Getting Mircea out of Ukraine was a minor problem; his passports had been left with his clothes and other personal items back at the flat above the club. There was talk of contacting the Romanian embassy to get a temporary replacement one, but the doctors advised against his leaving the hospital.
“Can you guarantee his safety?” they had asked Michael in discussion of this. If the Syndicate was on the lookout for Mircea, surely the Romanian embassy in Kiev would be under surveillance. But just more practically, it would be effort enough to get Mircea on to a plane, and not have to house him in Kiev while travel documents were made. Fortunately, Mircea still had his wallet with his ID, even if the money he had in it had vanished. Michael pointed out that to travel within the EU, all Mircea needed was ID – getting out of Ukraine and into the EU was still a problem.
Michael threw himself on the mercy of the Catholic charity he worked with and even the UN to get Mircea transported safely across the Romanian border. He told them that Mircea was practically a refugee, needing anonymity and security to get out of Ukraine. There was a lot of hemming and hawing, which Mircea was too heavily medicated to be a functional part of. Finally he ended up on a gurney in a van transporting farm supplies, with a written document from authorities in Germany vouching for him. Had Mircea been lucid, he could have told Michael the easiest way to resolve any border issues would just have been a few dollars in a discreet envelope. Michael was probably not the kind of guy who would go along with bribery, so it was best that Mircea hadn’t been able to say anything.
Of the actual trip, Mircea had only blurry sensations, not memories. He was aware of Michael holding his hand, and hours spent in a moving vehicle, but not much else. The opiates Mircea could have supplied himself with would have made the journey a pleasant psychedelic trip; the Soviet era painkillers the hospital provided made it a seemingly eternal fever dream. He must have whimpered non-stop, as Michael was hoarse from having to soothe him when they finally reached the airport in Cluj.
“We’re going to give you a sedative for the flight,” Michael explained in a raw whisper. The shot they gave him was more like the drugs Mircea liked – the flight to Munich was a seamless blissful blur. When he awoke hours later, it was in a private room in a clean luxurious German hospital. It was tempting to think he’d died and gone to heaven – only the dull aches in his body convinced him he was still on earth. He looked around the room, careful to avoid moving around too much, as there was a drip in his arm. After about ten minutes, an elderly nurse came in to check on the drip; she greeted him in German, saying something with satisfaction as she noticed the drip had finished. She disconnected it and took the needle out of his arm; she placed a cotton ball on the puncture and left the room, Mircea understanding the word for doctor in what she said before she left.
Moments later the doctor the nurse had spoken of entered the room. He was impressively young, probably not much older than Mircea, although his closely cropped hair was thinning. He shined a penlight in Mircea’s eyes, and checked his vital signs.
“Do you speak English?” he asked in that annoyingly good accent the Germans have in English. Mircea wanted to show off right back at him, but found his tongue felt heavy and dull. “You might not be fully comfortable to speak,” the doctor advised. “The sedative may not have fully worn off yet.” He poked his head out of the door and called for something in an authorative tone, but his voice cracked somewhat , a tell-tale sign of his youth. The nurse came back in the room with the apparatus to measure Mircea’s blood pressure; as she put the cuff around Mircea’s arm, the doctor spoke to her scoldingly, something she did not react to with more than an eye roll to Mircea. The doctor’s cheeks flushed helplessly at her insolence, and Mircea found himself smiling. He tried to give the doctor a sympathetic look, realising he must have looked just as ridiculous trying to swagger with power back in the day. He thought of Michael’s calm, composed demeanour – that guy exuded the authority of a lion, while he had shouted and roared and had probably seemed like nothing more than a tiny lapdog. Relax, he wanted to say to the doctor. We all know you’re in charge, but let the lady get on with her job.
The doctor focused on Mircea, ignoring the nurse. “I’ve read through the translations of the notes on your condition from Ukraine,” he said. The nurse interrupted him, announcing Mircea’s blood pressure. The doctor fought to keep from yelling at her, Mircea could tell; it was what he would have done if a worker in the bar, café or laundry had cut in on one of his speeches. He thanked the nurse in clipped tones, handing her Mircea’s chart. She made a big show of producing a ball-point pen from her pocket, banging it soundly against her breastbone to click it open.
“We’ll have you go in for a series of x rays,” the doctor continued to Mircea, pronouncing it ix-rays. “I’d like to see the extent of the damage to your body organs and more importantly, the state your mandible is in. I will of course refer you to a dental surgeon and orthopaedist; but I will oversee your case.”
