“The shoulder wound is out of surgery,” he announces. “He’s going to make it.”
“And the second one?”
He tilts his head in a way that doesn’t require words. “Still in the OR.”
“Thank you for letting me know.”
He watches me button my coat. “Go home, Polina. Sleep.”
“That’s the plan.”
The drive home is twenty-three minutes. My phone sits in the cupholder the entire way, and I glance down at it at every red light. Lev hasn’t texted. He has no idea that I’ve carried this information alone through the back half of a shift.
I pick up the phone at the fourth red light.
I know what I’d say. I drafted it in my head after I left the break room.This isn’t working. I think we’ve both known it for a while. I don’t see this ending well for either of us.Clean. Direct. The kind of ending that doesn’t leave room for negotiation, because I know if he starts talking, I’ll let him. If I let him, the conversation will go somewhere I don’t have the defenses for tonight.
I know how to end things. I’ve done it before.
When the light turns green, I set the phone back in the cupholder and drive.
I don’t call. I stare at the road and don’t call, and I decide I’ll think about what that means when I have the energy to be honest with myself about it.
Tonight, I don’t.
My building comes into view at the end of the street. I park and sit in the car for longer than necessary, watching a couple walk their dog past the entrance, the ordinary rhythm of aneighborhood at night going on without any awareness of what I’m carrying. I finally get out, pull my coat closed against the cold, and walk toward my door.
I freeze when I get to my doorstep.
A package is there. Not large, wrapped in brown paper with my name across the top in handwriting I’d recognize anywhere. No shipping label or postage, which means someone brought this here. Either Lev or someone he trusts enough to know my address, and either of those things puts him within a few steps of my front door today, while I was at the hospital.
I look up and down the empty street before I pick it up, bring it inside, and set it on the kitchen counter to peel back the paper.
A book. Old, judging by the yellowing pages and the texture of the cloth cover. I turn it over carefully and open it to the title page.Principles of Operative Surgery.1947. First edition.
Six weeks ago, on a night when the conversation drifted the way it sometimes does between us, Lev asked me what I’d want if I could have anything that served no practical purpose. I thought about my mentor’s copy of this book. How it lived on the shelf in his office behind his desk, and how I stood in front of it during consultations, the way you stand in front of something in a museum. Not to read it, just to be near it. I told Lev that, and I remember thinking immediately afterward that it was an odd thing to share.
A small, white card is tucked inside the front cover, filled with his handwriting, neater than the notes he leaves when he’s in a hurry.
For the doctor who saves everyone but herself.
I read it twice, then I carry the book to the couch and sit with it in my lap.
I don’t know when he sent this.
That’s the thing I keep circling. He could have left it this morning, before anyone knew about the attack on my family. He could have found this book weeks ago on an unremarkable afternoon, remembered what I said, tracked down a first edition because that was the specific version I mentioned, and had it waiting on his kitchen counter for the right moment to send.
Or he sent it tonightbecauseof what his family did to mine.
If he sent it before, he’s the man I’ve let myself believe he is. Someone who listens when I speak, who holds onto details I’ve already forgotten sharing, and who does something kind without needing me to notice.
But if he sent it after… well, he’s his father’s son, after all.
I don’t know which is true, and I’m not sure which one is worse.
