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“Thank you,” she replies tightly.
“That is a nice surprise. It’s lovely to hear your voice.”
He sits on the bed next to her and asks, “May I?”
She pulls the blanket away and shifts towards him so that he can see her leg.
“These stitches can definitely come out today. It won’t hurt at all.”
She watches him closely as he works. She does not even blink an eye when he starts pulling her stitches out one by one. I am relieved to see that it does not cause her pain. Then he puts surgical tape over the scar that is forming and tells her it will help with the healing, to keep the scar from becoming raised or inflamed. “The painkillers will help as well. They have anti-inflammatories in them. I’ll leave some more here for you,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow towards her and shoot her a look that says I told you so. She ignores me.
He removes the stitches from her stomach and her face and then asks her to lie still as he presses his fingers gently along her ribs. “They are healing nicely. It must have been a hairline fracture, which makes you quite lucky.
“Lucky?” she scoffs.
“Um, yes, sorry, probably not the best choice of words. Are you eating well? Do you have anything you want to tell me—now that you’re talking? Is there anything bothering you or pain that you want me to help with?”
“No, thank you. The pain is tolerable.”
“How often are you taking the pain pills at the moment? Perhaps you need a higher dose.”
She pulls her mouth tight, and I chuckle.
“She has not been taking them, doc,” I say. “She is proving to be a little rebellious in that sense.”
He looks at me and then at her. “Why wouldn’t you want to take painkillers when you are in pain?”
“I asked her exactly the same thing.”
She shrugs.
The doctor stands. She says nothing.
He smiles. “The good news is that you are looking really well. You have a lot more color in your cheeks, and you are getting stronger. Things are coming along nicely, and I want you to start moving around a bit. Not too much, but slowly start walking around the house and finding your feet. Please, though, take it easy, don’t push too hard, and when you feel tired, you must get back into bed and rest. Let’s take this slowly, okay?”
She is silent.
“I’ll see you again soon, then,” he says, gathering his things.
Outside the door, he tells me that she has to take it slow. Just because she is speaking a little bit does not mean that she is okay. She is still suffering extreme trauma and has a lot of healing to do.
When I glance back into her room after he has left, she is lying in the bed with her back to the door.
My phone rings, so I pull it out of my pocket. It is Fyodor. Perhaps he and my other brothers have managed to find something out for me.
“Fyodor,” I say when I answer.
“We have some news for you.”
“Shoot.”
“We got hold of one of Alexander’s men. He was actually there when they took her. He was part of it.”
Anger surges through me. I want to kill that scum.
“Is he still alive?” I ask.
