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“Good. Now I want you to leave me on speaker and look for any wound on Alek’s head. Don’t lift his head. Don’t move him. Look for anything obvious. Can you do that?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Ian tossed the phone aside, every nerve in his body going icy hot as he checked.
Alek’s hair was matted with blood, but Ian could still spot the gash on the back of his head. “I see it.”
“Sit down by Alek’s head and very carefully use the towel to hold gentle pressure to stop the bleeding. Use your other hand to keep his head from moving.”
Ian did so without hesitation, holding the towel against thewound like maybe he could keep all the blood from spilling out if he tried hard enough.
The operator asked, “Is the bleeding slowing?”
He’d forgotten she was still on the line. Ian quickly looked around. The towel was bright red where he pressed it to the wound, but it wasn’t completely saturated, and the pool of blood didn’t seem any larger. “I think so.” Ian returned his gaze to Alek’s chest and held his breath until he was sure Alek was still breathing.
“The helicopter is five minutes out. You should hear it soon.”
While he waited, Ian told Alek everything; how sorry he was, how much he loved him, how stupid Alek was to hang out on a third-story window sill, how he would never cut down the wisteria after this, how he forgave him and nothing Alek did could ever be more than he could take. Ian would marry him, and he’d sayI doas many times as it took for Alek to be satisfied that there would only ever be him, but Alek probably couldn’t even hear him because it was too late.
Meanwhile, Alek remained so still he might as well be dead, except for the steady rise and fall of his chest that Ian now synched his own breathing to. Ian didn’t stop talking to Alek,except to occasionally lay down verbal tithes and offerings and bargains and prayers to gods of all kinds until the distant sound of helicopter blades grew louder and he couldn’t hear anything else at all.
5
ALEKSANDAR
BULGARIA
Aleksandar Velishikov was five in his first memory. His pudgy fingers hovered over black and white stripes. A gauze curtain blew lazily in the breeze, carrying with it the scent of sweet wisteria that bloomed in bunches of purple flowers like grapes where it climbed up and around the window. Beside him, Uncle Krasimir’s fingers danced over the keys, turning sunshine into sound that floated around them like fireflies in the dark.
Uncle Krasimir was his father’s brother and more his parent than anyone else. Aleksandar’s father was very important and very busy. His mother had brown skin and pale green eyes the color of jade stones. When she hugged him, which was never very often, the scent of honeyed roses wrapped its arms around him and stayed long after she was gone.
One night, Aleksandar woke from a nightmare and left his room, following the amber light that glowed at the end of the hall until he found his father in his study, his enormous hands held over his face.
“Love is a weakness,” his father had said. “Never let anyone see where they can hurt you.”
Then he patted him on the head and sent him off into the dark hallway alone.
As Aleksandar grew older, his father continued to shape him into the heir he was intended to be. “Deception is survival,” he told him and Aleksandar remembered that too, even after his father had forgotten.
Uncle Krasimir waited at the gates of Aleksandar’s primary school every afternoon. They walked home together, their footsteps hollow on the dusty cobblestone, the sun warming their backs, as his uncle told him stories from history. Seemingly doomed adventures in which a bold hero conquered insurmountable odds, mysteries that had never been solved, love that didn’t just start wars, but ended them too.
Afternoons were for music. Uncle said Aleksandar’s hands were made for the piano, but that wasn’t what made him gifted. It was how he used them, how they moved, almost sentiently, like music had stitched itself inside his fingers. It was the way that Aleksandar wielded his emotions like a sword that slashed into the listener until they couldn’t be sure if their feelings were their own or if Aleksandar had put them there.
But mere talent wasn’t enough for his uncle. “You have been given a gift you cannot squander. You must never let a single day pass without practice.”
The first time that Aleksandar played for an audience, the lights were too bright, the eyes that watched him in the darkness burned holes in his skin, and he couldn’t make his fingers work.
His uncle was not disappointed. He said, “Fear is only proof we are alive.”
Uncle Krasimir’s house was built into the side of a hill that overlooked a dense forest with a river running through it. Dark green ivy climbed up walls made from river rocks stacked one on top of the other like a vertical puzzle.
His uncle’s ballroom-turned-workshop was a lonely child’sparadise. Enormous paintings in gilded frames leaned against walls, making tunnels for Aleksandar to drag books under and read. Wooden chests were filled with cabinet knobs and burlap grain sacks overflowed with tiny hinges and screws that made his fingers smell of copper the rest of the day. There were dark armoires to hide in and grandfather clocks that had forgotten how to tell time, an army of chairs standing in rows, yards of jewel-toned velvet hanging down from the ceiling.
On the less than rare occasion Aleksandar broke something whilst weaving down the narrow aisles of history, his uncle never yelled. Instead, he’d patiently teach him how to fix it.
“Nothing is ever too broken to be fixed,” his uncle had said.
But he was wrong about that. People and hearts could break and never be fixed again.
