Doctored Vows - Chapter 32

“Hold on. Go back,” Alla demands, her eyes wide and mouth gaping. “Zoya objected to the marriage of her baby sister?”

When I nod, she couldn’t appear more shocked—until I say, “And then took her place.”

“What?!” Her voice bellows throughout the empty OR. “So she’s married? Right now? She’s shacked up with a stranger?”

I grimace, but since Zoya’s story isn’t mine to tell, I half shrug and half nod instead of shouting the yes bellowing through my head.

Alla’s reply whistles through her teeth since it comes with a massive shocked sigh. “That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, it is,” I agree, reclining back. “I’m worried for Zoya, but I also trust her intuition. She wouldn’t have objected if she didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

“Does Aleena think the same?”

I can’t hide my grimace this time.

“Ouch.”

Ouch doesn’t come close to explaining the devastation Zoya will be feeling for hurting Aleena. She will do anything for her—anything at all—that’s why I know there is more to Zoya’s decision than she is letting on.

“Anyway, I should probably head back. If I don’t push pathology, who will?”

“Still waiting on Yulia’s latest blood workup?”

I jerk up my chin, aware Alla is under the same NDA as the rest of the hospital staff. “It is so weird because she was well enough to be discharged before I went away, and now she is back to square one.”

“You’ll work it out.” She rubs my arms supportively. “We don’t call you Dr. Genius for no reason.”

I sigh like I hate the nickname, but I much prefer it over the one that was graffitied on my locker weeks ago.

“If I don’t see you before, I’ll see you next week.”

“You will.”

After helping Alla return the chairs we borrowed from the nurses’ station, I hug her goodbye before heading back to the pediatric ward.

“Are you okay?” Dr. Lipovsky asks when she spots my entrance to the nurses’ station to gather a patient’s file. “Too much sugar?”

We crossed paths in the underground parking garage. I was exiting to collect supplies for Donut Hole Thursday from Ano, and she was arriving for her shift. “They smelled delicious. Though I’m sure my thighs would have despised every burpee required to work them off.”

A laugh rumbles in my chest, but it is the fight of my life to let it escape my mouth when I notice a name missing from the patient board behind her svelte frame.

“Why has Yulia’s name been removed from the in-patient list?”

Dr. Lipovsky mumbles something, but I miss what she says from my heels pounding the tile floor as I race into the room across from the nurses’ station.

Yulia’s room is empty, and her bed has been stripped.

Dr. Lipovsky rubs my shoulder when I fail to bite back a sob. “Why are you upset? You wouldn’t have discharged her if she still needed monitoring.”

“I didn’t discharge her.” Yulia’s recovery after her medical episode was as fast-moving as Maksim’s mother’s, but she still had a little to go before she was well enough to return home.

“I suggested to Lev that we could discuss the possibility of her being discharged for the weekend so she could meet her baby sister, but I hadn’t commenced the paperwork yet.”

“Oh.” After checking Yulia’s file, which has been placed onto the records officer cart to be collected instead of in the slot outside her room, Dr. Lipovsky says, “The paperwork states that you discharged her.” She twists the discharge paperwork around to face me. “Is this your signature?”

I almost nod until I remember that I’ve been using my married name for the past week.

I had nothing but words to thank Maksim for funding Yulia’s medical expenses, organizing a one-on-one meeting with my father so I wouldn’t be required to go to a maximum-security prison, and for every other wonderful thing he has done, so I’ve worn my rings every day since we reunited, and used the last name he chose to reinvent himself on every document I’ve signed.

Dr. Lipovsky appears worried when I say, “That is not my signature, but I have the means to find out who wants us to believe it is.”

She watches me with wide eyes when I skirt by her, pick up the nurses’ desk phone, and dial a frequently called number.

For the first time, Ano doesn’t answer my call.

Upon spotting the concern on my face, Dr. Lipovsky stops a nurse whizzing past us so fast she is almost a blur by grabbing her elbow. “Who authorized Yulia Petrovitch’s discharge?”

“Um.” She looks worried, but since her concern is more based on Dr. Lipovsky’s anger than the repercussions for snitching, she says, “Dr. Sidorov.”

“Dr. Sidorov?” Dr. Lipovsky sounds as uneasy as her gaunt expression makes her look. “He hasn’t worked in a ward in years.”

