Epilogue
SLOANE
What happens after the yard comes back to me in flashes, and for a while I can’t tell which parts are real and which parts my mind has stitched together because it needed the story to make sense.
I remember the car first. I’m in Vadim’s arms in the back seat, not beside him, not across from him, but half on his lap because every time I try to move away he tightens his hold and tells me, very calmly, that if I attempt to be stubborn right now he will consider it a personal insult.
Anton is in the front, speaking into the phone in clipped, controlled sentences, telling someone to clear the private entrance, telling someone else to get obstetrics ready, neonatal ready, surgery ready, and I hear Ethan’s hospital mentioned three times before I finally believe that Vadim is taking me back there.
Marek keeps turning around from the front passenger seat, his face bruised, his mouth bloody, his expression caught somewhere between fear and anger.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I tell him through clenched teeth.
“I’m trying to decide whether you’re dying.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“You asked.”
“I didn’t ask.”
Vadim’s hand is under my stomach, supporting the weight the way he did in the hospital corridor, and even through the pain I feel the relief of it, the small decrease in pressure that makes me hate how much I need him and love that he knows without asking.
Another contraction grips me, and I curl toward him with a sound I can’t stop.
Vadim lowers his mouth to my hair. “Breathe.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Slower.”
“I’m in labor, not doing yoga.” I almost call him an unbearable man, but the contraction gets worse and I grab his shirt instead, twisting the fabric in my fist while he holds me still and murmurs things I don’t fully hear.
I remember the hospital entrance. The car stops, and the doors open, and soon I’m being led away by the hospital staff.
“Don’t leave,” I say, because fear has stripped away anything that might have sounded like pride.
“I’m not leaving,” Vadim says.
“You have to stay where I can see you.”
“I will.”
My fingers tighten around his. “Promise me.”
He bends closer, his face pale in a way I have never seen before. “I promise.”
Another contraction builds before I can answer, and I turn toward him because there’s nowhere else for the fear to go. “It’s too early,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“What if she’s not ready?”
His jaw tightens, but his voice stays steady. “Then we help her to get ready.”
I close my eyes because that’s not a promise any man can make, not even Vadim, but it is enough to hold on to for the next few seconds.
Then they’re moving me, and the ceiling begins passing overhead in bright white panels while people ask questions I can barely answer. How many weeks. When did my water break. Is there bleeding. When did contractions start. Any medication. Any allergy. Any complications. When was my last scan.
I answer what I can. Vadim answers some of the rest because he has clearly memorized more of my pregnancy than I realized during the short time he has known about it. I’m too scared to resent the fact that he knows things when I need him to know them.
When they check the baby’s heartbeat, everyone becomes too quiet for a few seconds, and those few seconds are worse than the pain.
“What?” I ask immediately. “What is it?”
The doctor tells me the baby is distressed, but not in a way that makes them panic yet, which is the kind of sentence people say when they’re trying very hard not to terrify someone who is already terrified.
Vadim’s hand tightens around mine.
I turn my head toward him. “You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
Another contraction comes before I can say anything else, and I hold on to him because there’s nowhere else for the fear to go.
His hand is in mine, his other palm smoothing my hair back from my damp forehead, and he keeps saying my name in a low voice, not as an order this time, not as a warning, but like he’s trying to keep me anchored to the room.
I remember the doctors deciding they can’t stop the labor.
I remember the room changing after that, more people coming in, a neonatal team waiting nearby, someone explaining that because the baby is premature they may need to take him immediately after delivery, and I shake my head before they even finish because I don’t want him taken anywhere.
“No,” I say.
The doctor speaks gently. “Sloane, if he needs support, we have to help him right away.”
“No.”
Vadim leans close. “Listen to them.”
I look at him, horrified. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am.”
“They’re saying they’ll take him.”
“They’re saying they’ll help him.”
My throat closes. “What if they take him and I don’t see him?”
“You will see him.”
“You don’t know that.”
His face changes, but he doesn’t look away. “No,” he says quietly. “I don’t know that. But I know they are ready, and I know you have to get him here first.”
The plainness of it helps more than comfort would have. I nod because I have no other choice.
