I chew my lip. Something’s been worrying me. Maybe I won’t wake up from the anesthetic. Maybe this will be my last time with him. I catch his hand. I want to tell him I love him. He should know. He looks at me expectantly, but the words that come out of my mouth are totally different. “Do you think you’ll get bored of eating me one day?”
“I don’t bore easily. I’ve been drinking milk since I was a baby and I still love it,” he says with a wink.
I smile nervously. I really want to tell him I love him. Just in case I don’t wake up, but before I can pick up the courage, there is a knock on the door.
Jack opens the door and a nurse bustles in.
“Oh, doctor,” she says in a flustered voice.
He smiles cheekily at her. “Good morning, Nurse.”
He kisses me on the head. “I’ll be back to see you before they take you down to the anesthetist.”
While the nurse is taking my blood pressure, Lena comes in. I smile broadly at her. She has never been the same since the afternoon I showed her my back. She howled when she saw it, and the pitiful sound reminded me of our mother. The way she wailed when she lost her baby. That is the only time she wept like that, but it’s never left my mind. She never even cried like that when my father broke her limbs, or that time he plunged her hand in boiling water.
I held Lena, but I couldn’t stop her from crying. I learned that day that no matter how strong she seems we are both irreparably damaged, and all it requires is a trigger to expose that incurable wound. There was nothing I could say or do that would comfort her. When she began to call out to our dead brother, I became frightened. I called Guy. He had gone to Manchester for a meeting. He dropped everything and flew back immediately. Only when she was in his arms did she quieten down. Ever since that day she has become even more protective over me.
“Are you ready?” she asks with a gentle smile.
I grin back. “Yes.”
She walks up to the bed. “Good. It’ll go well. Jack’s one of the best.”
At that moment I get emotional and my eyes flood with tears. She entwines her fingers with mine and switches to Russian. “Oh, darling. Don’t cry. You’ll be fine. I’ll be waiting right here for you.”
I swallow hard and nod.
She takes a tissue out of her purse and dries my eyes. “I’m so proud of you. You’ve come so far. You’re the bravest person I know.”
“I’m not brave. I couldn’t have done any of it without you and Guy.”
She shakes her head. “We gave you the knife. You cut the ropes all by yourself. Every single one. You are free now. Fly the way you were always meant to.”
I grasp her hand and kiss it.
“You should be leaving now, Ma’am,” the nurse says.
Lena lays both her hands on my cheeks and kisses me gently on the forehead. “I’ll be waiting outside. All will be well.”
I watch her leave. A male nurse comes in and starts wheeling me down the corridor. At a station full of equipment Jack appears. He already has his face mask on and his eyes sparkle like the bluest, brightest stones.
“Just relax, Princess,” he says.
A mask is put over my face and the anesthetist asks me to count backwards. I don’t count, I stare into Jack’s eyes and tell him with my eyes that I love him … until blackness comes.
When I wake up, my mouth is dry and I am lying on my front with my cheek resting on the pillow. The first thing my searching eyes see is Jack sitting on a chair nearby, but he is not looking at me. He is staring out of the window into the night, his expression far away. For a few seconds I stare at him in shock. This is surely not the face of a happy man. I thought he was happy with me. Then as if he feels my scrutiny he turns towards me and his face changes instantly. He smiles.
“Hey,” he whispers.
I watch him get up and come to me. “Your surgery went well and I think you’ll be really happy with the result.”
He sounds like a doctor talking to his patient. Then he strokes my hair and he becomes my Jack again. I ask for water. He gives it to me and watches me intently while I drink it.
Though I smile and answer all his questions about how I feel, that faraway, unhappy expression I saw on his face when he thought no one was looking remains at the back of my mind, fraying the edges of my happiness.
Thirty
Jack
As a patient walks out of my consulting room, Karen buzzes me to say that Lena is at Reception waiting to see me.
“Send her in,” I tell her, rubbing the back of my neck. I shouldn’t be here, but I’ve had to work through my backlog. The people I’ve messed around because I can’t get to work in time in the mornings anymore.
Lena comes to sit in front of me. She puts her purse on my table and smiles at me.
I lean back in my chair and look at her curiously. “What’s up, Lena?”
“First of all I want to thank you for what you did for Sofia. I’m so grateful to you.”
That’s not why she’s really here. “You don’t have to thank me, Lena. Anybody in my shoes would have done the same.”
She shifts in her chair. “I don’t just mean the surgery. You’ve made her happy.”
I nod. I know I’ve made Sofia happy, but she’s made me happy too. Very happy. “The emotion is mutual,” I say softly.
She smiles again. “You know how you and Sofia agreed that for the next week she’s going to stay at your place and you were going to take care of her?”
I watch her without expression. “Yeah?”
“You still have to work during the daytime, right?”
“Uh … huh.”
“Who will watch her then?”
“I’m taking tomorrow off to be with her, but once her bandages are removed she will be able to move around and do almost everything for herself. Besides, I’ll only be thirty minutes away. If she needs anything at all she only has to call me.”
