Chapter 3: The Doctor's Visit
The knock at the suite door was too soft, too polite. Andrey answered, filling the frame, and a thin man in a worn suit slipped past him, clutching a leather bag. He had spectacles and a nervous habit of touching his throat.
“The patient?” he asked, his voice reedy.
Anya was still in the chair by the fire, swimming in Alexsi’s oversized grey sweater, her legs tucked under her. She’d managed to change, but the process had left her trembling. When she saw the bag, the professional spectacles, her breath hitched. Her eyes, clearing slightly from the chemical fog but now clouded with raw fear, locked onto Alexsi.
“Don’t go.” The words were a paper-thin whisper, but they sliced through the room. “Please. Don’t leave me with him.”
Alexsi felt something cold solidify in his chest. This wasn’t just shyness. This was a deep, animal terror of men with medical bags. What the hell had doctors done to her before? In the name of preparation? Examination? His mind conjured images he instantly forced away, but the revulsion remained.
“Of course I’ll stay,” he said, his voice steady for her benefit. He walked to the arm of her chair and perched there, a solid barrier between her and the physician. He didn’t touch her, but he let his hand rest on the carved wood near her shoulder, an anchor point.
The doctor, introduced only as Pavel, approached cautiously. “I just need to check your vitals, assess the… chemical influence. Your feet.”
Anya stared straight ahead, her body rigid. As Pavel knelt, she flinched when his shadow fell over her. He took her pulse, frowned, checked her pupils with a small light. “They kept her heavily sedated. Tramadol, perhaps, mixed with something else. A withdrawal regimen is advisable. I have a mild tranquilizer to help her sleep through the worst of the shakes.”
He produced a small bottle of pills. Anya’s gaze tracked them like a predator. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“She’ll take them if she needs them,” Alexsi said, a dismissal in his tone. He took the bottle and set it on the side table.
The examination continued, clinical and swift. Pavel re-dressed her feet with proper bandages from his bag. He asked her simple questions—her name, the date—and her answers were slow, halting. “I… I forget sometimes,” she whispered, shame coloring her cheeks. “The words… they slide away.”
“A common effect,” Pavel murmured, but the excuse sounded pathetic.
When he was done, he packed his bag quickly, eager to be gone from the tense atmosphere. Andrey saw him out. In the flurry of zipping leather and shrugged-on coats, Anya’s hand, quick as a bird, darted to the bag left momentarily open on the floor. Her fingers closed around a small, unlabeled vial. She palmed it, tucking her fist against her stomach.
Alexsi missed it. He was watching the door close, his mind a riot of anger and pity. He should have asked. The thought slammed into him belatedly, a stupid, obvious oversight. He’d been focused on her immediate safety, on the visible wounds. He hadn’t considered the violations that might not show on the skin. The possibility that she might already be carrying a consequence. The system that delivered her would not have been careful. He felt sick. He should have given her the option, the knowledge that she had a choice. He just hadn’t thought.
He turned back to her. “Can you eat something? The soup is here.”
She nodded, but her eyes were distant, calculating. She ate a few spoonfuls of the broth, her movements automatic. When Andrey stepped into the hallway to have a smoke and Alexsi turned to the window, staring blindly at the rain-slicked city, she uncapped the vial. Two small pills. She dry-swallowed them, her face contorting at the bitterness.
The first cramp hit twenty minutes later. A deep, grinding twist low in her belly. She gasped, folding over in the chair.
“Anya?” Alexsi was beside her instantly.
“I’m… fine,” she managed, but her skin was turning a clammy grey.
Then the nausea rose, unstoppable. She stumbled toward the bathroom, one hand on the wall. He followed, hovering. She made it to the toilet before she vomited, a violent, hollow retching that brought up only the thin broth. She shuddered, gasping. Another cramp, sharper this time. She cried out, a short, sharp sound she tried to stifle.
“What’s happening?” Alexsi’s voice was tight with alarm. He thought of the vial she’d taken. Poison? Had she tried to kill herself rather than stay with him? The idea was a physical blow. “What did you take?”
She shook her head, tears mixing with sweat on her face. She couldn’t speak. The waves came faster—cramping, vomiting, a hot, alarming rush between her legs. She was bleeding. He saw it spotting the white tiles.
“Andrey!” Alexsi barked.
Andrey was already in the doorway, taking in the scene with a soldier’s swift assessment. “The doctor’s pills?”
“She took something else. She stole it.” Alexsi knelt beside her, his hand on her back. “Anya, please. Tell me. I need to know what to do.”
She retched again, nothing left, her whole body convulsing with the effort. When she could breathe, she slumped against the cold porcelain, her strength gone. The fear in her eyes was now mixed with a profound, weary defeat. “I couldn’t… ask you,” she panted, her lips cracked and pale. “I didn’t know if you’d say no. Or if you… were part of it. I couldn’t risk it.” A fresh tear tracked through the sweat. “From before. What they did. I thought I might be. I had to be sure.”
The meaning crashed over him. Not poison. Something else. A desperate, terrible insurance. She hadn’t known if he was in on it. She saw his uniform, his father’s name, and expected another jailer. His heart, already broken, splintered into finer, sharper pieces. He should have spoken, should have offered her control over this one, fundamental thing. His silence had been a prison too.
“Oh, Anya,” was all he could say, the words thick.
Another cramp seized her, and she sobbed, curling in on herself. The bleeding was heavier now, streaking the bowl.
“Right,” Andrey said, his voice cutting through the panic. He moved past Alexsi, his size suddenly not intimidating but capable. He turned on the taps in the large, claw-foot tub, testing the water. “We can’t call that quack back. This is… this is what it is. We manage it. You,” he said to Alexsi, “get the clean towels. All of them. I’ll get the robe.”
They worked in a grim, synchronized rhythm. There was no bashfulness, only a desperate, focused practicality. When the cramps subsided for a moment, Alexsi gently lifted her from the floor. Her dress was ruined. Andrey handed him a pair of surgical scissors from the doctor’s kit, left behind. Alexsi cut the soiled lace away, his movements precise, his eyes averted from her body, preserving her modesty as the fabric fell. Andrey held open a thick terrycloth robe.
They wrapped her in it, covering her completely. Then, together, they lifted her—Alexsi at her shoulders, Andrey at her knees—and lowered her into the lukewarm water. She gasped at the contact, then went limp, her head lolling back against the rim, eyes closed. The water began to tinge pink around her.
“It’s alright,” Alexsi murmured, not knowing if it was. He found a washcloth. Andrey passed him a bar of plain soap.
They washed her with a gentleness that was military in its efficiency, reverent in its care. Alexsi cleaned her face, her neck, her arms, the cloth moving over her skin without a hint of possession. Andrey supported her back, keeping her head above water. They worked around the robe, washing what they could reach, averting their eyes from what they couldn’t, giving her a shielded dignity in the midst of the visceral mess.
Her sobs had quieted to shudders, then to exhausted, hitched breaths. She opened her eyes once, looking up at Alexsi’s face, tense with concern, then at Andrey’s stoic, careful expression. Something in her, some final wall of terrified expectation, crumbled. Not into happiness, but into a state of profound, uncomprehending shock. They were caring for her. Cleaning the blood and sickness away. Seeing her at her most broken and not exploiting it. Not hurting her.
Alexsi rinsed the cloth, the water darkening. He made a silent vow to her, watching the tremors that still wracked her frame. He would say it aloud when she could hear it. That no one would touch her without her permission. That her body was her own. That he was sorry, so terribly sorry, for not making that clear from the first moment.
For now, he just wiped a strand of damp chestnut hair from her forehead, his touch as light as air.