Page 101 of Twilight Tears
“Am, too,” he fires back. “I can’t stay here anymore, Yakov. I’ll lose my mind if I don’t get out. I can’t eat any more dry meatloaf or shitty, off-brand gelatin. And I’m tired of being woken up every two hours all night long. I want to sleep in my own bed.”
“A bed you can’t fucking get in and out of on your own,” I remind him under my breath.
I want to add that he also won’t be able to defend himself if the Gustev Bratva decides to strike, but Nik still doesn’t like to talk about his paralysis in any real way. He finally started going to physical therapy, but he won’t let me see him in a session. The longer this denial of his goes on, the more I’m sure Luna is right: Nik is embarrassed.
My mother is circling around me, trying to hear what’s happening. “If Nik needs a place to stay, tell him to come here. I’ll have Hope get his room ready. I can take care of him.”
I put my hand over the phone. “His room is upstairs.”
“So? It’s always been upstairs.”
“But he hasn’t always been paralyzed from the waist down.”
She frowns. “That’s a minor issue. We can solve that.”
“I don’t need anyone to solve anything for me,” Nik interjects, clearly having heard the conversation. “I’m a grown ass man. I can take care of myself and I don’t need anyone’s permission to discharge myself from the hospital. I already checked.”
“You may be a grown man, but I’m your big brother. More importantly, your pakhan. I can make your life hell if I want to. Keep defying me and you’ll end up shoveling coal in a mine in Siberia.”
“Might be tough without the use of my legs, but I’ll do my best.” He cackles hysterically to himself.
“Tell him to come home,” my mother whispers. “We can take care of him here.”
I wave my mother off, but it’s not a terrible idea. I could arrange full-time care for him here at the mansion. It would also be a lot easier to monitor Nik’s recovery and murder Pavel if Nik was under my roof again.
“Nik, I’m fucking serious. You can’t be alone right now. Someone needs to be there to monitor you.”
“Are you speaking as my pakhan or my big brother right now?”
“Both,” I say. “You can discharge yourself from the hospital, but if you do, you’re coming to live with me.”
My mother claps her hands. “Nik is coming home!”
“And Mom will be there, too,” Nik adds under his breath. “Fuck me. A grown man living with his mother again.”
“Take it or leave it,” I say.
After a beat, Nik curses. “I’ll take it.”
Nik is propped up in the hospital bed in the sitting room. Every few minutes, he uses the remote to adjust the headrest or to lift his feet. “Where did you find a hospital bed on such short notice?”
“The hospital.”
“They just sold it to you?” he asks.
“I didn’t ask to buy it. They just didn’t dare stop me when I had it removed from a hospital room and loaded onto a truck.”
Nik snorts. “That sounds about right.”
Considering the donation I made in Nikandr’s name, the hospital can spare a single bed. I didn’t have any trouble hiring an in-home care team to take care of him, but acquiring the bed on such short notice was a problem. Like all problems I encounter, I solved it my way.
“How is my baby boy feeling?” Our mother swirls through the doorway and reaches for Nik’s hand. Since he got back, she’s been fawning over him worse than any of the nurses at the hospital. It’s driving Nik insane.
“I’m fine.” He pulls his hand back gently. “How are you feeling? Was the traveling hard on you? You could go take a nap, you know. If you need it.”
She kisses his cheek. “You’re so sweet. Worrying about me. No one worries about you once you’re old. I’m not used to all the attention. But I’m fine. Perfect now that you’re here, actually. The only thing that would make it better is if Mariya was here with us. And Luna, too, of course.”
My working theory is that being back in this mansion with her children is somehow winding back my mother’s biological clock. She is bouncing around the house like she’s fifteen years younger, at least. I’d be happy for her if it wasn’t so fucking annoying.