Inside, Igor helps me iron out the wrinkles in my plan. Outside, Fedor is somewhere in the city drawing his next breath.
One of his last.
23
MOLLY
The morning shiftnurse’s name is Patricia, according to her badge, and she has the efficient warmth of someone who has been doing this long enough that kindness has become reflex rather than effort. She moves around me with the discharge paperwork and the camera and the briskness of a woman who has seventeen things to do before noon and is doing all of them without making anyone feel like one of seventeen things.
“Deep breath for me,” she says, positioning the camera.
I breathe. My ribs voice their objection in the sustained way they have been voicing it since yesterday.
“That’s good bruising,” she says, with the appreciative neutrality of a medical professional assessing a specimen. “Airbag did its job.”
“I feel very grateful to it.”
She almost smiles. “Any dizziness this morning? Nausea?”
“Headache. Behind my left eye.”
“That’ll hang around for a few more days. If it gets worse instead of better, you come back.” She hands me a clipboard. “Sign here, initial here, and here. The follow-up instructions are on the pink sheet—your OB needs to see you within the week.”
I sign where she points. “My OB’s going to have opinions about this week.”
“You doing okay? You’ve got someone picking you up?”
“I think my husband sent someone.” That’s what the text said an hour ago. Why he can’t bother to come get me himself, I don’t know, but I’m not happy about it.
Patricia hears what is said and what isn’t. “Mm,” she says, which is not a judgment and is also notnota judgment. She takes the clipboard back and checks my signatures. “Babies are strong. You did good.”
“They did the work.”
“You let them. Same thing.” She hands me the discharge papers with the brisk finality of someone completing a task. “Take care of yourself. That means actually resting, not whatever you’re already planning to do instead.”
I fold the papers into my bag. “I’ll rest.” It’s true in the sense that I intend to rest and uncertain in the sense that the next several days are not obviously restful.
Patricia looks at me with the expression of a woman who has heard this before. “Mm,” she says again. Then she moves on, because there are sixteen other things.
An orderly comes to wheel me out the front door, and before we get there, I find Andrei in the lobby. The man is broad and contained, the careful courtesy of a man who understands whatis owed and delivers it without elaboration. He nods when he sees me. One of Pavel’s more reliable men. No wonder he sent him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, which is more words than Andrei typically offers in a single transaction.
Can’t say I’m too surprised, though. I have a feeling a lot of Pavel’s guys will treat the injured, pregnant wife of their boss with kid gloves for a little while. “Functional, which is an improvement. Thank you for coming.”
He nods again and moves toward the exit, and I follow, waving off the orderly and the wheelchair. I don’t need it—it’s just hospital protocol. When we get outside, two men flank us with a professional comfortableness that is weird because I don’t know them.
“I don’t know these two,” I mutter to Andrei.
“You don’t remember them?” He pauses, tilts his head. “How bad was your head injury?”
“Mild concussion. At least, they said it was mild.”
He nods once. “Yacob and Bryce.”
They give a brief smile or a nod of acknowledgment as we continue to the SUV. I get into the middle row next to Yacob. Or maybe it’s Bryce. I’m not sure. If this is a mild concussion, I’d hate to see what a regular one does to me.
This is so embarrassing. “Sorry I forgot your names. That’s really terrible of me.”
