Epilogue #2
I see the baby twelve hours later. Vadim wheels me to the NICU because the nurse insists I shouldn’t walk that far yet, and I only stop complaining when I realize Vadim’s hands are too tense on the wheelchair handles.
The nurse explains everything before we go in. The incubator. The breathing support. The monitors. The wires. The fact that he will look small, because he is small, and that doesn’t mean he’s not fighting.
I nod like I understand.
Then I see him.
He is tiny. Smaller than anything I prepared myself for. He’s wearing a little cap, his skin flushed and delicate, his chest moving beneath wires and tape and things I don’t understand. One hand rests near his face, fingers curled, and the sight of those fingers breaks me all over again.
Vadim stands behind my chair.
“He’s too small,” I whisper.
“He will grow.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I told him.”
I look up at him through tears. “You told our premature baby to grow?”
“Yes.”
“And did he agree?”
“He moved one finger.”
“That’s not agreement.”
“It’s close enough for now.”
The nurse smiles. I cry and laugh at the same time, and then she helps me reach through the incubator opening so I can touch my son’s hand. His fingers twitch against mine, barely there, and I feel something inside me settle in a place fear has occupied for months.
“My baby,” I whisper.
Vadim says nothing, but when I look back, his eyes are fixed on our son with an expression I don’t think anyone outside this room would recognize.
He is afraid.
He is in love.
He has no idea what he’s doing.
For once, neither do I.
The next few days pass in hospital time, which doesn’t feel like normal time at all.
I sleep in short stretches. Nurses check me constantly.
Doctors come and go. Vadim handles calls in the corridor and returns before I can properly miss him.
He brings updates about Ethan, about the baby, about everything else, and he delivers them in a practical tone that helps more than excessive reassurance would.
We name the baby Leonid Ethan Mercer Chernovar on the third day.
Vadim says that’s not how names work.
I say it is how this one works.
We compromise only after Ethan, from his own hospital bed, weakly says that if we keep arguing over names, the baby will grow old enough to choose one himself.
Ethan improves slowly after Vadim brings in more specialists.
Not magically, not in a way that makes everything easy, but enough that the fear sitting in my chest loosens little by little.
He gets more color in his face. He jokes more.
He asks to see pictures of Leonid constantly, and every time I show him one, he says something rude about how the baby looks like a tiny angry businessman.
Vadim is offended every time.
This doesn’t stop Ethan.
Anya and Nadia come to see me on the fourth day. Anya walks in holding Boris under one arm and a paper bag in the other, looking far too serious for a child visiting a maternity ward.
“Is the baby still in the glass box?” she asks.
“Incubator,” Nadia corrects softly.
Anya nods. “The glass box.”
“He is,” I say.
She comes closer and hands me the paper bag. Inside is a drawing of a baby with wings, horns, and what looks like smoke coming out of his mouth.
“He’s a dragon,” Anya explains. “Because he was born during shooting.”
Nadia closes her eyes.
Vadim, standing near the window, says, “Actually, that’s pretty much what happened.”
Anya beams at her uncle. She climbs carefully onto the chair beside my bed after Vadim tells her not to jump, then asks me whether Leonid can visit when he’s bigger, whether he likes rabbits, whether his hair will be silver, and whether he’s allowed to bite bad people when he grows teeth.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
Vadim says, “Depends.”
I point at him. “No.”
Anya looks delighted.
Nadia hugs me before she leaves, and for a moment she doesn’t say anything. She only holds me carefully, like she understands that some apologies are too complicated to say while a body is still healing and a baby is still in intensive care.
“I’m glad you are here,” she says.
I nod because my throat closes. “I’m glad too.”
Mila and Daniel come two days later.
I know they’re outside before they enter because Vadim’s face changes in a way I have learned to read. He doesn’t look angry exactly, but he looks prepared to become angry if the conversation requires it.
Mila steps in first. She looks thinner, her hair shorter, her face nervous but determined. Daniel stands behind her, awkward and bruised and trying very hard not to look directly at Vadim for too long.
For a second, Mila and I only stare at each other.
Then she comes to me, and I hug her as much as I can without hurting myself.
“I’m sorry,” she says immediately.
“No.”
“I should have told you more,” she says.
“No, not at all,” I say. “It was your secret to keep. Besides, you’re not responsible for your brother’s actions, nor for those of the men who hurt you.”
“Thanks,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. She turns to her brother. “I was tired of you fighting my wars.”
