“I saw Sofia’s bag there after my shift on Monday. You may be right,” Hanna answered.
“Well, if they’re marking it, whatever, how’s it a problem for anyone?” Ivan questioned.
“It’s not like they’re standing in our faces or anything,” I added, shrugging.
Even a blind person could see that there were different factions of young staff at the clinic—and Julia’s clique was one of the most dominant. Hanna and I, together with Ivan and Amanda, were some of the few staff members who didn’t belong to any faction. Whenever we were at work, our focus was on the job and the patient, not on whoever we were working with. The four of us often came together simply on the grounds of common interests and the work department.
So, it wasn’t exactly pointless to say that Julia and her friends sometimes tried to ‘assert’ their dominance and remind everyone that they were an authority in the hospital. But the bottom line was that we had no reason to obsess over them.
“True, though,” Amanda conceded, emptying her cup.
A wave of anger shot through my body as I took out my phone to check the time, and caught sight of a text message.
‘You can’t run, let alone hide from me, dorogoya. Come on, give me a call. We’ll let bygones be bygones. Okay?’
**********
I stared at the picture of the beautiful little darling on my phone screen. Liza had sent the picture to me very early this morning (which would have been early at night on her end since she was in Manhattan), following our chat about how much I missed her baby.
Just to see Liza’s kid, I could have taken her offer to be flown to New York any time. But it wasn’t that easy. In fact, it was more complicated than Liza knew. I had no desire to remain in a Bratva setting or remain close to the Lobanov family for any moment longer. Being there during Liza’s pregnancy was hard enough; it was the limit for me. Although Liza and I had become good friends, I couldn’t stay.
I’d just stay here in Russia and keep doing the work I love at the clinic. The normalcy of my life here gave me a peace I would protect at all costs.
With a determined sigh, I locked the phone and put it in my purse. I zipped up the purse, slung its strap over my shoulder, and walked out of the house.
I was at the hospital to resume my night shift in less than forty minutes. Walking briskly across the large reception and answering greetings with a smile, I went into the changing room. Having changed into my blue scrubs and traded my sandals for my black protective footwear, I headed for the first ward.
I was walking out of the patient’s room, a pleased smile on my face, when I saw Hanna at the end of the hallway.
“Slowpoke,” I joked, expecting her regular, playful, not-so-remorseful reason for being late.
But Hanna simply blinked at me like she hadn’t met me before. I watched her eyes dart around the hallway before they landed on me again.
“Hi…,” she greeted, her tone cold.
“Hanna, what’s going on? Are you—”
“I have to go drop this,” she cut in, gesturing to the file in her hand.
Then she turned around and left.
What the hell was that?
Deciding to deal with whatever it was after checking on the remaining patients, I made my way down the hallway.
I had barely taken a step into the reception to retrieve the records of a patient when I heard it.
“...Vitya Morozov for smuggling intelligence to…”
My ears stung at the mention of his name, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to understand what I was hearing from the reception TV. Turning away from the desk I was headed towards, I stood still, eyes on the screen where a newscaster read the news. The face on the top right corner of the screen, Vitya’s ever-arrogant face, stole all of my attention, and I struggled to listen to the news itself.
The Russian authorities have arrested him for smuggling intelligence.
Which, in itself, should be good news.
Just as I tried telling myself it might just be that simple, that it might not mean anything bad for me, the bombshell hit me.
Scans of his devices have revealed suspects with whom he might have been colluding or using to get more intel.
