at the thing that actually mattered.
Cowardice.
Plain, inexcusable cowardice.
I had been afraid of what I would find, so I had found nothing, and that nothing had nearly cost me everything.
Not this time.
This time I gave Ilya one call. “I need everything you can find,” I said. “Medical records. Full history. Birth to present. Every hospital.”
“That’s a new one.”
“Ilya.”
“I heard you.” The humor left his voice. “Name?”
I gave him Marco’s full name. Date of birth. Last known address. School. Everything I had. “It’ll take a few hours,” he said. “Some of these systems are… disagreeable.”
“Take whatever time you need.”
“Alexei?”
“What.”
“Are you okay?”
I didn’t answer that.
Four hours later, I had everything.
Every record. Every scan. Every note scribbled by every physician who had ever examined him, from Italy to America, from childhood to now.
I read all of it.
Twice.
Some parts three times.
Because I had decided, somewhere around 3 AM with my eyes burning and my chest tight, that if Marco’s body was going to betray him, I was going to know exactly how, exactly why, and exactly what could be done about it.
Ignorance was no longer a luxury I could afford.
Not where he was concerned.
I also got him to the best-known specialist in the country.
The appointment was arranged within hours. The doctor had tried to push it to next week. I had politely informed him that next week was going to result with his head off his shoulder.
The appointment was moved to today.
Marco sat on the examination table with his shirt off, looking small and trying very hard to appear unbothered by the fact that he was being looked at by strangers when I knew he hated it. He was naturally insecure and didn’t like too much attention on him.
The specialist - Dr. Aldenberg, a man in his sixties with silver hair - was reviewing the records Ilya had acquired when the door opened and a nurse entered.
She was carrying a small tray.
On the tray was a needle.
I crossed the room in two strides and caught her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Dr—” she started, voice shaking. “Drawing blood. I need to draw blood.”
“Alexei.” I felt Marco’s hand on my sleeve, tugging lightly. “Alexei, let go.”
“It’s just blood work,” he said softly. “She’s doing her job.”
I looked back at the nurse. She was trying very hard not to cry.
I released her wrist. She moved to Marco’s side with the wariness of someone approaching a dangerous animal’s owner.
“Are you scared of needles?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
Used to it.
He was used to it.
He was used to being stuck with needles.
My hand came up and settled on his head, fingers sliding through his dark curls, cupping the back of his skull with a gentleness I didn’t know my body was capable of producing.
He leaned into the touch and the nurse inserted the needle.
I watched the dark blood flow into the tube and felt something in me go very, very still.
I hated the fact that he had endured this all of his life.
That his earliest memories probably included this. That somewhere in his mind, in the childhood recollection, there was a version of him - small, frightened, too young to understand - sitting on an examination table just like this.
That was his life.
That had always been his life.
A body under surveillance.
I kept my hand on his head until the nurse finished, my thumb moving in repetitive strokes against his temple. When she finally withdrew the needle and pressed a small cotton ball to the puncture, I reached over and held it in place myself, my fingers replacing hers.
“All done,” she murmured, then fled the room.
More tests followed.
An echocardiogram. An EKG. A stress test that made me grip the edge of my seat so hard my knuckles went white because watching Marco walk on a treadmill with sensors attached to his chest while medical staff monitored the slow degradation of his heart was, I had decided, a form of torture that should have been banned by international convention.
He was tired afterward. Eventually we were sitting in Aldenberg’s office.
I sat with my legs apart, elbows on my knees, staring at the doctor.
Aldenberg was reviewing the results. “Who was your doctor before?” he asked.
Marco shifted. “Dr. Reiner.”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“Since we moved here. About… a year and a half.”
The doctor removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your situation could have been prevented.”
“Prevented?”
“Your heart has weakened significantly over the past eighteen months. The progression is consistent with the underlying condition you were diagnosed with as a child, but it has been accelerated by neglect.”
“Neglect,” I echoed.
“Missed appointments,” Aldenberg continued.
“Inconsistent medication. Lack of dietary management. No regular monitoring of cardiac function. The medication you were prescribed was appropriate, but it required adjustment six months ago based on changes that should have been caught in a routine follow-up.” He paused. “They were not caught.”
I made a mental note.
Dr. Reiner.
I would deal with him later - meaning I’d fucking kill him.
Aldenberg continued, turning his attention back to Marco.
“Your heart has weakened. The muscle isn’t pumping as efficiently as it should.
The ejection fraction is lower than I would like.
There is some enlargement of the left ventricle, which suggests your heart has been working harder than it should to compensate for the deterioration. ”
Marco wasn’t panicking, but I could see the way his fingers were pressing so hard against each other that the knuckles had gone white.
I reached over without looking and placed my hand over both of his.
He flinched slightly, then relaxed.
