Calvin jumped to, kicking the knives off and far away from Donny and Rachel’s grasp. From inside the house, Shane heard the sounds of policemen and rescue workers and frightened children. Peripherally, he heard backup coming alongside him, but he was focused on Calvin.

  “You got this?” he asked, and his voice sounded high—almost casual—and Calvin nodded numbly. “Good,” Shane said, feeling wise and calm. And that was when he blacked out.

  Chapter 11

  I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take…

  “Mad World”—Gary Jules

  LATER, it would hit Mikhail and hit him hard that not once did he think Shane had broken his promise. When he looked outside after class and did not see the car, his first thought was to call and see what the hold up was.

  When there was no answer, his stomach went cold, and he told himself he was being foolish and dialed again.

  The second time, someone picked up, and there was a hollow sound of corridor echoes behind the voice, which was good because Mikhail did not immediately think of another man in Shane’s bedroom. He knew that sound. That was a hospital sound. That was a hospital sound, and the man who answered was not Shane.

  “Uh… hello?”

  “Shane?” Abruptly Mikhail felt lost. He fought the very real bolt of cowardice that told him to just hang up and walk home and pretend that it was not Wednesday and that Wednesdays had never meant anything beyond the middle of the week, and even that did not mean anything unless he was working a faire on the weekend.

  “No, no, he’s not out of surgery yet. Who is this?”

  Mikhail had not left the dance studio yet, which was good because he sat down on the floor. If he’d been outside he would have sat down on the ground in the poorly lit parking lot next to the dance studio, and he would have been killed.

  “This is a friend,” he said weakly. “Did you say surgery?”

  “Oh God… you didn’t know… of course he didn’t know, Jeff, you asshole, or he probably wouldn’t be calling Shane’s phone….” That last part sounded like the man was talking to himself, and Mikhail tried to pull together a question or something intelligent and what he managed was, “You are the Jeff that eats dinner at Deacon’s?”

  There was a silence, and then the man on the other line said, “And you are the person that Shane won’t admit he’s dating because he’s afraid you’ll bolt madly for the hills.”

  Mikhail swallowed hard. Ouch. And yet, completely the truth. “That would be me,” he said, and his voice fell limply into the darkened room he was sitting in. “How… what happened? How badly is he injured? I… oh, God. I cannot get there until tomorrow, the busses don’t run that late, and I can’t leave my mother alone….” He was blathering. He was thinking out loud. He was panicking. “Fuck,” he interrupted himself. “Please, just please tell me he’s going to be okay.”

  There was a digestive silence on the other end of the line. “It’s probably going to end well,” Jeff said carefully. “The knife—”

  “Knife?”

  “Yes—he was stabbed from behind—the guy went around his Kevlar with a hunting knife and slid between some ribs and punctured a lung. I think he nicked something else vital, and now it’s all about stopping the bleeding and dumping antibiotics into him so he doesn’t get an infection. Don’t worry about not being here tonight—he probably won’t come to until tomorrow. If you could make it then, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

  “Nobody called me,” Mikhail said, almost to himself. “Of course nobody called me. Nobody knew about me. Nobody knew about me because I couldn’t even tell him I’d see him next week. I kept telling him reasons he wouldn’t show. And now he’s been hurt and nobody knew to call me….” He was starting to shiver and shiver hard, and he might have gone into shock, right there, just from hearing bad news, if Jeff’s voice hadn’t cut through the muzz of his head as he sat on the floor.

  “Honey… honey… look, sweetheart…. Motherfucker! Now snap out of the guilt-death-spiral and fucking listen to me, okay?”

  “Da,” Mikhail said weakly, and Jeff-the-voice-on-the-other-line started to give him directions.

  “First, I want you to go get a jacket or something—you got something to get you warm?”

  “Da,” Mikhail said, and went to get his jacket and his scarf and put them on. He moved into Anna’s cubicle and took the afghan from the back of the chair and wrapped it around him. It wouldn’t do much when he walked home, but here in the studio it started to take the shivers away.

