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"Parking here costs a fortune, so I'll wait in the car and circle around if the ticket inspector walks by." Freddie pulls up outside the hospital and waits for us to leave. "If you can't see me when you're done, call me, I won't be far."
He must be talking to Porter, because I don't have his number or a phone. I'm relieved to have Porter with me.
Once we get inside my gratitude for Porter's presence increases. The room is full of people, all chattering at once, and the signs are written in English, something I never learnt to read. Gavriil did try teaching me Russian, but I lost interest in learning a language no one around me wrote in.
"It's this way." Porter deciphers the big word panels and takes my hand. This place is terrifyingly huge and busy.
We sneak into a darker corridor and I'm relieved for the quiet.
"Petrov, right?" Porter calls, more focused on finding Gavriil than appreciating the empty corridor.
"Yes, that is surname." I couldn't even read his name written in English letters. Mama taught me my first name in English, so I could write it, but I haven't needed a pen for six years… Except one time when I stabbed one in a man's ear. Or was that a pencil? Either way, he screamed out whatever Edward had wanted to hear from him.
"This way." Porter's voice steals me from my thoughts and his warm grip guides me to a small room with a bed and a dozen machines around it.
Gavriil looks so frail as he lies in the bed, he looks old and weak. I remember him on the ground, I remember the blood, but he didn't look as dead then as he does now. My feet take me the rest of the distance to the bed without Porter. He is unconscious, the scar on his face is more visible against his grey skin, making him look more like the monster he was inside.
I don't want to go back to how things were before. I want to move forward, with Porter and Knox. I want this chance more than I have ever wanted anything.
"Gavriil, I grateful for everything you did for me, but I need to move on. I am grown up now. Things must change. We will still be friends." My words are in Russian, for his ears only. He needs to know this, and I need to tell him when he can't argue with me.
I reach for his hand, but it's as cold as the graves and brings me no comfort. I need a sign of life from him but there is nothing. A machine is breathing for him, wires and cables run from under the covers to all the machines.
As I withdraw my hand from the edge of the bed, a long and frantic beep sounds.
Footsteps hurry to join us, and bodies jostle me backwards. Medical people surround him, trying to save him, but they can't, I just know it.
"I'm sorry, who are you?" A male voice calls, but I don't look around. I can’t take my eyes off Gavriil in fear I might never see him again. And if I turn around, they are going to see me crying.
"Technically, that's his son," Porter lies for me.
I'm not his son, I'm not his anything. Just a cleaner and translator he pays in food and showers.
"Are you Nico? We've been looking for you." The speaker is wearing a suit, not like the scrubs of the people trying to save Gavriil. This man is police, and I have learnt always to run from them.
"Oh shit." Porter grabs my arm, but his attention is fixed on retrieving his phone, so it doesn't take much to pull free.
"Kids, you shouldn't be here. This man is…"
Dying. He's dying and if they catch me, I'm going to be deported back to a country I don't remember.
"No, please. Come." I grab Porter and drag him with me. I flee, almost blind with tears. I have considered the possibility of Gavriil dying, but running for my life through a hospital is not how I pictured it to happen.
Gavriil is dying and I am running from his side. That's what I should have done when he was first shot. I want to return to his side, but look at the mess returning to him got me in last time. We hit the noisy corridor again and I don't know where to stop. I need to catch my breath but there isn't time.
"Porter. I not can run anymore." I ache everywhere the rope touched me, and everywhere else is exhausted.
"Hide in there. I'll lure them away." Porter pushes me towards a storeroom, and he legs it down the corridor. I try the door, but it won't open, so instead, I dive into a side ward and search for a lonely old man who wouldn't mind a grubby refugee for company.
"Who the heck are you?" My chosen victim questions as I gesture at the chair facing away from the door.
"I am visiting. May I sit and catch my breath?"
"Visiting? You look like a patient," the old man snorts. "But that makes your need to sit greater."
"That is a yes?" I pull my sleeve down over the wrist bandage.
"Yes boy. Sit."
