Page 125 of Inevitable Endings
“I do.”
He pauses before heading down the hallway, turns back just once. “He’s lucky to have you,” Hsu says, whether he means medically, or something far more personal, he doesn’t say, and I don’t ask.
Sawyer and Ada return without speaking, each of them careful, practiced in this kind of quiet. They move around the room like ghosts, gentle in their handling of him, though Aslanov doesn’t stir. Together, they lift him from the cot and onto the gurney, positioning his limbs so the IV lines don’t snag. His head rolls to one side with the motion, revealing a smudge of dried blood along the base of his hairline. Ada wipes it away with a cloth before draping a new blanket over his chest.
The hallway lights dim as they wheel him down toward the isolation room. The one and only isolation room this clinic has. I follow behind in silence, my footsteps out of sync with theirs. He’s being moved like something fragile now, as if whatever fury had cracked open inside him earlier might shatter again at the wrong touch.
They reach the room; windowless, muted, stripped of any possible trigger. The walls are a pale grey, almost blue in the right light. No metal edges, no reflections. Just padded walls and a single cot bolted to the floor.
They transfer him carefully, settling him against the mattress.
“I need a moment,” I say, quietly.
Sawyer nods without question. Ada hesitates just a breath longer, her eyes flicking between me and the bed.
Then she steps forward, gives my arm a gentle squeeze. We lock eyes and she hands over the Velcro restraints.
They leave, the door shutting with a soft mechanical click.
I exhale for the first time in what feels like minutes.
He lies there, still, unmoving, but twitching now and then. A flinch in his fingers. A pulse under the skin of his jaw. He’s not awake, not really, but something inside him is always alert.
This isn’t how I imagined seeing him again.
I crouch beside the bed, and as gently as I can, begin fastening them.
One wrist. Then the other. His fingers curl inward reflexively, like he’s reaching for something that isn’t there.
His legs shift as I work; small, sharp kicks that never quite make contact. I fasten the ankle restraints last, heart pounding in my chest like it wants to break free of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, not knowing if I’m saying it to him or to myself.
The restraints are soft. Humane. But that’ll make no difference to him.
He’s alive. But at what cost?
What have they done to him?
When it’s over, I sit on the edge of the bed and just breathe. The silence feels like a scream.
My eyes fall to the collar of his shirt, loose and slightly pulled to the side. There, just above the fabric, etched into the pale stretch of his chest, I see it again.
My initials.
Ink buried into skin.
He thought of me.
Even when everything else was taken, even when they tried to break every piece of him, he held onto that.
To me.
Just like I have held onto him.
He’s here. But nothere.His body is with me, breathing, but where is he?
I waited so long for this moment. Prayed for it. Bargained for it in the dark, with whatever was listening. Just let him be alive. Just let him come back.
