Viktor drives and the city appears on the other side of the water and I sit in the back of the car with my wife’s hands in mine and I do not let go.
35
ELENA
The facilityon 68th doesn’t look like a hospital from the outside.
It looks like a private practice, the kind with a discreet sign and a buzzer entry and no walk-ins, and then Viktor pulls up to the curb. Roman gets out and opens my door. I sit there for a moment looking at the entrance, and I think about Mara.
“I want to see Mara first,” I say.
Roman looks at me.
“Before anyone examines me, before anyone does anything, I want to see her.” I look at him. “Please.”
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he tells the doctor standing at the entrance to give us a minute, a woman in her fifties with short gray hair who has been waiting at the door since the car pulled up, and she nods and steps back inside.
Roman helps me out of the car, and I let him because my legs are not entirely reliable, and we go inside.
They bring Mara in on a wheelchair twenty minutes later.
She has her left arm in a sling, an IV line running into her right, and a hospital gown under a blanket someone has draped across her lap. Her hair is everywhere and her face is the gray of someone who has lost significant blood and been put back together on a table. When she sees me she opens her mouth and closes it and opens it again and what comes out is not words, just a sound. I cross the room and I crouch in front of the wheelchair and I take her right hand in both of mine.
“You got shot,” I say.
“I noticed,” she says. Her voice is thick and slow, the anesthesia still in it. “You got kidnapped.”
“I noticed.”
She looks at my face with the attention of someone checking for damage. I let her look the same way I let Roman look in the car, because I understand the need, and when she has finished looking, she says, “You are okay?”
I say, “I am okay,” and she closes her eyes for three seconds and squeezes my hand.
“Danny is going to lose his mind,” she says.
“Danny is going to be fine.”
“He called six times while I was in surgery, apparently. Six.” She opens her eyes. “I’m going to have to tell him I love him now, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” I say. “You are.”
She makes a sound that is almost a laugh and winces, and I squeeze her hand, and I do not let go for a long time.
The examination room is white and clean, and the doctor, Reyes, moves through it with the focused efficiency of someone who has seen complicated situations before and has learned not to let complications interfere with the medicine. She checks my blood pressure, my pulse, the baby’s heartbeat with an ultrasound wand that she presses against my stomach, and the sound fills the room, fast, steady, and I close my eyes and breathe.
Roman is standing at the far wall with his jacket still on and his arms folded, and he’s watching the Doppler with an expression I have not seen on his face before, concentrated, stripped of the usual control, just a man listening to a heartbeat.
“Good,” Dr. Reyes says. “Strong.” She moves the wand slightly. “Now let’s do the full scan.”
She runs the ultrasound in silence, the screen angled toward her, and I lie on the table and look at the ceiling and think about the room in New Jersey and the frosted window and the man with the wire-rimmed glasses and his word on that.
Dr. Reyes goes quiet.
Not the quiet of moving from one thing to the next. A different quiet, the quiet of someone looking at something that requires a second look. She adjusts the probe, looks at the screen again, and then she looks at me.
“Mrs. Petrov,” she says. “Are you aware that you are carrying twins?”
The room goes completely still.
