Her blue scrubs clash with the harsh fluorescent lights overhead, and I feel like I need sunglasses as a headache starts to pound behind my eyes. It’s too noisy with all the people, the phones ringing, the staff hustling back and forth. Too busy, too bright, too close.
“Something like that.”
She gives me a small, compassionate smile and squeezes my shoulder before she leaves me in the waiting room.
I look around the waiting room at the old, scuffed linoleum, the faded red fake-leather seats with tears exposing the padding underneath, and a mix of people. Some are old, some young. Kids and parents. Some in pajamas, others in T-shirts and shorts, others in loungewear they probably threw on to rush to the hospital.
I wonder what happened to whoever they’re here for.
What the fuck happened to Evgeny, and why do I care so much that I feel numb and hollow and scared?
Shouldn’t I be elated? My captor is incapacitated. I can leave the ER free and clear, escape the Kucherov Demon, as I’ve learned he’s called, and disappear. The others will be too busy caring for him to come after me I hope.
Granted, they’ll probably think I did something to him if I disappear suddenly. But I know this is my chance.
Except I don’t want to go. All I want to know is that Evgeny is okay. I’m desperate to know he’s okay.
I want him to be okay so badly I could tear my hair out.
Instead, I curl into myself, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, and realize I’m still clutching Evgeny’s suit coat. The EMTs had ripped it off him and flung it onto the pavement. I grabbed it automatically, thinking he would be upset if he didn’t have it when he woke up.
It was an irrational thought, but nothing about this situation is rational.
I clutch the coat closer and bury my face in its folds. It smells like him, and I breathe it in, picking out each scent. Cedar, cardamom, vetiver, citrus, a faint hint of sweat, and the unnamable musk of his skin I’ve come to know well over the past two months.
Tears push at my eyelids, and I press the fabric and my palms to my eyes, forcing them back. I can feel the bandage on my forehead covering the cut from the incident in the bookstore, when Evgeny had become my white knight. That thought makes the tears harder to ignore.
Please let him be okay. Please.
“Eva? Where is he?”
I jerk upright to find Dmitri standing above me like a giant, growling bear. He’s as frightening as one, too, his face a forbidding storm, breathing hard, like he ran here. And he probably did.
“Back in the ER.” I point to the doors like he doesn’t know where that is, sniffing and rubbing the moisture from my eyes.
He pivots, and I watch him march up to the desk, people parting to let him through. I hear his voice as he harangues the charge nurse, gesturing, threatening. But the nurse has probably seen it all, and after a few minutes, Dmitri stomps back, the storm on his face even blacker.
“You really can’t go back there.”
Dmitri flicks a glare my way but doesn’t say anything as he drops into the chair beside mine. He barely fits.
“You’ll just make it worse and waste precious time. I’m sure they’re doing everything they can.”
“You sure know a lot about hospitals,” Dmitri growls. “I didn’t know you were a fucking doctor, too.”
“Sorry.” I ball the fabric of the coat in my hands. “I’ve just… I’ve done this a lot.”
Dmitri goes quiet before he asks, “You have?”
“Yeah.” I almost end it there, but something compels me to continue. “My mom got sick when I was sixteen. I was here with her a lot.”
Another stretch of silence before Dmitri says, “Oh. Sorry. That sucks.”
I shrug because there’s nothing else to say, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t suck. It does, very much.
“You must hate hospitals.”
When I glance at Dmitri, I’m surprised to meet his eyes with his mouth set in a frown. “Yeah. I do.”