  “Good. I’ve got your attention. That’s fucking awesome. Now, you’re right—we didn’t know about you—or how to get hold of you, and that’s something you’re going to have to fix or live with, right?”

  “Da… I mean yes. I understand. I… you understand, last time he was in the hospital, nobody visited. He was there for a month, and nobody visited. I cannot bear to think of him alone there, thinking nobody would come….”

  “Christ,” Jeff muttered. “Well, now that is something I didn’t know, so I guess we’re even. No worries—hell, what is your name?”

  “Mikhail, but”—and he blushed because there was no reason to throw in this detail except that it felt incredibly important—“Shane calls me Mickey.”

  “Well, then, I should probably call you Mikhail or he’ll bust my teeth out when he can stand. Okay, Mikhail, don’t worry. He’ll be here in the morning—”

  “You are sure?” And oh dear God, did he not sound pathetic, like a child, but he could not help it.

  Jeff, whoever he was, had a way of being both gentle and crisp. Vaguely Mikhail wondered if he was a doctor—they could do that too. “Yeah, Mikhail—he’s too damned big and too damned tough for this to level him. Now he’ll be here tomorrow and the next day, too, and you can make up for not being here tonight. We’re all here. Deacon, Crick, Benny, Andrew, Jon, Amy—hell, even the baby is here in the hospital, waiting for him. He’s not going to shake us until he tells us all to piss off, and even then he’d better be damned convincing, okay?”

  Mikhail could breathe as he couldn’t earlier. “Okay,” he echoed, the word sounding small and lost as he said it. There were a couple of heartbeats of space between them, and it suddenly occurred to Mikhail that, “Oh God. I shall have to meet Deacon.”

  “There is a distinct possibility,” Jeff said dryly. “But you’ve been pretty good at ditching out of that one so far.”

  “You do not understand…. He talks about Deacon like… like a father and a god at the same time…. I am not the man you bring home to a father and a god. I’m the man you hope the father and god never finds out about.”

  There was an amused, tired snort at the other end of the line. “Jesus, honey—given that résumé, ten years ago I would have been dating you myself.”

  Ten years ago I was a junkie whore living in Russia, assaulting my mother so I could get back out on the streets. “Ten years ago I was fifteen.”

  Again that dry, amused sound. “Well, maybe not.”

  “I don’t want to meet Deacon,” Mikhail murmured, almost to himself again. “Meeting Deacon means I really will have to live up to something.”

  “Well, yeah,” Jeff said, blowing out a breath. He sounded tired and he sounded worried, and Mikhail had a sudden thought that he should probably not dump his same terrified bullshit on this nice man. “Honey, if you want to be the guy someone calls during an emergency, that sort of comes with the territory.”

  “Where is he? Which hospital?” Mikhail asked, because he didn’t want to think about that right now.

  “U.C. Davis,” Jeff told him, and then told him the room number. “It’s the intensive care unit—but he might be moved tomorrow if he’s out of danger.”

  “Oh God, I hope so,” Mikhail muttered. “I will be there tomorrow,” he said. “If… if he asks for me, tell him. Tell him I said it was a promise.”

  “I’ll do that. You going to be okay now?” Oh God. Even this man with his dry, amused voice was nice to him.

  “Yes. I will go home and make plans to be there tomorrow. I can do that.” U.C. Davis Med Center was a two-hour bus ride, and his mother had chemo the next day. He also had classes to teach in the afternoon. He would, indeed, have to make plans to keep this promise.

  He rang off numbly, then stood up and managed to make it out of the dance studio without forgetting anything like his shoes or whether or not to lock up.

  The walk home was a blur of Christmas lights on wet pavement, and most of it happened in Mikhail’s head. He was actually surprised to open the door to his apartment, and it was only his mother’s voice, hoarse and weak, that brought him to reality.

  “You are late, lubime. Is Shane with you?”

  Mikhail froze at the door. For a moment he thought that he would not tell his mother. He would tell her that Shane had left him, had bailed, had decided not to pursue the relationship. It would hurt her, but it would not worry her. He opened his mouth to do just that, when he heard his own shaking voice.