She clears her throat. “Here is what I was thinking. I was thinking that you should move into our apartment for the next couple of weeks. This way I can stay with her during the day, and when you come back I can go back to Cheshire and you can take over her care.”
I stare at her, surprised. I have to admit, never in my life, have I come across such dedication and love between two sisters. One part of me resents having to share even an ounce of Sofia, and another can’t help but be in awe of such a rare and beautiful phenomenon.
“There’s no need for that. You’re welcome to come and stay with her at my place during the day,” I offer.
“I have my baby and all her things are at the apartment, but I will come to yours if you’d rather not stay in our place. You can both move into our room since it is much bigger and has an en-suite. It’ll be good for you too. Going to work will be more convenient. You’ll shave ten minutes off your travelling time,” she says persuasively.
I rub my chin reflectively. “What does your husband think of this … arrangement?”
She smiles. “Actually, it was his idea. I was obsessing about how to sort out the problem last night, and he suggested it.”
My eyebrows rise. The last time Guy and I met he wasn’t too impressed with me. In fact, I distinctively remember he was sipping hard on the haterade.
“So, are you okay with the idea?” she asks.
I shrug. “Sure. I could move in for a week.”
She exhales with relief. “Thank you, Jack. I am so glad. In ordinary circumstances I would have preferred to have taken her back to Cheshire with me, but since I honestly believe that she will heal faster with you, I’m happy to come down every day and care for her.”
I spend the first night in the hospital with Sofia. After she falls asleep I go down the corridor, get myself a lousy coffee from the vending machine, and sit down on one of the couches. It is late and there is no one around. It’s an odd feeling to be in the hospital at this time. I look out of the glass door and see people walking past.
The nurse who had come t
o prep Sofia passes the front desk, sees me, and walks towards me.
“That was a nasty thing on her back. What bastard did that to her?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I’d kill him if I saw him,” she mutters angrily. “It’s just not right that he should be walking about alive and well. The idea that a man could do that to a woman and walk about free makes me so angry,” she says.
I say nothing. I can’t. I’m holding it all back by the skin of my teeth. She has no idea how I feel about that monster. I wouldn’t just kill him. I’d flay him alive and make him suffer for days.
“Anyway, that’s me done for the night. I’ve got my daughter flying in from Germany so we’re going out.” She looks happy.
“Have a great time,” I say.
She moves away and I stare into my coffee. It’s Africa all over again. There was not a thing I could do about anything there either. In the end shit happened and I was hired to put a plaster over their rotting cancers. I feel like going out getting totally plastered and smashing something. That always helped in the past, but I know it won’t help tonight. Nothing will help.
I lift my head and look out of the glass walls. The sky is velvety and full of stars. If there is a God out there, then let that sadistic beast find his retribution.
Deliberately I pick up my coffee and drink it, trash the cup, and go back to Sofia’s room.
I open the door and find her awake.
“I thought you’d gone home,” she says.
“Not without you, Princess. I ain’t going nowhere without you.”
Thirty-one
Sofia
The technique Jack used is called a scar revision with geometric line closure. I have been prescribed painkillers, but I think I am too happy to feel any real pain so I don’t take them.
Forty-eight hours after my operation Jack takes the bandages off in his bathroom.
“Hmmm …” he says.
“What does it look like?” I ask anxiously.
Jack positions me in front of the bathroom mirror. “Close your eyes.”
With bated breath I follow his instruction.
“Go on and open your eyes now.”
I obey, and Jack is holding another mirror behind me. I look into it and inhale sharply. Even though my wounds are still very swollen and raw the ugliness is gone! All the thickened and tethered scars, the snarled skin, and the angry red and brown valleys have been taken away. All that is left is the unharmed skin. I cover my mouth with my hands and meet his gaze in the mirror.
“Like it?” he asks.
I spin around, and cupping his face between my palms, kiss him. For a long time I simply lose myself in our kiss, the evergreen sensation of his lips, the taste of him, the smell of him, the feel of my man. Then I pull my face away.
“It looks … amazing,” I whisper into his mouth.
He holds me a few inches away from him. “It’s not finished yet. This is only the beginning. In two weeks you will start wearing silicone sheets. Then, when all your incisions are well healed in about four weeks, I will increase the volume of whatever few depressions are left with fat transfers under the tissue. After that I’ll resurface the remaining scars with a series of Fraxel laser restructuring.”
I smile at him.
“Just when you don’t think it can’t get any better you will have microdermabrasion treatment. After that the scars will be so fine you’ll have to look really hard to see them.”
I look up at him in awe. He is my savior, my protector, my all.
He shakes his head. “How can you look so sweet after everything you have been through? It’s simply incredible that you are so untouched by the evil and cruelty you have been forced to live with,” he marvels.
I look deep into his beautiful eyes. “Thank you.”
“Thank me properly,” he whispers back.
My breathing catches. “How?”
He hooks his fingers into my panties and pulls them down my thighs. They pool around my feet. He grabs my ass and lifts me up. I curl my legs around his waist, pressing my wet heat into his abdomen. There is nothing separating us except his thin shirt. I lift it up. Now there is just my open naked sex rubbing slowly and deliberately on his skin. It’s like I’m leaving my scent on him. Marking him as mine.
