Page 70 of The Breath Before Forever

Igor swallowed audibly, letting out a shaky breath. “They said it might help to get another graft on my back, but at this point, I’m running out of usable skin.”

“I hear donor—”

“Not interested. They already put some fucking fish scales on me when I was in there the first time. Jesus Christ.”

Vaslav cringed, but didn’t question Igor on the topic further. There were some things that men should simply be able to keep to themselves. Undignified—or radical, depending on how someone wanted to look at it—medical procedures were certainly one of those things.

“I’m here because Bogdan called,” Igor admitted.

“Oh?”

Igor shrugged, his gaze sweeping the many monitors on the wall across from theirs. Unless the nurses were in the room, most of the machines and devices were kept silent for the most part. Occasionally, one thing or another would beep, and shortly thereafter, a nurse would enter the room to do something with the IV pole, a lead on Hannah, or whatever else needed their attention.

Someone kept the young woman’s wild, red curls brushed, her lips moist, and the faint hint of vanilla in the air matched the body lotion on the rolling stand next to the bed. The one gash that had been on her face, just above the line of her eyebrow, had been fixed by a plastic surgeon who owed Bogdan a favor. One would need to be studying Hannah’s lax features very carefully to see the way the surgeon had stitched the scar along her brow line.

“Do you think she can hear us?” Igor asked.

“She’s not dead.”

“I know that!”

Vaslav cocked a brow at the slight shout, but he tried to give Igor some grace for it all the same. “I meant, she’s shown responses to some stimuli. Or her brain activity suggests she had responses. There’s research that shows her coma state is similar to others who woke up and proclaimed to have been somewhat lucid or conscious at different times. Can she hear us? It’s possible.”

Between the three people who had been in the villa the morning the bomb blew, Hannah had been the one with the least visible injuries. Perhaps because she had closed the front door just in time and that blocked her from the initial blast, or it could have just been circumstance. Right place, right time.

Except nothing about this was very right.

Igor shifted subtly on the chair, flinching as he did so and letting out a short gasp of breath that spoke of his pain. An agony he otherwise kept quiet. “Bogdan ... he, uh—”

“What?”

“He called me.”

Ah.

Vaslav followed Igor’s gaze to the woman on the bed, but this time, his friend’s stare lingered on Hannah’s slightly swollen stomach under the stark white hospital sheet.

“He said an amnio would confirm—probably don’t need it, but anyway, getting me listed as the biological father would go a long way to ending the legal matter with Hannah’s mother.”

“And then what?” Vaslav questioned.

“Pardon?”

“Are you raising the baby? I heard they did an ultrasound last week. Congrats, it’s a girl.”

Igor turned to him, blinking once, and then twice, slowly. “She could wake up before—”

“At this moment, given what we’ve got to go on, let’s say that she doesn’t wake up before they have to take the kid out of her. What are you going to do then?”

“Vaslav, I’m not in the fucking mood today to do this with you, or anyone else. Okay? You’re goddamn lucky that I’m even here in this hospital right now.”

He wouldn’t deny Igor that.

“Let Bogdan do the amnio,” Vaslav said. “We can figure out the rest later.”

Igor flinched at the comment. “It was just fun. Even that last night—that’s why I went there. She took my mind off the rest. I don’t get it.”

“That makes two of us who are currently confused.”