I actually would argue with that, under better circumstances.
Right now, I’m too busy trying not to fall apart in his arms.
So, I just hold on while he carries me inside, past the broken groceries and the man gasping on the ground, and for the first time in eight months, I let myself stop pretending I can survive his world by myself.
33
ALEKSEI
By the timewe reach the hospital, I am past anger.
This is something worse.
The emergency entrance clears the second they see me coming. Not because of who I am in the papers, but because of the people I bring with me and the look on my face. Nurses move faster. A doctor appears before I ask. Another is called before the first even finishes speaking.
I don’t ask for the best. I tell them.
“She’s almost eight months pregnant,” I say. “She took a hit to the head. You will check both of them.”
The doctor starts to reassure me in that careful, practiced tone medical people use when they think someone powerful needs handling.
I cut him off. “No assumptions. No delays. Scan her head. Monitor the baby. You tell me everything.”
He nods. Smart man.
They take her from my arms only when I know exactly which room she’s going to and who is touching her. The whole time, I can’t get the image out of my head. Her on that sidewalk. The groceries. The blood at her temple. The fear in her eyes before she saw me.
I should have found her sooner. I should have had men on her every day, not every few days, not discreetly, not at a distance because I told myself giving her space was some kind of mercy.
Mercy.I nearly laugh. What good did space do her when a man still got close enough to put hands on her?
One of the doctors comes back first. Head injury is minor. Bruising. Mild concussion, likely. No skull fracture.
The obstetrician takes longer. Every minute feels like punishment.
When she finally comes out and says the baby is fine, heartbeat strong, no signs of distress, I have to look away for a second.
Not because I’m emotional. But because if I don’t, I might break something from the release of it.
Fine. She’s fine. The baby is fine. That should settle me.
It doesn’t. It just leaves more room for everything else.
I spend the next hour making calls. The man from the street is being handled. My father’s people are being checked again. Every route, every camera, every leak. I want names. I want certainty. I want to know who thought touching her was something they could survive.
No one gives me an answer fast enough.
Eventually, after the doctors leave and the nurses settle into their rhythms, I go to her room.
The lights are low. Hospital rooms always look gentler in the dark than they do in the day, but I know better than to trust that illusion.
She’s asleep when I walk in. One hand over the blanket, resting protectively over the curve of her stomach. Hair pushed back from her face. The bruise at her temple is smaller now that someone cleaned the blood away, but it’s still there.
I stop beside the bed and just look at her.
She was gone for almost eight long months.
Eight months of silence, and now here she is again, sleeping in a hospital bed because I let danger stay too close while pretending distance was enough to keep her safe.
