The room goes very still.
I look at her.
She looks back without blinking.
The answer comes too fast. A lie.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I know her now, or enough of her. I know what she looks like when she wants to shut a door before someone can put a hand through it. This is that face.
Still, I don’t call it. Not yet.
I just nod. Once.
If she expects an argument, she doesn’t get one. If she expects relief, she doesn’t get that either.
Only the nod. Only the silence after it.
Her mouth tightens slightly, as if the lack of reaction unsettles her more than anger would have.
And I leave it. Because if I say what I’m actually thinking, I won’t stop there. I’ll ask dates. I’ll ask names. I’ll ask why she ran. I’ll ask why she thought she had the right to decide I would never know.
And I am too angry, too relieved, too raw from seeing her on that pavement to trust any of those questions in this room.
So, I keep my voice level and say, “You should rest.”
She keeps looking at me. Trying to read what I’m not giving her.
I stand. The chair scrapes softly against the floor. My hand goes to the bedrail for one second before I let it go.
“Aleksei,” she says.
I stop, but I don’t turn around right away. When I do, she looks smaller somehow. Not weak. Just tired enough that the fight is harder to hold.
“I meant it,” she says. “About thanking you.”
I nod once. “Sleep.”
Then I walk out before I do something stupid like go back to the bed and ask again.
Outside the room, the hallway is bright and cold and full of people who still don’t have the answers I need.
By morning, I’ve already decided.
She isn’t going back to that apartment.
She can fight me about it if she wants. She probably will. But she’s not going back.
When the doctor clears her to leave, I’m waiting outside the room with her discharge papers already signed, prescriptions filled, and two men downstairs making sure no one gets within twenty feet of the exit.
She sees me and immediately knows something is wrong. “What?”
“You’re coming with me.”
Her eyes narrow. “No.”
I almost smile. Almost. Even half-concussed, she still goes straight to defiance. “Yes.”
