Page 108 of Doctored Vows

The reminder has me opening my eyes too quickly for someone with no lubricant in their sockets. They burn from the width of their opening, not to mention my shock at the unknown location I am waking in.

I’m cold because I am outside, and the only thing protecting me from the elements is my surgical scrubs.

When I try to gather my bases, the lady seated a few spots up from me holds her purse close to her body while focusing on a bus approaching the horizon. She shakes like a leaf. She isn’t cold. My presence is scaring her.

I understand why when I catch sight of my reflection in the reflective material of the bus shelter. I look like a wreck. My hair is knotted, my face is covered with dirty stains, and my scrubs have seen better days.

“I… ah…” I clutch my head. It hurts to talk, but I push through the pain. “I need help.” When she tugs her purse in tighter, still scared, I plead, “Please. I don’t know where I am or how I got here…” I scan the unknown location. Even in the darkness of the night, its unkempt state can’t be concealed. Several homeless line the streets, along with a heap of trash and cardboard beds. “Am I still in Myasnikov?”

Her nod is brief, but it offers me immense relief.

“My husband…” I take a break to lube my throat with spit, hopeful some wetness will ease my words out through the burn scalding my veins. “He will be… looking for me. Do you have a phone I could borrow”—another painful breath separates my words—“to call him?”

“No. I don’t have anything. No phone. No money. No jewelry. I have nothing.”

As she returns her eyes to the bus, willing it to hurry up, the moon breaks through a stormy cloud. I squint when its bright rays add to the pounding of my skull.

“What time is it?”

When I shield my eyes from the bus headlights, the stranger replies, “A l-little after two.”

“In the morning?”

Some of the fear she is experiencing trickles through my veins when she nods.

“I… ah… I…”

After drinking in the rock on my ring finger, then the emblem of Myasnikov Private Hospital on my scrubs, she scoots closer. My fear that I’m about to be jumped is unfounded when she whispers, “I-I can pay for your bus fare, but that’s all I can offer you. I don’t have any money. I just have a bus card.”

After again scanning the street and noticing the stranger’s eyes aren’t the only pair gawking at me, I say, “Okay. Thank you.”

It takes a mammoth effort to stand, so there’s no way I will make it onto the bus without the stranger’s help. Mercifully, she comprehends my struggles without me needing to speak. After banding her arms around my back, she hoists me to her side before she guides my ginger walk to the stationary bus.

“Mara, what did I tell you last time? No more druggies.”

The lady placing me onto a cracked vinyl seat pffts the driver before scanning a transport card on the electronic scanner by the door twice.

“She’s a paying customer,” she replies to him in Russian. “That’s all you need to worry about.”

She’s assuring him I am fine, but she still sits a couple of spots back from me.

Her trust is so low, when the driver peers at her in the mirror he uses to keep passengers in line several stops later, she pretends she can’t feel the curiosity bouncing off him.

She doesn’t move, speak, or acknowledge anyone until the Myasnikov Private Hospital stop has her reaching for the yank cord to tell the driver I want to get off at the next stop.

My head is still woozy, and my legs are unstable, but I make it to the front of the bus unaided.

“Thank you,” I whisper to the guardian angel still watching over me.

Mara dips her chin before she shifts her focus to the window like I never said anything.

I barely stumble down the street two steps before I cross someone I know.

Eva sighs like I’m far more presentable than I feel before she cranks her neck to someone behind her. “Get Maksim.”

In less than a nanosecond, an SUV pulls into the alleyway next to us, and Maksim races out. Sheer panic is scoured between his brows, and he looks exhausted.

I more collapse into his arms than throw myself into them, and then I bury my head into his pecs to drown out the frantic situation occurring around me.

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