AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s not a terrible idea. She knows more about taking care of babies than I do. And this whole thing with Nik has made it clear that I should enjoy the time I get with my family before it’s gone. I haven’t appreciated any of them enough. Not while I’ve been so focused on taking out all of the threats against us.
But babies aren’t the only things that take a lot of work. Being around her is exhausting. We’ve been in the car for twenty minutes and I’m ready for a break. How much worse will it be when we’re living under the same roof again?
Suddenly, she gasps. I almost swerve, worried there’s a hobbled grandma with a walking stick in the road.
My mother turns to me. “Please, please, tell me you’ve started working on the nursery already. There is so much to do. You can’t wait until the last minute. Especially with twins. Luna is going to be giving birth before you know it. Time flies.”
One can only hope.
My mother stops talking as we pull into the hospital parking garage. She lifts her chin and presses her thin shoulders back, but she doesn’t say a word.
Not as we ride the elevator up to the ICU.
Not as we sign in at the front desk.
Maybe she’s going to try to pull herself together. Maybe this won’t be like the last time we were at the hospital. She said she wanted to be here to support me. Maybe that’s what she plans to do.
Then she walks through the door of Nikandr’s hospital room, pulls back the curtain around his bed, and collapses.
“Nikandr!” She stumbles forward, barely grabbing onto the side of his hospital bed before she hits the floor. I grab her thin upper arm and drag her to the chair next to his bed.
“My Nikandr,” she sobs, laying a shaky hand on the bed railing. “I should have been here.”
I slide her chair closer so she doesn’t fall face-first onto the tile floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice I’m even here. She just grabs for Nik’s hand and squeezes, talking to him softly in Russian. Fat tears roll down her cheeks.
I back away towards the door. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
I move into the hallway and press my back firmly against the wall. I repeat today’s date to myself again and again, but the memories buried deep in my brain don’t care about logistics. They don’t care that my father has been dead for over five years.
Right now, I’m back to the night my father died. I’m back in the doorway to his room, watching my mother’s knees crack against the tile floor by his bedside, wailing for someone to help him.
By the time she got to the hospital, it was already too late. He’d been dead for hours. He’d been gone since they loaded him into the ambulance at Nik’s soccer game, his blood puddled in the dirt parking lot.
She wept and screamed until the nurses asked me to take her away. I tried to pull her towards the door, but she clung to the railing of his bed. I had to pry her fingers away from the plastic and pick her up like a child. When I got her home, she buried herself in the comforter and didn’t get up for days.
When she finally sat up, she looked me in the eyes and said, “I never knew I could miss him as much as I loved him.”
It was in that moment that I decided to never give that much of myself to anyone. Because I wouldn’t survive if they took it away.
I close my eyes and reach for my burner phone. I tap one of only two numbers in the contacts and press it to my ear.
“Yakov?”
Luna’s voice shatters through the memory. Instantly, she brings me back. To the present. To now. Where I’m committed to giving everything I am to this woman.
“I needed to hear your voice.”
“Yakov,” she says again, softer. “I miss you.”
It’s barely been a day, but it feels so much longer. “I miss you, too.”
“What’s going on? Have you found out anything about Akim’s brother? Do you know when we’ll get to leave here?”
I drag a hand through my hair. There’s so much I have to do. So much going on. “Nik almost died. I’ve been at the hospital since I left you at the safehouse.”
She gasps. “I had no idea. Is he okay?”
“He’s stable. My mother is here now. She just flew in an hour ago.”
