Page 208 of Sexting His Assistant

Then I’m forced to wait.

Waiting is worse than fighting.

Fighting has direction. Fighting gives the body a task. Waiting leaves the mind loose, and mine goes everywhere it should not.

To the man in her apartment. To Roman at the gala.

To her face in the park when I asked for the dance.

I stand outside the scan room with blood on my shirt, Nina’s blood and maybe some of mine, and I listen to machines I cannot see.

Mirov comes out after what feels like an hour and cannot be more than fifteen minutes.

“She’s alive,” Mirov says before I can ask.

I close my eyes once.

Mirov says, “She has a concussion. The scan does not show a major bleed. There’s swelling, and we should keep her under observation because head injuries like to make fools of confident doctors, but right now, this is better than it looked.”

“How long until she wakes?” I ask.

Mirov says, “Could be soon. Could be hours. She was hit hard.”

My jaw tightens.

Mirov looks at my shoulder. “And you tore something.”

“I don’t care,” I say.

“I know you don’t care,” Mirov says. “That’s why I’m telling you instead of asking.”

“I’m not leaving her,” I say.

Mirov says, “I assumed that, which is why I’ll fix your shoulder beside her bed while you glare at me.”

I almost tell him to go to hell.

Then I look through the glass and see them moving Nina into a room.

I follow.

They settle her into the hospital bed, replace her ruined dress with a gown, cover her with a blanket, and clean the blood from her hair as much as they can without disturbing the injury. She looks too young under the white lights. Too still. Her face is softer in sleep, stripped of all the expressions she uses to keep the world at arm’s length.

I take the chair beside her bed.

Mirov does exactly what he threatened to do. He cuts open the shoulder seam of my shirt, mutters that I’m a stubborn animal, cleans the wound, tapes the dressing again, and tells me I will need stitches reopened if I keep behaving like an idiot.

“Later,” I say.

Mirov says, “You always say later.”

“And yet you keep coming,” I say.

Mirov says, “Because your mother pays on time and frightens me more than you do.”

Nina’s fingers move slightly under the blanket, and for one wild second I think she’s waking, but she only settles again.

Pavel calls again.