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Konstantin’s words are hard to digest, but they’re the truth. My relationship with Alek can’t compete with Aleksandr Kurochkin’s duty to his nation, no matter how deep our love runs.
I remain here on the stage, a puddle of misery and rage. All my pain is directed at Alek, wishing I’d never met him while also wanting him to walk through those doors and into my waiting arms.
“Willow!”
I glance up to find my dad running down the aisle and onto the stage. His eyes wide with panic.
“We need a medic!” he shouts before embracing me.
“I’m fine, Dad. The bullet barely grazed me.” I scan the room. “Where’s Galina? Is she okay?”
“Galina’s fine. She’s with Ivan now.” He releases me, gripping my shoulders to hold me at arm’s length and check me over for other injuries. As he examines my ear, his complexion grows pale.
A medic comes onto the stage with a first aid kit, and he sets it on the floor to begin unpacking it. He says something to me in Russian.
“I can only speak English,” I say. “Sorry.”
“Is this your only injury?” he asks with a heavy accent, pointing to my left ear.
“Yeah, I think I was just grazed by a bullet.”
He pulls out some supplies to clean my ear, but when he presses the gauze to me, I yelp in agony. Dad squeezes my hand.
The medic cleans the area around my ear before pulling out another instrument and inspecting the canal. “Are your ears ringing?”
I suck in a sharp breath, my eyes watering from the pain. “They were for a while, but it’s better now. Sounds are still a bit muffled.”
He’s silent for another minute as he completes his examination. “Good news: it doesn’t look like your eardrum burst. But the cartilage on the top of your ear is split. You will need to go to the hospital for a more thorough inspection and special sutures, but if you go now, you will be waiting for a long time to be seen. Possibly days.”
“Why?”
The medic gives me a strange look, as though the answer is obvious. “Because the hospitals in this city will be overwhelmed within the hour.”
I glance at my dad, who has a somber expression on his face. A sick feeling comes over me.
“Thank you,” he says. “We’ll get her in as soon as possible.”
The medic packs up his first aid kit before running off to another injured person in the first row.
“I can’t believe this,” Dad says, staring at me. “If that bullet had been an inch over—”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. Can we just go home now?”
“Of course.”
Dad helps me to my feet, then he wraps his arm around my shoulder to walk me out of the auditorium.
Once outside, the front of the school is crowded with ambulances, police vehicles, and news cameras. It looks like the story is finally breaking amid the chaos.
We pass by a stretcher, and I recognize the person lying on it—Johanna. Two paramedics are talking on either side of her.
One of them reaches down and pulls the white sheet over her face. Instead of being loaded into an ambulance, she’s hauled off to a grassy lawn nearby, where rows of people are lying, hidden beneath white sheets.
Ivan has the house surrounded by guards from the security agency, and meanwhile, my dad has been on the phone with Washington for the last hour.
Galina and I are sitting in front of the television. The story has made international headlines by now, so we have the BBC turned on so I can listen in English. I’m desperate for news of Alek, who is being hailed as a hero for giving himself over to the Labor Party fighters. Resistance fighters, they’re calling themselves.
Despite the military and police looking for him, he’s still reported missing.
