by Serena Vale
But no, Erik had been nothing short of polite with her. Evie had not always been great at reading people but even she was able to realize a sexual advance when she saw one. And nothing about Erik’s manners or conduct last night had done anything to suggest that was craving something more delightful than the snacks or the drinks or a good conversation. All of his needs, it seemed, had been met in as civil a manner as could be found.
Still, it was a pleasant thought just the same if he would have wanted more.
She sighed deeply and rubbed her forehead. In all likelihood she would never see the mysterious man again. Functions for a hospital were like holidays with family: done only so many times a year and not everyone would turn up for them if they turned up at all. The people that had donated to the hospital had had their fun and their photo opportunities, the hospital had lent out is people as a kind of payment to the people with the money, the hospital had gotten its publicity… everyone was happy. And the odds of seeing anyone from last night were somewhere between a snowball’s chance in hell to a meteorite landing squarely on her head.
“Shit,” she mumbled.
She got up after a few more minutes of depressing thought and dressed herself. She had two days to herself and there were more productive things for her to be doing. She made herself a pot of coffee and resigned herself to do what people usually did on their days off.
She was about to begin making a grocery list when there was a sudden knock at the door. The knock was loud and insistent and it was enough to make her jump a little, ruining the early morning tranquility of her home. The knocking persisted as she drew closer to the door.
“Alright, alright,” she called to the closed portal. “I’m coming! What’s so important that it can’t wait a…” she gasped when she opened the door.
Erik stood there. He was still dressed in the same suit he’d worn the previous evening, but something was out of sorts with him. His eyes were red, he looked a little pale, and he leaned his weight against the doorframe of her apartment like a man who needed a crutch. His clothes and his shoes were lightly soiled with dirt and grime, a far cry from the mysterious man she had conversed with the previous evening.
“Good morning,” Erik said, his voice a little low. “I’m sorry to just drop in like this and unannounced… but I had to see you…”
The words sent bolts of lightning to her heart.
He straightened up and her eyes fell to his left side where his matching hand held a handkerchief to a bloody stain that had ruined his suit and was already permeating the fine fabric of his shirt.
“… I needed to see you badly…” he added, his weight beginning to slump against the frame.
She barely had time to reach out and catch him.
“Oh, my god!” she muttered, panic mixing with confusion that only barely managed to keep her from crying out completely. “I have to get you to the hospital!”
“No hospitals,” he managed to say weakly. “No hospitals… I came to you directly… please… I can trust no one…” his voice faltered as did his legs and he nearly fell face-first upon the hardwood floor of her apartment before slipping into unconsciousness.
Chapter 4
She had managed to haul him up onto the kitchen counter top of her apartment and the scene looked like something from a disaster movie where a person would have had to perform the equivalent of tree-side surgery in a world without power or proper tools or some other such thing.
She had stretched out a couple of towels that made the counter top only slightly more comfortable for him while she worked, rolling up one such towel and placing it under his head in place of a pillow. He lay with only his trousers still upon him, but his chest was bare, allowing her to work.
She had only had a moment to savor the sight of so much of his skin before the feeling of delight had passed and she’d set to work. His shoulders were indeed broad and his torso was very well developed. A patch of hair rested on his chest, along with a few other scars that looked as though they could have been obtained in childhood.
But she’d found enough focus to ignore such things and resorted back to her usual methods and training and performed the work she could with the few items that she did have available and substituted what she could for what she lacked. All together she was able to determine that the damage wasn’t severe and already there were signs that the wound was infected, but she believed that she managed to catch the danger in time as she sewed him back up.
It was hours before he regained his faculties and Evie sat closely by, watching him and keeping a close eye on his injuries. She was bursting with questions and counted it a small mercy that he hadn’t been awake to answer them while she had worked. Answers could always come later, but not if he bled out from his wounds. That had set her priorities straight
When he finally did open his eyes she sat up like a nervous prairie dog in its mound to see him. His eyes were foggy, but he did not seem so out of his senses that he would require treatment that she couldn’t provide. His fatigue was owed to exhaustion and loss of blood and while he was still pale in the face, he seemed strong enough to convince her that he would survive.
“Careful,” she whispered, standing up over him. “You might pull a stitch.”
Erik’s eyes fluttered as he looked down the left side of his body. Whether he approved of her work or not was immaterial. “Bad?” he asked, his voice a little cracked.
“No,” she said with a little relief. “It was a clean entry and exit… it was just a step above being superficial. You’re lucky that it didn’t hit anything major.” She gathered up a cup of water and put it to his lips, helping him drink. “Drink this, I don’t have any I.V.’s and you need to replace some of the fluid you’ve lost.” He accepted her help and only lightly sputtered the water he drank before reclining his head back upon the makeshift pillow she’d provided for him.
