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VERA
Alexei Orlov comes back into my life shirtless, bleeding, and still indecently beautiful enough to make me hate him for it.
I don’t know it’s him when the elevator doors open. At first, he’s only another body on a gurney, surrounded by men carrying guns inside a hospital as if the law has agreed to wait outside. One of them shoulders a nurse away from the doors. Another orders security to clear the trauma floor, and our guards obey so quickly, I decide I’ll be furious about it later.
For now, the patient is losing blood faster than we can pour it into him.
“Three gunshot wounds,” the paramedic says as we run beside the gurney. “Chest, upper abdomen, upper left thigh. Pressure was ninety by sixty. He lost pulses once. We got him back.”
“Intubated?” I ask.
“On scene.”
“Blood type?”
“Unknown.”
“Then hang O negative and activate massive transfusion.” I yank on gloves as Marina cuts through what’s left of his shirt. “Call surgery. Tell them I need a theater now, not after someone finishes making a phone call.”
A man in a black coat catches my arm. I stop because he has the grip of someone who has broken bones before and won’t mind doing it again. He’s broad, shaved close at the sides, and carrying a pistol beneath his coat. His expression says he expects obedience from everyone who still enjoys breathing.
“You save him,” he declares, glaring at me.
I look at his hand until he releases me. “I was going to, but now I’m tempted to take a coffee break.”
His fingers flex once, and Marina goes very still beside the gurney. I step closer and point at the red line painted across the floor. “Cross that again, and I’ll have you removed.”
The man’s lips curl into an unpleasant smirk. “You don’t have anyone here who can remove me.”
“I don’t need anyone to remove you. This is my trauma bay, and you leave when I say you leave.”
For one second, his expression turns murderous. Then the patient’s blood pressure alarm starts screaming, and I snap, “Move.”
Everyone does.
The gurney swings beneath the trauma lights. I climb onto the step beside it, press gauze into the chest wound, and order another unit. Blood floods between my fingers, warm enough to make the rest of the night disappear.
Bodies fail in patterns. Pressure drops. Organs tear. Hearts struggle until someone gives them a reason not to stop.
The patient’s face is streaked in blood, partly hidden by tape and the breathing tube. Dark hair. Hard cheekbones. Scruff along a mouth I know before I let myself know it.
My hands keep working even as my thoughts go blank. Marina says my name, but I’m wiping blood from his brow, and for one brutal second I feel hotel sheets beneath my palms. His black suit jacket was tossed over a chair. His mouth was at my throat. His hand closed around my hip while he asked, very quietly, if I wanted him to stop.
I hadn’t.
I’d wanted him until wanting became reckless, and by morning, he was gone. Now Alexei Orlov is dying beneath my hands, and the man who doesn’t know he has a son may never find out.
“Doctor?” Marina tries again.
I look at the monitor. Pressure sixty systolic. Heart rate one-fifty. Oxygen dropping. “He’s bleeding into the chest. Get the thoracotomy tray ready. Where’s my theater?”
“Two minutes.”
“He doesn’t have two minutes.”
I drive the needle into his chest and release trapped pressure. Blood follows, too much of it, and one of the armed men steps through the doors.
