Chapter 21: The Shattering Call
The plastic casing of the burner phone cracked against the laminate floor. The sound was small, final. Dasha didn’t hear it. All she heard was the white-noise roar of her own blood flooding her ears, a tidal wave drowning out the hum of the refrigerator, the distant swish of traffic on the wet Munich street below.
Her knees hit the floor a second later. Not a dramatic collapse, but a slow, inevitable buckling, as if her bones had dissolved. The neat, sterile world of the sublet—the white walls, the scent of lavender—shattered, replaced by a single, brutal image: twisted metal, shattered glass, and Matt, still and broken inside it.
Elliot’s words hung in the air, toxic and absolute. He is in the hospital.
A sound escaped her, a sharp, animal inhale. Her hands, usually so steady, fluttered uselessly at her sides before pressing hard against her mouth. She tasted salt. She was crying.
The phone, on the floor, emitted a tinny, distant voice. “Dasha? Dasha, are you there? Christ, say something.”
She scrambled for it, her fingers slipping on the smooth plastic. “Where?” The word was a rasp, stripped of all her careful composure. “Which hospital?”
“St. Marien. In the city. Listen, it’s not—“
“How bad?” she interrupted, her voice hardening into something sharp and clinical. It was the only part of her that still functioned. The professional. The fixer.
Elliot sighed, a ragged sound down the line. “They won’t tell me anything. I’m not family. He was conscious when they brought him in, they said that much. His car hit a barrier on the A9. Rain. Maybe he was driving too fast. I don’t know.”
Maybe he was driving too fast. The words unlocked a new, more specific horror. He’d left the set. He’d been angry, distracted. Because of her. Because of the notebook. The causality of it hit her with the force of a physical blow. Her leaving, his accident. They were now forever linked in a chain of terrible consequence.
“I’m on my way,” she said, already pushing herself up, her legs trembling.
“Wait, you’re in Munich, it’s a six-hour—“
“I’m in the city,” she lied, the falsehood coming automatically. “I never left. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
She ended the call before he could ask more questions. Truth was a luxury she couldn’t afford. The distance was a problem to be solved. She opened a travel app on her old, personal phone, her movements frantic. The next direct flight was in three hours. Too long. Trains were slower. A rental car, in this weather, on these autobahns, was suicide.
She stared at the screen, her mind racing through logistics, costs, timelines. Then she stopped. The cold, calculating part of her brain presented a simple, horrifying equation: if she had caused this, then her obligation was absolute. Money was not an object. Consequences were not an object.
She found a number for a private charter service she’d once researched for him, for a trip he’d never taken. She called. Her voice was pure steel, the perfect imitation of a high-powered executive handling a crisis. “I need a plane. Munich to Berlin. Now. Yes, I understand the fee. Send the car to this address.”
The next forty minutes were a blur of terrifying stillness. She changed out of her loungewear into dark jeans, a simple black sweater, boots. Practical. Armored. She didn’t look at the suitcase by the door. The life she’d been packing away was irrelevant now. She just stood in the center of the empty room, watching the rain streak the window, each second an agony.
The car came. A sleek, black Mercedes. The driver was professionally silent. The flight was a nightmare of engine noise and oppressive quiet in a plush, empty cabin. She refused the offered coffee. She just watched the clouds, her hand clenched around the armrest, her nails leaving half-moon impressions in the leather.
Berlin was a grid of lights swallowed by the drizzle. The car took her straight to St. Marien. The hospital was a monolithic block of concrete and light, a temple of anxiety and antiseptic. The ER entrance was a carnival of misery under fluorescent lights—a teenager holding a bloody towel to his hand, an old woman crying softly, the rhythmic beep of unseen machines.
She approached the reception desk, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. “Matthew Bomer. He was brought in by ambulance earlier.”
The nurse, middle-aged and tired, didn’t look up from her screen. “Relation?”
The word stuck in Dasha’s throat. Assistant? Former assistant? The woman who’s private thoughts might have sent him careening off a road? “Family,” she said, the lie bitter on her tongue. “I’m his sister.”
A tap of keys. A frown. “He’s been moved to the fourth floor. Private room. 407. But visiting hours are—“
Dasha was already moving toward the elevators, her boots clicking a rapid, desperate rhythm on the linoleum.
The fourth floor corridor was quieter, the lighting softer. Room 407. The door was slightly ajar. She stopped outside, her courage failing. She could hear low voices. Elliot’s, pitched high with worry. And another, calmer, male—a doctor.
She pushed the door open.
The room was dim, lit only by a small lamp near the window. And there he was.
Matt lay propped up on the bed, his left arm in a cast from fingers to elbow, a bandage taped to his temple above a spectacular, purpling bruise that spread towards his eye. He looked pale, tired, diminished. But his eyes were open. They tracked to the door, and when they landed on her, something shifted in them. A shock. A deep, unsettling stillness.
Elliot spun around, his expression a comical mask of relief and alarm. “Dasha! How did you—you said you were in the city!”
She ignored him. Her gaze was locked on Matt. The reality of him, injured but alive, breathing, hit her in a wave that threatened to knock her sideways. The terror of the last few hours curdled into something else, something raw and overwhelming.
The doctor, a young man with a kind, weary face, looked between them. “This is the sister? Good. He has a moderate concussion, the fractured radius, significant bruising. He is very, very lucky. The airbag did its job. He needs rest, and observation for the next twenty-four hours.” He offered a thin smile. “No permanent damage.”
No permanent damage. The words echoed in the silent room.
The doctor left, nodding at Elliot to follow for paperwork. Elliot hesitated, looking from Matt’s stony face to Dasha’s frozen one. With a resigned shrug, he slipped out, pulling the door closed behind him with a soft, definitive click.
The silence that remained was thick, charged with everything unsaid. The rain pattered against the window. A monitor beeped softly down the hall.
Dasha couldn’t move from the spot just inside the door. The professional mask was gone, shattered. All that was left was the furious, terrified truth. “You idiot,” she whispered, the words barely audible.
Matt watched her. His good hand rested on the white hospital sheet. “You came back.”
“Elliot called. He said you were…” She couldn’t finish. She hugged her arms around herself, a defensive gesture she never allowed.
“I was what? Dying?” His voice was rough, but devoid of its usual charm. It was just flat. Tired. “I’m not. Sorry to disappoint.”
The casual cruelty of it stung. It gave her a anchor. Anger was easier. “Is that what this was? A dramatic gesture? Because I left?” She took a step forward, her voice tightening. “Because you read my private notes and decided to go for a drive in a storm?”
His eyes darkened. “I read one page,” he said quietly. “The one where you wondered if there was a man under here, or just a machine.” He shifted slightly, wincing at the pain. “I was trying to find you. To tell you that you were wrong. About Chloe. About everything. The machine malfunctioned. It drove into a barrier.”
The admission hung between them. He’d been coming for her. The guilt, already corrosive, deepened.
“You shouldn’t have read it,” she said, but the heat was gone from her voice.
“I know.” He looked away, out at the dark window. “But I did. And now you’re here.” He looked back, his gaze piercing even through the fatigue and the bruising. “Why are you here, Dasha? You vanished. You told Elliot I was ‘just fine.’ Why fly across the country in the middle of the night for a broken-down machine?”
All her cleverness, her wit, her composed defenses, deserted her. There was no sarcastic retort, no professional deflection. There was only the stark, terrifying truth, laid bare by the panic of the last few hours.
She met his eyes, her own blurring with tears she refused to shed. “Because the machine is my responsibility,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word. “And I thought I’d broken it.”