“It wasn’t just your war,” Vadim replies fiercely. “I don’t regret anything I did. I did it only to protect you. But I know where I went wrong.” His palm squeezes mine. “I should have trusted my gut.”
She turns to me. “Do you see how insane my family is? My brother started several fires because he couldn’t believe he had fallen in love.”
“That’s not true,” he says.
“We wouldn’t have been in this hot mess if you just admitted your feelings and communicated better,” she says. “But then again, I don’t think I would have met my handsome hunk of a husband.”
“Husband?” Vadim and I say at the same time.
“Yes. Now, no more murders please. Let’s just focus on Sloane getting better, and the baby too.” She turns to face me. “And to think, you were just trying to survive our batshit family—” She shakes her head.
“That’s true,” I say with a shrug. “But only the male members.”
“I’m the only male member,” Vadim says.
“Exactly,” I say.
Mila laughs once, then cries, and I cry too because apparently, I’m only a leaking human being now.
Daniel clears his throat from the doorway. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
I look past Mila at him. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
He glances at Vadim. “That makes two of us.”
Vadim says nothing.
Mila turns to her brother. “I came back on my own.”
“I know.”
“No one forced me.”
“I know.”
“Daniel didn’t bring me because you threatened him.”
Vadim looks at Daniel, who goes very still.
“No,” Vadim says. “He came despite knowing I might.”
Daniel swallows. “That was discussed.”
“With who?” I ask.
“With myself,” Daniel says.
Mila reaches for his hand, and Vadim sees it.
For a few seconds, no one speaks.
Then Vadim says, “You should both see Leonid.”
Mila looks relieved enough that I realize she expected something worse. Daniel looks like he expected death and has been offered a tour instead. When they go to the NICU, Mila cries at the incubator, and Daniel, trying to help, says Leonid is ugly in the way all newborns are ugly.
Vadim turns his head very slowly.
Daniel immediately says, “That came out wrong.”
“It did,” Vadim says.
Mila elbows Daniel hard enough to make him wince.
I laugh for the first time without it turning into tears.
The weeks after that are not easy, but they are better.
Leonid gains weight slowly. His breathing improves. The feeding tube comes out. Then one monitor goes. Then another. Every change feels enormous because for a while our lives are reduced to numbers, grams, feeds, temperature, oxygen, and whether the doctors look pleased when they approach us.
Vadim learns to change diapers with the concentration of a man defusing an explosive. He pretends not to be nervous the first time a nurse places Leonid against his bare chest for skin-to-skin, but he sits so still that I have to tell him babies don’t break because someone breathes near them.
“I know that,” he says.
“You look like you don’t.”
“He is very small.”
“Yes.”
“And loud.”
“Also yes.”
Leonid makes a thin, annoyed sound against him.
Vadim looks down. “He disagrees with you.”
“He’s three weeks old.”
“He has opinions.”
I smile because Vadim says it like this is a family trait he respects.
A few weeks after the birth, when Leonid is strong enough for a short, supervised visit outside the NICU, I take him to Ethan. Vadim walks beside the wheelchair, one hand near the baby carrier and the other near my shoulder, which is unnecessary but strangely reassuring.
Ethan is sitting up more now. He’s still thin, still sick, still connected to things I wish he didn’t need, but there’s color in his face that wasn’t there before Vadim’s specialists arrived.
When he sees the baby, his eyes fill.
“Oh,” he says, and for once there is no joke ready.
I carefully place Leonid beside him with the nurse’s help. “Your nephew.”
Ethan touches one tiny hand with the tip of his finger. “He’s real.”
“Yes.”
“He looks angry.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Maybe he’s upset you named him like a Russian prince.”
Vadim says, “He is welcome.”
Ethan looks up at him. “Thank you.”
The room goes quiet.
Vadim inclines his head once.
Ethan doesn’t make it dramatic, which somehow makes it worse. “I mean it,” he says. “For her. For him. For me too, I guess.”
Vadim’s face remains controlled, but his voice is lower when he answers. “You are her brother.”
“That doesn’t explain all of it.”
“No,” Vadim says. “It doesn’t.”
I look away because I’m crying again, and I’m tired of these men making me emotional when I’m supposed to be recovering.
By the time Leonid is finally discharged from the intensive care unit, I’m so used to the NICU routine that leaving feels unreal.
For weeks, every day has been measured in numbers.
His oxygen. His weight. How much milk he takes.
How long he sleeps. Whether he keeps his temperature steady.
I know the sound of every machine near his cot, the names of the nurses who take the night shift, and the exact face doctors make when they are pleased but don’t want to promise too much.