Then comes the part that is mostly pain. There’s nothing graceful about it, nothing beautiful in the way people like to describe birth after the worst of it is over. It’s pain and pressure and panic and voices telling me what to do while I’m convinced my body can’t possibly survive doing it.
Vadim stays beside me through all of it.
He lets me crush his hand.
He wipes my face with a cloth when sweat runs down my temples.
He bends close enough that I can hear him even when I stop hearing anyone else.
“You can do this,” he says.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“I’m so scared.”
“I’m here.”
That’s the only thing he keeps repeating, and for once I don’t ask him to stop.
I remember one final push. I remember pressure so intense I think I might split apart from it. Then release. Then emptiness.
For one terrible second, there’s no cry.
I turn my head toward Vadim. His face changes, and that scares me more than anything the doctors could have said.
“Why isn’t she crying?” I ask.
The baby is taken to the neonatal team waiting nearby, and the room fills with activity that doesn’t include me.
Someone tells me they’re helping him breathe.
Someone else tells me to stay with them.
Vadim’s hand is still around mine, but his eyes are on the corner of the room where our baby is surrounded by doctors.
“Vadim.”
He looks at me immediately.
“The baby.”
“They’ve got it together, don’t worry,” he says.
“Don’t let them—”
“I won’t.”
I want to tell him not to let them take our baby away from me, but I can’t finish the sentence before the room blurs.
When I wake, I know I’m not in the same room. My whole body feels heavy and sore, my mouth is dry, and there’s an IV in my arm. For a few seconds, I stare at the ceiling without understanding why my chest feels so hollow.
Then I remember.
“The baby.”
The words barely come out.
Vadim is there. He’s sitting beside my bed, one hand already closing around mine before I manage to turn my head fully. His shirt is different, his hair damp like he washed quickly and came straight back, and the bruise on his cheek looks worse under the hospital lights.
“The baby is alive,” he tells me before the panic can set in.
I close my eyes. The relief hurts. “Is she okay?”
“The baby is in the neonatal unit, in great hands. You have absolutely nothing to worry about,” he tells me.
I start crying before he finishes.
Vadim shifts from the chair to the edge of the bed, careful of the IV and the blanket and whatever damage my body is still recovering from. “You were right this one time,” he says.
I blink at him through the tears. “What?”
His mouth softens a little. “It’s a boy.”
For a second, I only stare at him. Then I cry harder. “A boy?”
“Yes.”
“Our son?”
His face changes when I say it that way.
“Yes,” he says freezing slightly. “Our son.”
I narrow my eyes at the reaction. “What did you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what I thought initially,” he says. “I’m an idiot anyway. And it doesn’t matter who the father is when you’re the mother. That’s the only thing that matters to me.”
“Well you’re an idiot,” I say, punching him slightly. “For knocking me up.”
This time he smiles a little.
I reach for him, and he leans down without making me ask twice. His arms come around me carefully, but I still hold on to him as tightly as I can, pressing my face against his shoulder while everything inside me shakes with relief.
“I thought I lost him,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I thought I lost both of you.”
“You didn’t.”
I pull back enough to look at him. His eyes are red, his face bruised, and he looks more exhausted than I’ve ever seen him, but he’s here, solid and warm and watching me like he has not moved from this spot since I went under.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“It’s nothing.”
“That is never true when men say it.”
“It’s close enough.”
I touch the bruise near his cheek. He catches my hand and presses his mouth against my palm.
The kiss we share after that is careful because I’m weak, because my body is sore, because there are too many wires and tubes between us, but it’s not distant.
His mouth stays against mine long enough for me to believe that I’m awake, that he’s here, that our son is alive, and that whatever comes next won’t be something I have to survive alone.
When he pulls away, another thought returns.
“Petrov.”
Vadim’s expression changes, but it doesn’t harden the way I expect. “What about him?”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
I stare at him. “He isn’t?”
“He’s stable.”
“You didn’t leave him behind?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Vadim looks at our joined hands for a moment before answering. “I’m done with vengeance.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Vadim, who once looked like revenge was the one language he trusted completely, sounds tired of it in a way that feels real.
“Iosef used everybody’s grief,” he says. “Petrov and I have enough blood between us already. I won’t make another corpse part of our son’s first day.”
Our son.
The words keep striking me in different places.