Page 6 of Love What's Left
On the flight here, everyone stripped off their armor and weapons. My brother removed my outer layers down to my black T-shirt and pants for me because I refused to put Sydney down.
If I gave more than a passing thought to what we look like—a phalanx of angry and desperate men surrounding the unconscious, too thin, filthy woman in my arms and storming the hospital—I’d marvel that they don’t falter or run in the other direction.
And, if I hadn’t known Dr. Joshua Granthy since we were both kids, I wouldn’t have caught the widening of his dark eyes, his hard swallow, and the flash of horror and pity at the sight of my wife in my arms.
Eyes hardening to urgent efficiency, Josh transitions in an instant to “physician on call.” “Put her on the gurney.”
His voice is as deep and steady as I’d known it would be.
I keep walking, ignoring the pain in my ribs. Josh and the other staff and security flank us.
“Gabe, what are you doing? Put her on the gurney,” Josh insists.
Sydney moves in my arms, burrowing against me and rasps through cracked lips, her voice barely audible, “No.”
Not unconscious after all. Not wholly, anyway. Tears burn behind my eyes and fill my throat. Relief. Pain. Fear. Grief. An unholy combination of all of them.
I tighten my grip. “I have you, Sydney. I’m here. Lead me to a room. I’m not setting her down.”
Sydney goes lax in my arms once more.
“You can trust me with her,” Josh says.
“Of course, I trust you.” Josh would never allow his dislike of me to affect how he treats a patient. But I can’t put her on that gurney.
We enter the building, and Josh places a stethoscope to Sydney’s chest, listening as he keeps pace beside me. Then, he drapes the device around his shoulders. “All right. My dad’s already on his way to take over her care. Who started the oxygen and IV? Henry?”
“Yes.” Henry passes over a pocketful of vials of blood to a nurse and begins a rundown of Sydney’s condition and his stabilizing treatment in terms I don’t know and never will. Dad says it’s another of his “special interests,” but that’s bullshit. It goes back twenty-two years to two little boys bleeding in an underground mafia stronghold, fighting for our lives. That night. This one. So much the same.
Nikolai Markov did this to her.
I bulldoze my way through the hallways and double doors toward the glass-walled room waiting for us and slam my rage into a mental box to open and examine later.
Josh ushers us inside and tugs the beige curtains closed. “If you won’t lay her down, then sit. I have to examine her.”
I lower myself to the edge of the gurney, my wife fragile and so breakable in my arms. Hands flutter around us. Josh asks his questions, but Sydney doesn’t respond as he pokes and prods her injuries.
I hold her as they take off her dress, the wrap style with the tie closure making removal simple. It used to be my favorite. She wore it the night I proposed to her.
Sydney doesn’t seem to be aware of what’s happening around her, but she refuses to uncurl her fingers from the red sash-style belt.
I slide my left hand, palm up, under hers. “Hold on to me instead.”
The filthy cotton falls as she transfers her grip. I raise her body with my other arm, so the nurse can tug the dress from beneath her and away. The woman passes it to Henry.
My lungs freeze at the sight of Sydney’s rib cage and the bruises in multiple stages of healing, her visible pelvic bones, and concave stomach. Someone covers her with a snap-shoulder hospital gown.
I’ve never seen my wife this pale, not even when she was sick for three days on gas-station sushi she ate solely because I told her not to.
“Stubborn woman,” I choke out. “Be stubborn now. Open your eyes and fight.”
Josh lifts Sydney’s eyelids and speaks in the background. His questions sound like they’re coming from underwater. He has to ask twice before I shake my head.
My brother talks. Explains. We don’t know what drugs are in her system. He suspects benzodiazepines . . . mild dehydration . . . malnutrition . . . signs of concussion . . . toxicology report . . . I hear the conversation between Josh and Henry but absorb very little of it.
Sydney’s battered face is the only thing I see. Her reedy breaths through the hiss of the oxygen tank are the only sounds that penetrate.
Someone replaces Henry’s temporary oxygen setup for one of their own. They hook her up to a different IV solution.