His eyes darken with crazy need as he carries me to the countertop next to the sink and sets me down.
“Open up, my beauty,” he orders, his voice husky.
I open my legs wide. Gazing into my eyes he slips two fingers into me and curling them expertly stokes my inner walls. I whimper as he kneels between my thighs. I feel his hot breath on my open pussy before his mouth clamps down on my clit and he starts sucking greedily. Always as if he is starving. As if he can never get enough.
I look down and his other hand is working between his own legs, his movements rough and frenzied. One of his favorite things is tasting me as he jerks off. I’ve never had a man who loved my taste so much. I open my legs even wider to give him more access, and he immediately growls with lust and satisfaction.
Our eyes lock.
The orgasm hits me hard and fast.
One moment I’m nearly there and waiting to ride the wave, and the next, my eyes are rolling to the back of my head. I’m screaming like a banshee and gushing all over his hand, his mouth, and his chin. I still find it embarrassing and dirty that he drinks my juices, but it is also indescribably sexy.
With his fingers still buried inside me he stands. Pulling his fingers out he feeds all eight inches of his big, hot, girth into me, filling me to the brim. My head drops back and I moan with pleasure.
“This. Is. How. You. Thank. Me,” he grunts as he thrusts in and out of my clenched muscles.
“Harder,” I pant with every hard slam.
He shuts me up by crashing his mouth against mine, pushing his tongue into it and making me suck it. The gesture is at once aggressive, dominating and completely possessive. As he picks up speed his mouth separates from mine.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he says.
“I’m yours,” I reply.
With a hoarse sound, he spills his hot seed inside me.
“Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real,” I tell him.
“I have the same damn problem,” he mutters.
Smiling, I lean forward and lie on his chest. His big arms come around my waist and his cock twitches deliciously inside me.
Thirty-two
Sofia
That Thursday Lena takes my class for me. When I ask her how it went she says that Lori came, but when she saw her, she immediately turned around and ran out of the room. Lena also says that she looked frightened and pale.
I wonder what is wrong, but there is absolutely nothing I can do except wait for my next class and hope she will attend. In the meantime, my life is a big bowl of the reddest, ripest, sweetest cherries. It is food, laughter, fun, and sex. Oh, my God, the sex.
Even though I am still lightly bandaged it never stops Jack. The only position we don’t attempt is with me on my back, otherwise, there is no limit to his creativity. I find myself sitting up with my legs open very often. On beds, tables, chairs, at the end of the bath. Oh, and sometimes he’ll make me stand and hook a leg over his shoulder while he helps himself. Like I said, we are limited only by his creativity.
Usually, Lena will arrive by ten and stay until he comes back home. We talk, we read, we play with Irina, we go for short walks. The time passes quickly and Thursday comes around. I persuade Jack and Lena that I feel well enough to take my music class, but it’s not the class I care about. Its Lori.
I feel as if I must see her. After all the years I spent living off my wits, my instinct has been honed and is very strong. I know that something is wrong. I feel it in my bones. We go to the center and I wait for her in my classroom. The other girls arrive on time, but Lori does not. Disappointed, I start the class without her. We are almost finished when she bursts though the door. She is brea
thing hard and her eyes are wild with terror.
“What is it?” I ask standing up from the piano stool.
She rushes up to me and says urgently, “Please help me, Sofia. My mother is very ill. I’m afraid she might be dying.”
I take her hand. “Take me to her.” She starts pulling me to the door. I know I am not supposed to run and I can feel the strain on my wounds, but it can’t be helped. I know this is an emergency. We run down the corridor and open the door that leads to the reception. Jack and Lena are waiting for me there.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jack cautions. He opens his hands in a gesture that is meant to convey what the fuck are you doing.
“Lori’s mother is very ill. We have to help her,” I tell them.
He holds his hands up. “Just calm down everybody.” He looks at Lori. “What’s going on?”
“Mama has been ill for two weeks, but now she’s really bad.”
“Don’t worry, Lori. We’ll help your mother.” He looks up at me. “I’ll go. You stay here with your sister.”
Immediately I feel Lori squeeze my hand. I look down at her and she is begging me with her eyes to go with her.
I look at Jack. “I want to come.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Please,” I beg.
“All right,” he says. “But no running.”
“Let Robert drive you. This way if you need to take her mother to hospital, Robert can help move her, and he can just drop you off at the entrance of A&E. You don’t have to park.”
“Good thinking, Lena. Thanks,” Jack says.
We walk quickly to the car and drive to her house. She lives in one of the four high rise apartments behind Kids Rule. As we walk towards the graffiti sprayed entrance, we see Andrew, one of the boys who comes to the center, standing by the heavy door. He smiles at us, but looks embarrassed.
I wonder why until I notice the older boys standing beside him. I can tell straight away they are small time drug dealers. I’d know those shifty eyes and stance from a mile away. For years I saw them hanging around the brothels.
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