  “He was injured at work, Mutti. He… he is coming out of surgery. I… they think he will be… okay….” His voice broke, and he was not sure of when he moved across the small apartment, but there he was, his head in his mother’s lap as though he were a child and his mother’s hands were smoothing through his hair. She whispered to him in Russian for a little while, and then, when he was starting to realize how foolish he felt, she spoke to him crisply.

  “Well, call Olga Divacz, then, and she can take me to the doctor’s tomorrow. You need to visit him, yes?”

  Mikhail looked at his mother and nodded. “Yes. He has many people there already, though. He may not even notice me.”

  His mother’s disgusted expression was reassuring. “Phfaw! Nonsense, mal’chik. Your face will be the first one he looks for.”

  He took a deep breath and sat up completely, wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “Thank you, Mutti. I am afraid I am being very foolish… here. I’ll go get us some dinner.”

  But Ylena didn’t let go of his hand. “Don’t feel foolish, Mikhail. Please….” He tried to get up. “Please don’t feel foolish. You’ve let this man into your heart—I was afraid you would let no one into your heart, and you’ve let him in. I… I am pleased.”

  Mikhail turned to her and tried for his usual arch expression. “Even if he is not a girl who will cook for me?”

  Ylena laughed and ruffled his hair. “I am afraid that you are the girl who will cook for him, mal’chik, but he is a nice man, so I do not mind so much.”

  THE next day it took three bus transfers and most of his morning to get from Citrus Heights to Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, but he did it with his usual self-sufficiency. He was tired and fretful by the time he asked the nurse for directions to the hospital room and pattered his way down the hall. As he neared the room, he passed two men—one of them very tall and the other one extremely beautiful and wearing a cowboy hat—muttering to each other about a damned fucking stubborn man, and Mikhail’s heart leapt for no particular reason.

  It sounded like Shane.

  He found the room number and looked in hesitantly. There was a dark-haired man wearing a very trendy sweater and shiny shoes sitting at the end of the bed and fidgeting with a book in his hand. He was talking irritably to Shane.

  “Of course they’re pissed,” he said, and Mikhail knew him by his voice. “You scare the shit out of all of us, and all you can ask us to do is feed your animals? Come on, man—take them up on the real food, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Shane muttered from the hospital bed, “and I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “Oh Jesus—you’re worse than Deacon!” Jeff protested with a laugh, and Shane gave a tired smile.

  “No one’s worse than Deacon.” His dark hair was oily and sticking out all over his head, and his fine, broad body was draped in a white gown. There was a bandage wrapped around his chest, and he was unbearably pale. He was beautiful.

  “Yeah—you need to just admit you feel like shit and you don’t want food. We’d understand that. This ‘Don’t put yourself out’ shit makes us want to strangle you.”

  “Please?” Shane muttered. “Because the truth is I feel like shit, and I don’t think I can eat much more than soup.”

  Jeff perked up. “Soup! Excellent. I’ll go outside and call them so they can send some with Benny!”

  “Jeff….”

  But Jeff was already heading out the door. He almost brushed completely past Mikhail, but he stopped just in time.

  “Hey,” he said tentatively, “you wouldn’t be…?”

  “Yes.” Mikhail bobbed his head nervously. “You were very kind yesterday. I should thank you.”

  “I’m glad you made it, sweet thing,” Jeff said crisply. “He’s been asking for his cell phone, and I told him you were coming. You caught me by surprise last night—you know we’re not supposed to use those things in the hospital.”

  Mikhail nodded. “Yes. I… thank you again.” And still he hesitated there at the doorway. His Shane—except not his, not here. Here he had a family, and they were worried and anxious and in his business. He felt superfluous. Suddenly he felt Jeff’s hard, capable hands on his shoulders, shoving him through the door.

  Shane looked up and spotted him, and his entire face lit up the drab little room.

  “Mickey! You made it!”

  Mikhail took three steps to his bedside and found he could summon some mock irritation, because it was a better alternative to falling all over himself to make sure Shane would be all right. “You miserable, irritating man. You make plans with me and then get stabbed? Stabbed? It is like you make up bad pastimes just to avoid our date. I’m really very pissed, you realize that, yes?”

