36. Artem
Artem
Fucking Nadia. I knew she was sniffing around for months. For someone whose job it is to be incognito, she fucking sucks at it.
And yet, I also fucking suck, apparently.
Because there's a bullet in my chest, and the FBI just raided my home.
I groan as I try to sit up before I realize I can't. "Katya…" The pain in my chest radiates through my body, and I can't move enough to get off the gurney. Not that I could anyway. I'm being held down by several orderlies while a flurry of activity goes on around me.
Not that I can focus on it.
All I can think about is Katya's scream. It will stay with me as long as I live.
She tried to help me, which was surprising. I thought she'd be throwing a party at the idea of my potential death.
Instead, her tiny hands scrambled to stop the blood flowing from my chest, and it had taken three agents to pull her off of me.
I don't even think she realized what they were doing. She didn't calm until she saw me being taken away.
Now I'm in the hospital, I think. Hard to focus. I've been in and out of consciousness, but every time I come to, all I know is that I need to find my wife.
"My wife," I growl. The doctor attending to me is young, maybe twenty-five, and I'm hoping he's some sort of prodigy and not an intern, so I don't fucking die on the operating table.
"Sir, you need to?—"
"Where is my wife." I reach up and grab his coat, pulling him toward me as hard as I can. The orderlies jump in, but I'm not giving up. "Where is she…"
"Sir—" He tries to ease my grip with the practiced calm of someone who has handled difficult patients before. He hasn't handled me before. "I need you to lie back. You have a chest wound and you're losing blood, and I need to figure out if this was clean."
"I'm fucking aware." I release him because the effort costs more than it should, and I'm being pragmatic, not cooperative. "I need to know where my wife is."
"I don't have that information."
"Get it."
"Sir, you need surgery."
"Find my wife, or I'm not consenting."
He looks up at the ceiling, clearly trying to ask some higher power for patience.
"She is my wife. She was taken into custody. I want to know if she's been charged, where she's being held, and whether she has legal representation." I pause to take a breath, which makes me want to scream.
"I understand that, but I'm not?—"
"Authorized," I finish. "Find someone who is."
He sighs, orders a nurse to prep me for surgery, and tells me he'll be back.
I don't feel the need to tell him he'd better have answers for me. Truthfully, I don't have the energy. The bullet is still lodged somewhere, and every time I move I know I'm making it worse.
Not that it matters.
If Katya is in danger…
Forgive me, Irina. I pray, hoping she can hear me.
Then the dark comes up and I let it.