“There are treatment options,” he continued. “With proper management, we can slow the progression significantly. But your heart is weakening day by day. I can’t promise how long it can hold on.”
I held his hand like I was trying to keep him tethered to the earth, like if I let go he might float away into some place I couldn’t follow.
“Am I going to die?”
The question hit me so hard my vision went white at the edges, and for one terrible second, I was somewhere else entirely - somewhere hollow, standing in a void again.
“Your heart is weak. I don’t know how long it can hold on. I foresee a heart transplant in the future.”
Transplant.
“When you say future,” I said, my voice scraping out of me like broken glass, “how long?”
“I can’t tell you the exact time. But I think you should get on the list. Your heart muscle isn’t pumping properly. It’s manageable now with the right medication, but your heart won’t work for long.”
The world went red at the edges. “Put him first on the list.”
Aldenberg opened his mouth to argue.
“The first on the list,” I warned, “or I rip your own heart out.”
The doctor closed his mouth.
“Do we have an understanding?”
Aldenberg swallowed once. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Marco’s fingers were still curled in mine and I held them tighter, tighter, tighter, like I could keep his heart beating through sheer force of will.
You are not going to die, I thought.
I drove him to my place instead of his home.
He sat in the passenger seat of my car with his head resting against the window, watching the city blur past without seeing any of it.
By the time we reached my apartment, I unlocked the door and let him in first.
He went straight to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of my bed without a word, shoulders rounded forward, head slightly bowed, the line of his spine visible through the thin fabric of his shirt.
His curls were falling into his face. His ribbon had slipped sideways at some point during the drive, hanging loose near his ear.
I knelt in front of him.
He blinked, startled, and looked down at me with confusion. “Alexei?”
I reached for his shoes. I loosened the laces, slid the shoe free, and set it aside.
When both shoes were off and placed neatly beside the bed, I looked up at him.
He reached out and touched my face. His fingers were cold.
They traced along my cheekbone, like he was memorizing something he was afraid of losing. His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly. “Have I ever told you that before?”
My heart stuttered. Actually, physically fucking stuttered.
That had never happened to me before.
But Marco was looking at me like I was something miraculous, and my heart forgot its rhythm.
I turned my head slightly and pressed my lips to the inside of his wrist, where his pulse beat against his skin. “You’re more beautiful, my star.”
His smile changed.
It saddened. The warmth stayed in his eyes but something was shadowing the light like clouds passing over the sun. “Alexei…” he said softly. “We don’t have to do this.”
I didn’t let him finish the thought. I rose from my knees, leaned forward, and covered his mouth with mine.
When I pulled back, I kept my face close enough that our foreheads nearly touched.
“Don’t continue that,” I murmured. “You know it’s useless.
I already love you. It’s far too late to push me away.
Now there’s nowhere you could run that I wouldn’t follow.
Nowhere you could hide that I wouldn’t find you.
So don’t ask me to let you go. I won’t. I’ll keep you alive for as long as I have breath to fight for yours.
If the darkness comes for you, it will have to carve its way through me first.”
His breath hitched and I added, “You aren’t getting rid of me. And you will be okay.”
I said it like a fact.
Because in my mind, it was.
I would make it true if I had to tear the world apart to do it.
His eyes searched mine. For doubt. For hesitation. For any sign that I was performing conviction I didn’t feel.
He found none. Because there was none to find.
Then I changed the subject. “Have you told Rei?”
“No. He doesn’t know about my issue,” he said quietly.
“Don’t you both tell each other everything?” I asked.
“I guess not.”
“I just can’t let him know,” Marco continued. “And you can’t either.”
He looked up at me with those wide, earnest, impossibly sincere eyes. “Okay? Promise?”
“I promise. It’s your decision.”
His shoulders dropped. The tension that had been holding him upright released all at once, and he sagged forward, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I just… I don’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want you to know.”
“There is nothing about you that I shouldn’t know. Remember, you’re mine.”
He nodded once. “I’m yours.”
I crawled into bed and pulled him against my chest and held him there, one hand in his hair, the other pressed flat against his back, feeling his heart beat against mine through the thin barrier of skin. It was weak.
I could feel it.
The flutter of it. The struggle.
The way it pushed against his ribs like a bird testing the walls of a cage that was slowly, slowly closing in.
“Are…” He swallowed. “Are you going to fuck me?”
I shook my head slowly. “Not today.”
I would never say no to him.
If Marco wanted me, in any form, at any hour, in any state of ruin or desperation or tenderness, I would give him whatever he asked for without hesitation. My body answered to him in ways that still unsettled me if I thought about them too long.
But not today.
Today I didn’t want to fuck him.
Today I wanted to hold him.
I kissed his forehead.
I kissed his temple.
I kissed the bridge of his nose.
I kissed the corner of his eye.
I wanted to kiss his heart and heal it.