Page 78 of The Breath Before Forever

“He was here last night,” Kiril said.

As if he had nothing else to offer—or he knew nothing else to tell her. Knowing Vaslav the way she did, and his strange relationships with the people around him, it wouldn’t even surprise Vera for that to be the case.

Like normal.

Nothing had changed.

Oh, but it had.

“By the way,” Kiril added while Vera buried her shaking hands into the front pocket of her oversized hoodie, “the Hummer’s filled and your keys are by the door. If you want, we could visit Hannah.”

The kid knew the right thing to say.

Vera spun on her heels like a toy top. “Can we?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but after dinner. Vas said I gotta follow the rules, or I can’t stay in the house.”

“What rules?”

“Mira’s.”

Mira had rules now?

Like the kid could read Vera’s sarcastic thoughts in her expression, he explained, “Just for me—and I’m not allowed to miss a meal.”

Ah.

Well ...

Not all change was a bad thing.

“So, dinner first,” Kiril said.

Vera smiled. “That sounds fair.”

*

The hospital made an exception for Vera when she arrived terribly close to the end of visiting hours. As it were, the head nurse recognized Kiril, and even used his first name, so she seemed to understand that Vera being there was a big deal.

Maybe for the woman in the bed, too.

No matter how much Vera had wanted to be in Moscow just to be by Hannah’s bedside over the past months, nothing really prepared her to see her friend unconscious and unmoving in a bed. A shell of herself, really.

Not entirely there.

It was all so strange.

Hannah didn’t look physically injured which made the situation harder to wrap Vera’s mind around when the nurse had urged her to talk before leaving. As if Hannah and Vera had so much to catch up on, and a lack of response shouldn’t stop her from speaking.

Yeah, strange.

After taking the seat next to Hannah’s bed, Vera decided to at least give the nurse’s suggestion a shot. What could it hurt?

“Hey, Hannah,” Vera whispered to her friend.

She didn’t mean to speak so softly, but the second she was alone in her friend’s private hospital room and the doors slid closed, there was no one to see her overwhelmed. It was a lot. From the prone redhead with her eyes taped shut in the bed to the many machines and monitors displaying numbers, graphs, and more things Vera couldn’t understand.

Every shade on all the windows had been drawn. She responds better when the room is dim, explained the midsestra before she left Vera and Hannah alone.