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“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck!”
Now that my anger at him has faded, I can feel the guilt surging beneath it. He told me the truth. He tried to explain and I’d brushed aside his pain in favor of my own.
Before I can get to the apology, the door opens and Dr. Liza bursts in. “Wren!” she exclaims. “Are you alright?”
“Sore,” I confess. “And tired?—”
“The cut on your thigh,” she says urgently. “I’m sorry I couldn’t take care of it when you came in; I just didn’t want him to get suspicious.”
I wince at my own stupidity. “I already screwed up on that one. It was stupid to think he wouldn’t figure out my clue.”
“What clue?” Dmitri asks.
“I was being held in a little house that faced an abandoned railroad track. In all the time I was there, I didn’t see one train go by.”
“Shit,” Dmitri hisses as his face pales. “I know exactly where that is.”
“I wasn’t very subtle.”
“Hey.” Liza moves to my shoulder. “You did what you could with what you had. Now, let me examine you, make sure everything’s okay with the baby.”
Dmitri doesn’t move, not even when Liza lifts up my skirt and examines my cut. He stares down at it so hard that I get self-conscious. He sees me fidgeting and fixes me with a hard glare. “Don’t even bother to ask, Wren. I’m not going anywhere.”
Liza must have as much prior experience with that tone as I do, because she doesn’t even try to ask him for space. She just straightens up and starts fishing in her bag. “You went deep, but at least you don’t need stitches. I’ll clean the wound first. Once that’s done, I recommend a hot bath.”
The doctor takes her time, but Dmitri stands there, patient and motionless, for the entire process, like he’s carved from stone. The moment Liza’s done and satisfied with her handiwork, she pats my knee. “You did good, Wren. You’re stronger than you look.”
I smile. “Yeah?”
“Hell yeah. You did good, mama.”
She starts to help me get off the window seat, but Dmitri beats her to the punch. He wraps an arm around my waist and hoists me onto my feet. “I’ll take it from here, Liza. I expect you to be on call for the next few weeks.”
“Of course.” She scoops up her things and disappears through the door, leaving us alone.
As soon as she’s gone, Dmitri starts to haul me toward the bathroom. I push myself off him and take a few wobbly steps backward. “I can bathe myself, Dmitri. I’m pregnant, not invalid.”
“You might need help getting in and out of the tub.”
I frown. “You calling me fat?”
He almost smiles before he kills it. “Can we skip the part where you object to everything I say and just humor me here?”
Sighing, I crumple forward and nod. “You’re lucky I’m tired.”
As it turns out, I do need help getting into the tub. But it’s not until I’m forced to undress that I realize what I’ve just agreed to. “Um… can you not look at me?”
“Why?”
I peek down at my swollen belly and try to control the blush on my cheeks. “Because… I’ll be naked.”
“I’ve seen you naked before.”
“That was different. And I wasn’t quite as pregnant back then.”
Something ripples across his eyes. “For God’s sake, Wren, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Just don’t look, okay? I’m asking you.”
