My life is in danger. And the baby?—
“What about him?” I whisper.
The doctor turns to me at once. “Right now, the baby still looks okay. The best thing we can do for him is stabilize you.”
I nod because I don’t know what else to do.
Aleksei bends down again, both hands braced on the mattress now, too much violence in his body to touch me safely and yet trying anyway. “Listen to me,” he says. His voice is lower now. Rough. Barely controlled. “I am not letting you die from this.”
The certainty in it should feel ridiculous. It doesn’t. It feels like the only solid thing in the room.
Another contraction tears through me and I cry out, and his hand is back in mine instantly.
The nurse starts naming medications. The OB argues with toxicology. Someone calls for a consult. The room becomes all movement again.
But through all of it, Aleksei stays where he is.
The room narrows around me.
Not all at once. In pieces.
The doctors are still talking, but their voices have started to blur at the edges. Nurses move fast around the bed. Someone is adjusting the monitors. Someone else is explaining something about fetal distress, about protecting me, about moving now, not later.
Surgery. I hear that word clearly.
Then I stop hearing anything clearly at all.
Aleksei is still there.
That is the only thing my body seems to understand.
He is still at my side, one hand locked around mine so tightly it should hurt and somehow doesn’t. His face is the last solid thing in the room. Pale with fury. Controlled by force. And underneath all of that, something I have never seen from him this openly before.
Love. Not want. Not possession. Not guilt or panic or obsession dressed up as urgency.
Love.
It is right there in his eyes, so naked and terrible that for one second, I almost forget the fear.
“Aleksei,” I whisper.
His whole focus sharpens on me. “I’m here.”
They start moving the bed. The world shifts. Ceiling lights sliding overhead. Wheels clicking. Doors opening somewhere ahead of us.
I don’t want to let go of his hand.
I think he knows that, because he walks with the bed as long as they let him, still holding on, still leaning close enough that I can feel his breath at my temple.
“You have to stay calm,” one of the nurses says.
I almost laugh.Stay calm.
As if the man I love is walking beside me like he’s trying not to murder the whole hospital.
As if I’m not being wheeled toward surgery with my baby still inside me and poison still inside my blood.
I turn my head just enough to look at him.