“Thank you, Evie.”
She paused; an uncomfortable feeling crept into her gut. “Normally, I would have called an ambulance and had them pick you up. Flattering as it is that you came to me, I have to ask you some questions.”
He nodded. “I thought as much.”
She got right to it. “This is a gunshot wound, Erik. How did you get it? Why didn’t you want to go to a hospital? How long ago did this happen? Why come to me?”
His eyes regained some of their mettle and in them she could see the desire within him to move. “I… I’ve upset you… I’m sorry… I’ll go then…” he tried to sit up.
“Hold it!” she said, stretching her arms out and keeping him from moving. His weight shifted and he nearly fell off of the counter top. “Don’t move! Christ!”
Erik looked around confusedly. She noted his confusion at seeing that he wasn’t in a bed, but on the counter top of her kitchen.
“Sorry… I couldn’t carry you to the bedroom and dragging you any further wasn’t really an option… it could have made your wound worse. And I needed you to be somewhere that I could flush your wound. This was the best that I could do, I’m sorry.”
He observed his wound. She had stitched him up and dressed the injury; twin patches of cotton dressing covered the entry and exit wound on his left side. Each was only an inch and a half apart. Deep enough to be lethal if left untreated, but shallow enough to have avoided major and necessary organs.
“You’re showing some early signs of infection in the wound. I’ll need to get some antibiotics before you’re well enough to move,” she advised.
This news didn’t seem to bother him. “Do you… often keep tools necessary for surgery in your home?” he asked.
“I am a surgeon,” she said, sitting back down on the chair she had dragged over from her dining table. “It pays to be prepared. Although, performing a minor surgery on a man that I met last night wasn’t really on my list of things to do on my day off.”
He nodded apologetically. “Yes… I’m sorry.” He stretched his fingers in and out she recognized the motion well enou
gh: a person realizing that their senses were not as perfect as they should have been. “Pain killers?”
She picked up a bottle of scotch that she had opened that was drained of some of its amber liquid.
He almost smiled at her resourcefulness. “No vodka?”
“It’s all I had,” she said, setting the bottle down. “Too much would have thinned your blood and made the bleeding worse. But you were unconscious anyway… that made it easier.”
He sighed and rested his head flatly on the counter top. “I’m in your debt, Evie. How soon before I can leave?”
“Not for a few days at least, this isn’t the movies. You can’t get patched up from a bullet wound and just walk off the same day it happens. Like I said, you need antibiotics and what I’ve got here simply won’t cut it. And you’re not going anywhere until you get them.”
“Unfortunate. If I do?”
“You develop a very serious infection that could end up killing you.”
He gave a short nod. “Very well… I can be patient… and I do believe there will be no danger for at least a few days.”
The word caught her like a fish hook. “Danger? Why would there be danger, Erik? What the hell is going on?”
He sighed. “I do not wish to trouble you more than I already have, Evie…”
“Well, seeing as how I’ve put you back together and you can’t go anywhere I’d say that I’m in it now, aren’t I?”
He was silent for a moment, but nodded. Whatever it was that had happened to him she knew that he was in it up to his eyeballs. And whatever it was, it wasn’t good considering that he’d gotten shot over the whole thing. And somehow she had the distinct feeling that if he was up to his eyeballs in shit then she was up to her forehead. That gave her some leverage to at least demand some answers.
“Then perhaps you can answer my questions.”
She could see that he understood his position without needing to be compelled into it and that she wasn’t asking a question and given their circumstances he had no choice but to comply. Still, there was something that resembled a thread of resistance within him.
“Evie… you may not wish to know.”
“You came to me, remember? You needed by help because you said you couldn’t trust anyone. If I’m going to take this risk, I have a right to know what you dropped me into, don’t you think?”
He was silent, his eyes glossy with contemplation for a moment before he looked as though he were officially resigned to disclosure. “Very well,” he said with a sigh, “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how I received this injury. But why I got it is far more troubling.” He licked his lips. “I am afraid I have been… betrayed.”
“Betrayed?” she asked quizzically, though that brought more questions to her mind and in no particular order.
“Yes,” Erik said before she could organize her thoughts. “As for why I didn’t go to the hospital… well, the ones who betrayed me know that I escaped and they also know that I was injured. They would be looking for me at the hospitals and would find a way to finish what they started. One of the oldest rules of warfare is that if your enemies know where you are then it is best not to be there when they come.”
“Warfare…?” she asked incredulously.
“It is a long story.” He adjusted himself on the counter to make himself more comfortable, though he didn’t damage her dressing. “As to when this happened… I’m sure you’ve also concluded that this had to have occurred last night. Not long after I left the party… almost as soon as I walked in my front door, as a matter of fact.”
