CHAPTER 20 #3
"Tell her thank you," I say. "Tell her I heard her."
Gabriel nods. He picks up the book again. He reads the next paragraph in Italian and lets the translation rest. He has learned which words I can keep without help.
At twenty-one hundred Stefan slides the room into night.
He does it as he does everything — by hand, by degree, by listening for the count.
The circadian lamp dims in three steps from warm-evening to warm-low to a small, single source over the head of the bed.
The fig at the corner becomes a shape. The IV pole becomes a chrome tree.
The moonlight pane at the bed's foot brightens against the dim.
The pane has moved. Three inches, the way Gabriel said it would when he installed the tube and watched the first rise. The square is no longer where it was. It is on the blanket at my left foot. I see it without speaking.
Each man comes to my forehead in turn.
Stefan first. His cord brushes my cheek. "Doll. Sleep. " He keeps his line off his tongue this time; he has already said it, in the count.
Alexei next. He stands up from the floor and his knees crack and he laughs at himself once, low, and bends to kiss my brow. "Krasivaya."
Gabriel third. The Italian phrasing is in the inhale before he speaks. "Elena. Buona notte. " The English is in his hand on my cheek for one beat. He marks the book and sets it on the bedside table beside the pin.
Nikolai last. He waits until the others have stepped back.
He moves his hand from the back of my skull to the side of my face.
He bends slowly because his neck is stiff from eighteen hours of not sleeping, a stiffness he will carry without acknowledgment.
He kisses my brow with the precision of a man pressing a wax seal.
He says it again — the surgical sentence, the four syllables.
"Stay, Elena."
"I stay," I say.
He keeps his hand on my face for four beats.
Stefan is breathing first; Nikolai is breathing second.
Then Nikolai goes too — only as far as the side chair against the wall.
He sits with the Patek's strap visible above his cuff where he has pushed the sleeve up to check it the one time he will let himself check it tonight.
The face of the watch is angled out so the bedside lamp catches it.
He has set the watch to be a witness. He has placed himself, deliberately, inside the arc of my sightline.
The room goes quiet.
Stefan in the bedside chair, head tipped against the high back, mug on the floor beside his foot, cord against the cuff of his shirt.
Alexei on the floor at my hand, his shoulder against the rail of the bed, his right hand still in mine and his left hand pillowed under his temple where he has lowered himself as a man lowers himself for a long night.
Gabriel on the bench beyond the bed's end, his back against the wall and the book open on his thigh with the ribbon at the page; his eyes have closed but his finger is still on the line.
Nikolai in the side chair, the Patek angled out, his right hand resting on the bed's blanket near my ankle as if a single point of contact will keep the count.
I check again — slowly, because Day 1 is hard for the count, and because the dose is the dose, and because counting is the work I do.
Four breaths. Four hands. Four men.
The pane at my foot has moved another half-inch.
The medallion is at my sternum. The pencil in the knot of my hair is on the dresser where Gabriel put it earlier.
The cardigan in unripe-wheat is folded across the chair-arm where Stefan put it when they moved me from the wheelchair to the bed.
The chlorhexidine smell on the room is gentle — Day 19's hard one has washed off; the washing-of-hands smell that has replaced it is four washes, four men, four soaps, the whole of the present.
I am awake at oh-four-hundred and they are not.
Waking was an accident. The dose should hold longer than this. The body has its own count, though, and the body has decided to look once.
I look.
Stefan first — the chair-back, the slight open of his mouth, the cord.
The chest rises with the four-count he taught me.
Alexei second — the floor, the hand still in mine, the bandaged deltoid in the dim.
Gabriel third — the bench, the book, the ribbon, the breath.
Nikolai fourth — the side chair, the watch, the hand on my ankle, the case-note face he is wearing even in sleep.
I touch the medallion once.
Saint Raphael — patron of healers, patron of the road home — at my sternum, the small silver disc warmer than usual. The hairline crack catches the pad of my finger. The angel's wing is whole enough.
I take inventory. The heat of my skin tells me enough. My own breathing measures itself against my chest. Their breaths around me: four men, three asleep and one half. The room: one. The moon at the lower brass rail: one square of silver, stable.
Four hands.
Four men.
One window I cannot reach.
The moon is still on the floor.
Stay.
I stay.