Page 83 of Even Robots Die
“The doctor is already here. The bullets have been removed, and the bleeding has been stopped. I think he gave her one of those bandages that should seal her skin in under an hour. From what I heard, she’s resting now. She lost a lot of blood and hasn’t regained consciousness. But the doctor was confident that she would wake up before or around the time the bullet wounds would be closed,” he tells me and then looks at his holo. “According to him, she should be awake in fifty-one minutes at the latest.”
I sit on the ground against the wall, right next to the door, my knees pulled up and my arms resting on them. I can’t go in with the smell of her blood, but I don’t plan on moving from here until she’s finally awake.
“What are you going to do?” Charles asks me as he settles next to me.
It echoes his question about telling her, but at least it’s a more general question.
“I don’t know yet.”
Silence follows my words and I think he’s going to leave it at that, but after a few minutes he speaks without turning his face in my direction.
“You should tell her. She might surprise you.”
“Do you know something that I don’t?” I ask him, and I don’t miss how my temper seems to rise a bit.
“No. It’s just an intuition. A gut feeling if you prefer. But more than that, she needs to know that she doesn’t have another month of work in Blois or here once she’s done fixing your killing urges.”
He pauses.
“Unless you’re planning on paying her to do a job that doesn’t need to be done?”
I don’t miss the hint of amusement in his tone.
The old spy thinks I won’t tell her just to keep her close for a longer time.
I’ve entertained the idea—she needs the money and I’m not ready to part with her just yet—but am I ready to blatantly lie to her just so I don’t have to let her go?
“What could go wrong if I am?” I ask out loud, even if it’s more for myself than for Charles.
He answers all the same.
“Other than she hates you and will never trust you again? I guess nothing.”
“Ah-ha,” I tell him sarcastically.
“But that’s the trick,” he adds. “You’re alright with her being mad at you. You even relish the thought of it. But you don’t want her to hate you. You want her to trust you enough so that the next time she has an episode like yesterday, she will let you take care of her. You want to be the one she turns to for comfort. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that you feel much more for her than you let on, that you feel much more for her than what you want to acknowledge. And if that’s the case, you can’t cage her. If you feel even a shred of what I believe you could feel for her, you’ll let her go.”
My first instinct is to lash out at what Charles just said, even though I know he’s right. Everything inside of me is rebelling at the idea that I would have to let her go.
“Did you think about the fact that she might want to stay if you give her the choice?” Charles asks as if he could feel what was churning inside of me. “You will never know if you don’t give her the option to choose.”
It’s in moments like this that I’m reminded that Charles is old, even in shifter terms. He’s seen a lot, heard a lot, and I shouldn’t discard the advice he’s giving me so freely.
Charles doesn’t wait for me to answer. He stands and then looks down at me.
“You should rest,” he tells me before he walks away.
“Thanks for the therapy,” I mumble, even though I know he will hear it. If there is someone that can hear anything, it’s him.
“I’ll send you my bill,” he says in a booming voice as he walks down the stairs and leaves me with my thoughts.
It’s still a mess in my mind, but I will only let it be like this until she wakes up.
After that, things are going to change.
47
Florentine
