He curses under his breath. “Please, go sit and get comfortable.”
He starts to walk away but I grab his arm. The doctor looks at me. “Just tell me, is he going to live?”
“Yes, but I need to get some blood.”
“Come on,” Anya says. “You need to eat. Drink. You heard the doctor; he’s going to be okay.”
I want to sit in that room and oversee everything.
But I can’t.
I’ll be in the way.
I have to let them do their thing.
I let Anya lead me away.
Anya pulls me toward the public restrooms near the emergency department entrance. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting harsh shadows that make everything feel more surreal.
I push through the bathroom door and catch my reflection in the mirror. I stop dead.
"Oh my God," I breathe.
Anya appears beside me, and we both stare at our reflections in stunned silence.
I look like I crawled out of a grave. My face is streaked with soot and ash, creating dark lines that make me look like some kind of warrior gone to battle. My hair is a tangled mess with debris caught in the strands. Blood—Maksim's blood, my father's blood, stains my clothes and hands. My eyes are wild; pupils dilated with adrenaline that hasn't worn off yet.
Anya looks just as bad. Maybe worse. Her normally perfect blonde hair is gray with ash, standing up in odd angles. Soot covers her face like war paint.
We lock eyes in the mirror.
And then, inexplicably, we both start laughing.
It's not funny. Nothing about tonight is funny. But the laughter bubbles up anyway, hysterical and uncontrollable. We're alive. Against all odds, we're standing here looking like extras from an apocalypse film, but we're alive.
"We look like hell," Anya gasps between giggles.
"Literally." I wipe at my face, which only smears the ash around. "I think there's a piece of ceiling in my hair."
"There is. Want me to get it?"
"Please."
She picks through my tangled hair, extracting chunks of concrete and who knows what else.
"Your turn," I say when she's done.
I return the favor, finding even more debris in her lighter hair. "You need a shower. Like, immediately."
"So do you." She turns on the faucet, wetting paper towels. "Here, let's at least get the worst of it off."
We scrub at our faces and hands, the white paper towels turning black almost instantly. It takes a dozen towels each before we start to look remotely human again.
"Better?" I ask, checking my reflection.
"Marginally." Anya tries to finger-comb her hair into something resembling order. "Still look like we've been through a war."
"We have been through a war."
