Chapter 12: The File

"It's morning," I said. "You promised."

He was in the study, standing at the window with his back to me, and he didn't turn right away.

I had put the folded lab report on the desk between us. The cup numbers were still in my head.

"You'll want to sit," Lucian said.

"I'll stand."

"Then stand."

He turned.

"Seven years ago in March, my men carried me into an emergency room in Queens," he said.

"I had two bullets in me. They gave a false name. They said John."

My hands went cold.

"The hospital had a rule. A gunshot with no name and a stranger's men at the door meant the police.

"It also meant a closed operating room until a lawyer said otherwise. The room was locked."

"I know the rule," I said. My voice sounded far off.

"A resident said she wasn't going to watch a man bleed out in a hallway over a form."

"Lucian."

"She took me down to the old trauma bay in the basement, with one nurse and a drawer of instruments.

"She opened me up on a table." His eyes were steady on me. "She talked to me the whole time. She told me to stay and I stayed."

My fingers had found the edge of the desk.

I remembered a man with no color left in him and a stranger's name.

I remembered the quick closure I had invented that night, because I was out of time.

I remembered my own voice saying, Stay with me, John.

I had never found out whether he lived.

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