  He couldn’t even look at Shane as he said it. He found he was picking at the coverlet next to Shane’s big hand, and as he finished his little speech he saw the big ugly bruises that were there from the IV needle, and he stroked them softly with his thumb, avoiding the needle that was still in his flesh.

  Shane grabbed his hand and murmured, “Mickey, I’m going to be fine,” but Mikhail still couldn’t look him in the face.

  “Could they have been any clumsier when they put this in? My mother weighs ninety pounds and gets poison pumped through her veins three times a week. She has less bruising than this.”

  “Mickey, look at me.”

  Mikhail shook his head, and Shane sighed.

  “Please?”

  Mikhail’s eyes blurred, but, well, hell. It could be the first thing Shane had actually asked of him, ever, and he was going to turn him down now?

  Shane looked tired, and very pale, and his brown eyes seemed half-focused with pain medication, but he was smiling, and Mikhail sighed. “You look like shit,” he said, but his voice wobbled and he was not very convincing.

  “Well, you look wonderful,” Shane said, and his smile widened. “I guess we’re about like we always are, right?”

  Mikhail shook his head. “No. No we’re not. I am… I am not okay. I don’t see how you can lay there and smile when… what were you thinking? I don’t even know what you were doing when this happened, and I’m still so incredibly angry with you for getting hurt. You cannot… you cannot promise me you will be there and then let this shit happen….”

  “Amen to that!” Mikhail turned and saw a skinny young man in a tan policeman’s uniform walk in, and he suddenly had a more appropriate focus for his anger.

  “And where were you?” he asked bitterly. “He is supposed to have help. You did not just let him get smashed this time, like a pink brick? Because that is intolerable—”

  He did not see Shane wince behind him, but he did hear the sucking sound of wind through his teeth and watched as the young man wrinkled his nose and mouthed the words “pink brick” as though he had no idea what Mikhail was talking about. He was still stuck on that when Jeff walked in behind him, having apparently heard everything.

  “That’s a good question, actually,” he said, his voice hard. “Aren’t you his partner?”

  “Calvin, this is Mikhail and Jeff. Mikhail and Jeff, this is Calvin,” Shane said, his voice dry. “And you two, leave the poor kid alone. It wasn’t his fault. He was the one who arrived with the cavalry, and I was the dumbshit who just had to get a closer look before he got there. How’re those kids, since you’re here, Calvin?”

  Calvin looked furtively at Mikhail and Jeff in a way that told them he was going to dodge that question if he could.

  “Why would you think I wouldn’t come and back him up?” Calvin asked, obviously buying time while he figured out “pink brick.” “He’s a cop, same as me. He just went in for a closer look and it bit him on the… well, in the kidneys, I guess.” He smiled a little uncertainly at Shane, and Shane smiled reassuringly back.

  “Well, it’s not like you people have a great track record where Shane is concerned, you know?” Jeff snapped, and Shane’s smile fell, and he made a faint moan in his throat.

  Mikhail blinked and watched a truly painful realization cross over young Calvin’s face. First he said the words “pink brick” under his breath—then he mouthed “you people.”

  Then he looked at Mikhail’s hand, which had never left Shane’s, and took in their obvious proximity.

  And then the light bulb went on.

  “Oh my God! You all think I… no! I would never! I don’t care who a guy sleeps with, I’m not going to leave someone with dogs just flapping in the breeze like that!”

  “Oh shit,” Mikhail said faintly, and then Jeff blinked, and he said “Oh shit,” and Shane’s helpless, pained chuckle was the only sound in the room.

  “Mickey?” he said after a terrible silence had fallen. “Mickey—you wouldn’t want to go get me some ice cream with Jeff, would you? I need to talk to Calvin. Just come back in a few, and we can have this conversation all over again.”

  Mikhail sighed. “I would, but I should probably go.”

  “You just got here!” Jeff protested, and Mikhail looked at him miserably.