“So why would he discharge Yulia?” I jump in, confused.

As quickly as my confusion rose, panic sets in.

What if Dr. Abdulov wasn’t working alone?

What if he had a co-conspirator?

Anger envelops me when theory after theory smashes into me. Is this why he offered me a promotion that far exceeded my qualifications? Was he seeking a scapegoat—a fool he could puppeteer?

My brain is screaming yes, but my heart doesn’t agree.

If Dr. Sidorov was a part of the criminal entity that stole my mother’s organs and attempted to steal Maksim’s mother’s organs, why didn’t Maksim take him down with the others?

I need answers, and since I trust my husband far more than I trust anyone else, I snatch my winter coat off the coat rack and then tell Dr. Lipovsky I’m going home because I am not feeling well.

She snatches my wrist as quickly as Maksim does whenever I lie. Her eyes bounce between mine, the wish to call me a liar beaming out of her. She just can’t get her mouth to cooperate with her brain.

“I’ll let you know anything I find out,” I promise, finally clueing in to the cause of the worry blistering in her kind eyes.

Her nod is brief but full of punch. “Please be careful.”

I return her hug before racing to the elevators that will take me to the underground garage. I want answers, but I don’t need to get Ano in trouble while seeking them.

As the elevator arrives at the underground loading bay, I’m stunned to find men unloading produce from a truck at the central loading bay.

They’re veering straight past Maksim’s SUV parked directly across from the elevator, but Ano’s tall frame, which usually stands above any crowd, is nowhere to be seen.

“What is that smell?” I murmur to myself when an unusual scent impinges the air.

I take another whiff of the weird aroma before shifting on my feet to face the delivery truck. I almost slip when my stubbornness has my soleless shoes skidding over a shiny blob on the floor.

My wardrobe is brimming with designer clothes and shoes, but I refuse to wear them until Maksim allows me to contribute to the household bills.

It’s been one argument after another for the past week, only ending once we’ve wrestled each other from our clothes and fucked the anger out on one of the many solid surfaces in our apartment.

My throat works through a stern swallow when I bob down to inspect the cause of my near slip more closely. It appears to be blood but has been watered down with something. It drips from the service entrance to the truck and seems to have been recently spilled.

I crank my head to the side when a familiar but not often-heard voice calls my name. “Nikita?” Boris’s confused gaze bounces between me and the delivery truck for several seconds before it eventually settles on me. “What are you doing here?”

I don’t know how catering operates at the hospital, but it seems weird that they’re taking food out instead of in—particularly when they’re using members of the pathology department to transport it.

Boris is carrying a box of bananas. It is leaking the same watered-down liquid that is dribbled across the floor, but he is heading in the direction of the truck instead of the service entrance.

“I could ask you the same thing.” I step closer to him, whitening his cheeks more. “I didn’t realize you had taken a position with food services.”

“I-I haven’t.”

Suspicion colors my tone. “Then why are you carting boxes of bananas across a loading dock?”

“Because I… ah…” His eyes snap up for barely a second, but the widening of his pupils is all I need to know that I won’t like what happens next.

They hold so much angst, and I learn why when a white cloth is placed over my mouth and nose a second after my feet are hoisted off the ground by the man pinning me to his chest and chloroforming me.

I thrash and kick, but within seconds, my limbs grow as heavy as my eyelids when I work a double shift. My throat feels like it is on fire, and my head is instantly woozy.

I am mere seconds from passing out.

When I no longer have the energy to fight, I’m lowered onto the cold concrete floor, where I drift in and out of consciousness.

I’m barely lucid when a teeming mad voice shouts, “What the fuck did you do?”

Its owner’s race across the floor is as frantic as my pulse as I slowly lose consciousness. Fingers press against the vein thudding in my neck before I’m roughly rolled onto my side so I won’t choke on my thickening tongue.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? She’s Maksim Ivanov’s wife!”

“I know who she is but I don’t give a fuck. She isn’t meant to be down here,” says a second voice I’m certain I’ve heard before. “She saw shit she isn’t mea⁠—”

His reply is cut off by a crack similar to a fist colliding with someone’s nose.

“She’s sanctioned. We can’t fucking touch her.”

“Those rules don’t apply to me!”

A scuffle breaks out, but I’m swallowed by the blackness engulfing me before a winner is announced.