Page 47 of Knocked-up Bratva Bride
From the reflection on the window, I saw the doctor give a brief nod and leave, leaving me alone again with the beeping machines. The only heartbeat I could hear was from my daughter now.
I turned slowly to the bed. Katya looked like a ghost of herself, pale and impossibly still beneath the hospital sheets. Tubes curled around her like ivy; life floated by her, and she was trapped in this motionless shell.
I stepped forward, slowly, until I was close enough to touch her, but my hands stayed at my sides.
“We don’t talk much. Fuck.Idon’t talk much. I believe in actions speaking louder than words, but I guess I’m talking now. Before your mother, I never planned to be a father. Didn’t fucking know how. Didn’t fucking want to.”
My voice cracked. I cleared it, forced it back into steel.
“But you…my little bunny.Moy Zakya. You popped up and made it impossible not to care. You were so fucking loud. And so stubborn. God, you hated me some days. You still do. And I deserve it. All of it.”
A beat passed.
This was almost ridiculous. I was supposed to be the man who could get anything done at any time. And now all I could do was stand guard beside a girl I couldn’t fix.
A girl who held my heart without ever asking for it. Without even knowing how capable I was of giving it.
I, the man with a hundred enemies and no regrets, reached out and took my daughter’s hand in mine. “Fucking wake up, Katya. We Yezhovs are soldiers from our mother’s wombs. We fucking fight, dammit. You have to fucking fight through, you hear me? Because…I…I’m not sure I’m ready to do life without your bratty personality in it.”
***
I took a stroll down the hallway with a cup of coffee Roman had distributed to those of us waiting in the hospital, and a purple knapsack. Further steps away, I spotted Elena on a bench in the waiting area, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes seemed to be focused on another world, far away from Earth. They were red, puffy, and distant.
When I drew closer, she got startled and flinched, scooted inches away when I sat beside her, and avoided eye contact, though I stared directly at her face.
For a few minutes, we sat together in heavy silence, watching nurses in scrubs hurry past, and other families wait for their loved ones.
Elena fiddled with the Styrofoam cup in her grip and wiggled her toes through her sandals.
“Are you cold?”
Her toes stopped wiggling, but her fingers kept on working the cup. She eyed my thin grey cardigan and jeans and scoffed. “You are the one without a blanket or a coat,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“I lived in Moscow.” I turned away from her, lifting the cup to my lips. “Dwelling in and with the cold is my second nature.”
“Well, that’s…interesting. I’m assuming Moscow is where you went when she said you left—” She cleared her throat, catching herself quickly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about that.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
They talked about everything, too. If there was one other person who knew how much my daughter resented me, it was Elena.
She nibbled on her lips. “How is she now? Has the doctor said anything?”
“Yes. She’s stable and out of immediate danger. As for the coma, they aren’t sure when she willchoose to come back to us.”
I still wanted to shove those words back into the doctor’s mouth.
After emptying the cup, I crushed it and tossed it into the wastebasket beside the bench, then started picking through the knapsack.
Earlier, a nurse had handed over a few of Katya’s things that could be salvaged from the accident: her knapsack and a music sheet notebook she’d been holding. The phone was almost damaged beyond recognition, but the car was gone—nothing but a scrunched up fucking mess.
Elena’s gaze followed my hands as I flipped through the music sheet notebook, and I heard her take in a sharp breath.
“I gave that to her….” She exhaled shakily. “Yesterday. I saw it on eBay and thought, ‘Hey, Katya will love this.’ Turns out she did love it, and I felt over the moon when she called to tell me about the Starlings record label offer, because then, she’d have an actual music sheet to start composing.”
I closed the book and stuffed it back into the knapsack, sitting up straighter. “I’m presuming you two have the best relationship. She gets a huge deal like that, and you’re the first person she calls.”
Her chuckle was sad. “We aren’t best friends for nothing.”
