Page 254 of Mile High Ruin

“Exactly,” I say.

Mila laughs once, then cries, and I cry too because apparently, I’m only a leaking human being now.

Daniel clears his throat from the doorway. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

I look past Mila at him. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

He glances at Vadim. “That makes two of us.”

Vadim says nothing.

Mila turns to her brother. “I came back on my own.”

“I know.”

“No one forced me.”

“I know.”

“Daniel didn’t bring me because you threatened him.”

Vadim looks at Daniel, who goes very still.

“No,” Vadim says. “He came despite knowing I might.”

Daniel swallows. “That was discussed.”

“With who?” I ask.

“With myself,” Daniel says.

Mila reaches for his hand, and Vadim sees it.

For a few seconds, no one speaks.

Then Vadim says, “You should both see Leonid.”

Mila looks relieved enough that I realize she expected something worse. Daniel looks like he expected death and has been offered a tour instead. When they go to the NICU, Mila cries at the incubator, and Daniel, trying to help, says Leonid is ugly in the way all newborns are ugly.

Vadim turns his head very slowly.

Daniel immediately says, “That came out wrong.”

“It did,” Vadim says.

Mila elbows Daniel hard enough to make him wince.

I laugh for the first time without it turning into tears.

The weeks after that are not easy, but they are better.

Leonid gains weight slowly. His breathing improves. The feeding tube comes out. Then one monitor goes. Then another. Every change feels enormous because for a while our lives are reduced to numbers, grams, feeds, temperature, oxygen, and whether the doctors look pleased when they approach us.

Vadim learns to change diapers with the concentration of a man defusing an explosive. He pretends not to be nervous the first time a nurse places Leonid against his bare chest for skin-to-skin, but he sits so still that I have to tell him babies don’t break because someone breathes near them.

“I know that,” he says.

“You look like you don’t.”