The last thing she recalls is the doctor standing over her, his hands cradling her face, his eyes staring into her own, her name on his lips as he whispers her name over and over again.
Elian recalls falling asleep at the doctor’s surgery as soon as she wakes up. There is no momentary confusion, no wondering where she is. It was as though she has been asleep for simply minutes.
She hasn’t been sleeping well, she acknowledges that. Now that all the stress is almost over is it possible it all caught up with her and she just fell asleep in his chair? She yawns, a wide, opened mouth yawn before catching herself.
“Doctor,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry, I think I nodded off.”
She blinks her eyes hard, sniffs and sits up in her chair. Her eyes feel full of sleep and she rubs at them, but her wrist is caught around the strap of her bag. She shakes it free, but it won’t loosen. She looks down, squints, because the bright sunshine that has filled the sky since she came here has suddenly dulled and the doctor’s office is now gloomy and dull. She picks at the strap of her bag, even now wondering which bag she has with her today, because this material feels thick, not the normal thin leather or cotton of her usual handbags.
“Doctor Bastiaan!” she calls, but her voice is fuggy and thick sounding.
She closes her eyes again.
She was shackled, around her right ankle. Even now she can’t stand the touch of anything cold on the skin of her calf or shin.
She shakes her head as if to clear the memory. Because that’s what it is, a memory. Opening her eyes she runs her fingers down the strap of her handbag. Relief flows through her, soothing like the cool of the drink that doctor Bastiaan gave her. It’s not metal. She’s not shackled. It’s the strap of her bag.
So why can’t she move her arm? Is it possible she was in the MRI scanner right now? Had she somehow got a gap in her memory, had she forgotten travelling to the hospital? But no, that wasn’t right, you lie down in a big tunnel thing, she knew, she’d Googled it.
Wake up, Elian, for fuck’s sake, she hisses at herself in her head, slaps her hands up and down on her thighs. Wake up, look around you, figure out what’s going on.
“Doctor Bastiaan?” she calls out again, still running her fingers up and down her wrist. “Are you here?”
Two things happen simultaneously; first, she realises that it isn’t the strap of her bag that is wound around her arm, it is a rope, and it is firmly tied around her upper body, trapping her to the chair that she sits in. Before she can even fully process the realisation, a voice speaks up out of the darkness.
“He’s not here.” There’s a beat of silence, then the voice comes again. “And you better hope for your sake he’s not planning on coming back.”
It is a voice that Elian knows, it is a voice that has spoken to her before, a voice that had spoken about her, had called her ‘it’ and had called her a nigger. Had held her down and smashed his fist into her face so he could rape her with ease.
Elian opens her mouth and screams.
Lev had thought he was still under the influence of his massive drug binge when the man hauled the girl from Niko’s caravan down the stairs and shoved her inert body into a chair.
The strange man hadn’t said a word as he slowly and methodically tied the girl up. Lev watched from beneath heavy lidded eyes, his gaze flicking from the newcomer to dead Roland.
What is she doing here? The last he’d seen of her he was chasing her through the Red Forest back in Chernobyl, under orders from Fat Arnja to find her after she’d escaped his clutches. Had she … is it possible she’s followed him, Lev, all the way to the Netherlands? And why? For revenge? No, she’s just a kid, just a scrawny, little kid.
The man, his work finished, had walked back up the stairs, not even looking at Lev. Lev studied the girl as she slumped in her chair. She wasn’t dead, but he didn’t hold out much chance for her. For him, for either of them.
A noise from the other side of the girl had interrupted Lev’s thoughts. Lev grimaces, Roland’s body has been leaking puffs of air since the guy had killed him.
Lev sighs.
This was it, he’d thought. A dead end. The end. The finish of them all.
But now she has woken, and Lev has spoken, and she knows exactly who he is. Lev shouts at her to shut up, that he won’t hurt her, that he isn’t in any position to hurt anyone. He is in just the same position as her, tied up and helpless.
But she’s not hearing him, she’s just screaming, and as soon as one scream stops there is a moment of silence as she inhales to scream again.
Lev raises his eyes to the ceiling, frightened now that the man will come back down and finish them off because of the racket she’s making. Lev grasps the seat of his chair and bounces up and down, wriggling and shuffling and scraping, using all his strength until his chair is nearer hers.
“Quiet, be quiet now,” he urges.
She falls into silence, stunned no doubt that he is suddenly so close to her.
“I am in the same position as you,” he speaks in a rush, eager to get his words out
