I sat silently in the loft, watching the clock slowly tick, one minute at a time. At this rate, I would be stark raving mad by morning.
A pounding on the door had me scrambling. “Who is it?”
“Viktor. Can you open the door?”
I swung the door open. Viktor’s face was covered in grime, and his hands were covered in blood.
“What’s wrong?” I barked. “Where is Andrusha?”
“He’s been shot.”
I worked to keep breathing. “Where is he? Is he okay?”
“He’s with the doctor. Things went south tonight. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. Can you help the doctor?”
“Yes.”
He speed-walked me to the infirmary. “You don’t leave here until I come back. No matter what anyone tells you.”
I nodded before moving around him, desperate to see Andrusha.
The doctor stopped me and motioned for me to wash my hands. He showed me how to scrub up to my elbows, and then he put a gown and mask on me. I tugged on the gloves. I waited with my arms in the air while he performed the same steps on himself, and then I followed him into surgery.
The room looked like a surgical room on TV. It was stainless and cold and smelled of disinfectant. Andrusha lay on the table, shirtless, with a huge, bloody bandage on his shoulder. An IV unit dripped a bag of blood into his arm, and his eyes were closed.
“Andrusha!” I cried in panic, but he didn’t respond.
I moved to touch him. But the doctor demonstrated that I wasn’t allowed to touch anything.
I don’t know how I held it together after that. The doctor showed me how to hold the suction in Andrusha’s wound while he sewed his shoulder back together. When I looked at the wound, I felt queasy and light-headed, so I focused on my job and tried not to think about the fact that his shoulder was a deep, bloody mess.
When the doctor sewed the final stitches into his skin, I was surprised at how normal his shoulder actually looked. He covered the stitches with a dressing, and together we wheeled him into the other room. The doctor dimmed the lights, helped me take off my gown, and pulled up a chair for me. I sat when he motioned for me to sit. I wanted to ask him how Andrusha was doing, but since we couldn’t communicate in the same language, I watched his body language.
When he left the room, I grabbed Andrusha’s hand while hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
The doctor periodically came by to check on his pulse and blood pressure, but he kindly patted me on the shoulder on the way out as if to let me know it would be okay.
Two hours later, Viktor was tapping on the door.
“Heard you helped with surgery.”
It was killing me I didn’t know how Andrusha was doing. “Can you ask the doctor some questions for me?”
Viktor obliged and translated for me. “Andrusha got lucky. No bones were hit, and no vital organs. The projectile nicked a major artery, so he lost a lot of blood, but the wound itself will probably heal quickly. He doesn’t think an actual bullet hit him, but a fragment of something a bullet hit. Otherwise, the damage would be far more extensive. Now Andrusha’s gravest threat is an infection.”
I hugged the doctor before Viktor motioned for him to move out the door. He looked at me but didn’t speak.
I found my voice. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“We weren’t with the rest of the men. Two vehicles attacked us, and Andrusha got shot.”
“Where were you going tonight?”
He looked grim. “We had set a trap for Bunko, but it appears he knew about it. He used the situation to try and take out Andrusha.”
I looked at Andrusha’s pale face. “What did you mean by ‘all-hands-on-deck’?”
He avoided my gaze. “We are expecting them to show up here. Maybe not tonight, but in the next few days. So we are preparing for that contingency.”
I looked around in growing terror. “How do we prepare for that?”
“The men will stay behind. Andrusha asked me to get you out of here.”
I frowned. “But Andrusha can’t leave in this state.”
He crossed his arms. “He will stay behind.”
I shook my head slowly. “I’m not leaving him.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
I looked down at Andrusha. The panic I felt when I heard he’d been shot was still in my gut. It made me realize that he was the only thing that mattered to me in this world. “I’m not leaving him here.”
He rubbed the side of his face. “This isn’t what he wants for you. He wants you to be safe.”
I crossed my arms. “He’s lying here, unconscious. I won’t leave him. And, frankly, I doubt you will either.”
“I made him a promise. Doesn’t matter if I like it—I told him I would keep you safe.”
I crossed my arms. “If you want to leave, you can, but I am not leaving Andrusha.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “So either we take him with us, or we stay?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “I’ll talk to the doctor and see how soon we can move him.”
The next two days of my life were the worst I had ever experienced. Andrusha developed an infection. He ran a fever and was delirious most of the time. The doctor pumped his body with antibiotics while I kept vigil at his bedside, washing his face and chest with a cold cloth and praying he would wake up at some point.
Viktor seemed to take over all of Andrusha’s duties, and he was busy all the time. He would stop by the infirmary to get updates. Twice he asked me if I would be willing to leave, but both times I vehemently refused.