Mircea nodded, managing to say a weak danke. The nurse clucked approvingly at him, replacing Mircea’s chart with her annotations to the foot of his bed.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the doctor asked eagerly, looking somewhat deflated when Mircea shook his head. The nurse tsked and said something in German that was probably everyone knows how to say danke, replacing the pen in her pocket. The doctor blushed again and ushered the nurse out of the room, brusquely throwing in a danke at the end. Mircea bit back the laughter that was bubbling up in him – medical treatment and a free comedy show! What a country!
Going for x-rays in Germany was very different to getting them done in Ukraine – the equipment was modern and immaculate, even better than what he had experienced in London. In Ukraine or Moldova, Mircea worried about his virility, not trusting the ratty lead pads they placed over the body parts not being x-rayed. Mircea didn’t have such concerns here in Germany. He looked over to the glass office where the technician sat with the doctor. They were having a discussion as they were reviewing the x-rays, which confirmed that Mircea, and particularly his jaw, was in bad shape.
“Things do not look good,” the doctor told Mircea matter-of-factly as the technician took the x-ray paraphernalia away. “Your mouth is very damaged, the worst I have seen without an external injury. We are also worried about your kidneys; the kidneys are naturally well-padded, but we see a lot of bruising. We’ll keep you under close observation, and bed rest for a few days, and then we’ll start on the oral problems.”
Mircea remembered overhearing the nurses in Ukraine mentioning blood in his bedpan, which he knew was never a good sign. He wished Piotr had outright shot him – all that required for Ivan was a quick trip to the hospital to get the bullet removed, and then he was placed out of Piotr’s grasp. Getting shot was a lot more scary, but didn’t involve slow recovery from internal injuries. Bed rest? Visions of dialysis rose in Mircea’s mind; a neighbour of his grandmother’s had had kidney failure. He had gone along when they went to visit the grey-faced woman in the hospital, the huge old-fashioned machine by her bedside beeping away. She couldn’t have been older than his grandmother, but she looked ancient. She died shortly after the visit, cementing the idea of living well when young and healthy in Mircea’s teenage mind.
There was a TV in his hospital room, but every show was in German. Mircea kept it on, to make noise and try to drown out his thoughts. That was the thing with sanctuary – it gave you a lot of time to think. Mircea didn’t want to ponder his situation, or worse, his future; as far as he was concerned, he didn’t have one. His days of being a lieutenant in the Syndicate were over, but really, what was he equipped to do in the real world? He hadn’t even gotten a Baccalaureate, as he went to a Colegii after Gymnasium. This allowed him to continue with higher education in Moldova, but didn’t give him suitable qualifications in other countries. All I wanted to do was make money, he thought bitterly. I didn’t have time for further education. He thought of buying a forged university degree, but realised he would have to forge legitimate work experience as well. I left school with no papers, and then got involved in criminal activities. I’ve painted myself into a corner.
Michael came by in the afternoon to check in on him. Mircea greeted him in a feeble voice, switching off the TV. Michael acknowledged this with a small smile.
“I spoke with your doctors,” he told Mircea. “You have a long road of recovery ahead of you, particularly with your mouth.”
Mircea winced. “Is it going to cost a lot?” He had no money, and no way of earning any.
Michael nodded, but waved a hand at him. “Don’t worry about this. It will be taken care of.”
The realisation that he was a charity case was almost as painful as his jaw. He groaned, and wished Piotr had killed him. That gangster must have realised that letting Mircea live would be a slow and demeaning death – the best he could do was go back to Moldova and try to eke out a living somehow, dimming the memories of travel and being someone with cheap alcohol and drugs.
“You’re going to have to lose your pride,” Michael counselled, seeing Mircea’s face twist with pain and humiliation. “It’s one of the seven deadly sins for a reason, but really, it’s all smoke and mirrors, a distraction from real issues. You need to stop worrying about having to rely on others for help, and start getting better.” Michael sat down in the visitor’s chair beside Mircea’s bed. “Did the doctors talk to you about your treatment? It’s complicated and going to take 4 to 6 weeks.”
It probably was going to be painful too. Mircea tried a light-hearted chuckle, not wanting to moan pitifully at the thought of the long and arduous journey ahead. “Well, it’s not like I have to be anywhere!” he joked.
Michael just gave Mircea a long look, not saying anything. Mircea sensed that Michael thought he wasn’t taking the situation seriously, and groaned.