She bit her lip. She didn’t like the picture that was forming in her mind. “Wait a minute… this happened last night? How long have you been out there and bleeding like this, Erik?”
“Ever since I was shot, Evie. I didn’t have access to a car, nor could I travel by means of cab or bus where someone was certain to see me. And a bleeding man would certainly rouse suspicion, don’t you think. So… I walked here.”
“You walked?” she asked, her mind beginning to understand why he looked so pale. If he’d walked a great distance with that hole in his side he would have lost a considerable amount of blood. But considering how badly he hadn’t been bleeding when he’d come to her, he’d done a good job keeping his fluids internal. It also explained why his appearance was a tad more tarnished than she remembered.
“As to why I came to you… well, I knew that you are a doctor. And I know that you did not have to go in to work today. This was the only place I could think of that I knew no one would be looking for me. At least, not for a long time yet… and I do imagine that sooner or later that someone will get around to it. I’m sorry for that.”
That someone toting guns could be coming to her door later if not sooner put a chill down her back and it brought to mind another question. “How did you know where I live?”
He chuckled, like the answer was the punchline to a simple joke, “Phone book.”
She held her breath for a moment. Her heart thrummed inside of her chest, warring with panic and fear until the completeness of his response washed over her. The simplicity of it made her chuckle a little as well. But the brief moment of glee was short lived. She felt another pair of questions rise up inside of her and she wasn’t looking forward to asking either one of them and she felt a degree of certainty that she wasn’t going to like the answers that she got.
“Who shot you?”
Erik looked hesitant for a moment and shut his eyes as he drew in a sharp breath as if the answer would pain him. “My fiancé.”
Evie felt a tickle of fear run down her back and she was barely able to keep enough of her finer senses together to ask her final question. “Erik… why would your fiancé want to shoot you?”
He rolled his head towards her and there was a look of concern on his face. Not concern for himself or fear that he was about to divulge some great secret. But it was the look of a person who held some information that was… dangerous.
But he looked resigned to being committed to a path of complete honesty. He gave a final sigh. “Because my family name is Kyrov… and if I die, she inherits my family’s entire empire.”
She froze, unable to move. The name slammed into her like an invisible fist against her solar plexus, robbing her of the ability to breathe. She smacked her lips, feeling that her throat had suddenly gone dry. For an instant she considered calling Erik’s bluff on this… that he was doing nothing more than lying and playing a cruel joke. But the hole in his side was evidence enough that he was not lying and it was far too much effort to go through for something as simple as a prank.
“Kyrov… as in… the Russian crime family?”
Erik nodded, looking full of what was undeniably regret.
Evie reached for the bottle of scotch, uncapped it, and took a long enthusiastic drink.
Chapter 5
An empty bottle later – and only an hour deeper into the morning – Evie watched her patient. Erik had drifted off to sleep and despite the amount of alcohol in her system Evie knew that she was nowhere near being able to relax enough to get any kind of rest. There was so much adrenaline pumping through her that it all but offset the effect that the booze should have had on her. Even so she felt she could have leapt straight to the moon, the urge to move was so overpowering. That would have been preferable just now, seeing as how she suddenly felt that there was nowhere on Earth that she could have hidden successfully.
A crime family… a goddamned crime family will be after me! She said the words over and over again and still they stung at her as if she were hearing them for the first time. The words didn’t even sit together in the context in which she used them. Evie had always tried to live her life as straightforward as possible. There had been times when she had sweated like a prisoner on death row when she’d received parking tickets. But this… this was something new… something terrible… and her mind could only conjure up terrible conclusions for it.
So much had happened
in the last couple of hours that it felt like her world had been built on the surface of a Rubik’s Cube and someone had just twisted her world in every direction conceivable until all she was left with was a puzzle that she could not see any easy way to solve. With that in mind, now she felt like she really was well and truly in over her head.
She sat staring at the man on her counter top, holding the empty bottle of scotch in her folded arms as if it were a teddy bear. She almost begrudged him the sleep he’d gone into. Medically she knew that he needed the sleep as badly as she needed the time to think. But all she could do, really, was imagine the horrible ways in which this could end for her. And none of them were pleasant.
She had always been prepared to deal with difficult patients; her line of work demanded that. She had come to accept that there would be times where she might have to get physical to restrain a patient or even have to break bad to news to family members who might react violently and at worst she would get written up or receive a reprimand on her record for any actions taken or words spoken. But she had never imagined it becoming any worse than that. Not ever had it occurred to her that something of this nature would happen.
This thing brought everything to a whole new level. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever thought that she would have been a mob doctor. She had done so involuntarily, sure, but nonetheless, here she was. And whether she liked it or not she couldn’t escape the idea that Erik Kyrov would keep her in the back of his mind as a person that he could go to in a time of need.