“Look, okay, I get it!” he said to Michael in exasperation. “I’m sick and have to let you take care of me. I’m grateful, really I am.” He wondered if he were supposed to do a penance or some sort of thing like that to show his gratitude. They probably will want me to sweep Church floors for the rest of my life!
Michael kept staring at him, then got up out of the chair. “There’s something you should see,” he murmured, leaving the room.
Mircea closed his eyes, wondering what Michael was going to bring in for him to see. Pictures of martyred saints? Photos of starving children in Africa? Copies of x-rays of my damaged jaw? He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, thinking that letting the Church take care of him was not a simple matter of letting go of his pride, as Michael kept saying. He was going to show thankfulness, rejection of his old ways, and probably obedience. I wonder if I’ll have to become a priest?
The door opened and Michael came in, not bringing pictures or x rays, but a person. A young woman who had to be coaxed into the room, her head hanging low. Her hair was a lank brown colour, which kept Mircea from recognising her initially. The last time he had seen her, she had been blonde.
Milla.
Mircea involuntarily sat upright, and Milla reacted to the sound by turning to leave the room. Michael caught her shoulders, speaking to her in a low, coaxing voice. The German missionary put an arm around the young girl’s shoulders, repeatedly assuring her everything was okay. Slowly, they moved forward, and Mircea sank back down on to his pillow, his heart beating rapidly.
“I know neither of you is happy to see the other,” Michael said, taking Milla’s hand. “But Mircea, you need to see this.” Very gently, he tilted Milla’s head up. She whimpered, and he patted her shoulder calmingly. He asked her permission to do something in a whisper, and Milla squeezed her eyes shut, nodding. Praising her quietly, like you would a dog doing a trick, Michael slowly pulled her lips open, showing Michael the mess of metal and wires that was in her mouth.
“This is what you need to expect,” he told Mircea, holding Milla steady. “They’re going to need to wire your jaw, exactly as they have done with Milla.” With a little moan, Milla closed her lips, tears falling from her eyes. Michael stroked her cheek, saying little comforting things to her. Milla opened her eyes and looked at Michael, who raised her hand to his lips to kiss it.
“It’s not going to be exactly the same,” Michael said over his shoulder to Mircea, smoothing Milla’s hair back from her face. “You don’t need to have dentures put in, as you still have your teeth.”
Remembering how Milla’s teeth clattered to the floor in a flood of blood made Mircea shudder. The sound of the bat slamming into her face echoed in his mind, and he whimpered like Milla. What had he done to this girl?! Why had he done it? To punish her for talking to the very man in the room with both of them? Mircea covered his eyes with his hands.
“We should consult a psychiatrist about how you wanted her to feel the exact pain you do,” Michael said to Mircea. “Now the two of you will have the same treatment to recover from these wounds.” Mircea dropped his hands, and saw that Michael was holding Milla in an embrace. Seeing Mircea looking at her, Milla pulled away from Michael, turning to face Mircea, her lips mashed into an ugly pout. Michael swiftly pulled her back to him, away from Mircea. “We talked about this, and you said you wouldn’t,” he said to her scoldingly. Mircea realised she had been trying to spit at him.
“Let her do it.”
Mircea’s words hung in the air. Michael kept Milla pressed to his chest. He shook his head. “Haven’t you learned yet that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?” he asked Mircea disapprovingly.
Milla made a noise, trying to say something. Michael looked into her face, nodding sadly. “I think she’s trying to say that seeing you like this doesn’t make her feel better.” He looked at Milla for conformation, and she nodded, her cheeks wet with tears. She gave Michael a pleading look, and he escorted her to the door, shutting it after she had fled the room.
Mircea felt as if he had been run over by a truck. He lay back on the pillow, crying and gasping for breath. What he had done to Milla had haunted him, but seeing her up close was like having his head boiled in oil. The ugly truth of what he had done was raw and horrible, and the fact that he would have to undergo it himself now was agonising.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” he repeated hoarsely. He thought of his doctor, trying to order the nurse around. He hadn’t hit her, although Mircea could sense he wanted to. Mircea actually had - did everyone at the hospital know what he had done? Did they know how brutal he had been, trying to make himself feel important? He curled himself into a ball in the bed, pulling up the covers so he could hide his face.
Quietly, Michael sat in the visitor’s chair beside his bed. He let Mircea cry himself out, then gently took his hand. “Let us pray,” he intoned, and started into the Lord’s prayer.