but she also knew that the hepatitis one caught from needles was not contagious. But she was sorry as hell he had come. She didn't want to see him.
“Do you think we could talk?” She motioned toward her room, and the nurse led her back there slowly. When she got there, she lay down on her bed and she looked exhausted. Vasili was looking. at her strangely, and then he hung his head and she saw that he was trying not to cry. “I don't know what to say to you, Serena.”
“I don't think there's anything left to say, Vasili.” For the first time in a long time, when she looked at him, she felt nothing. No disgust, no anger, no sorrow, no love. In her heart there was silence.
His head shot up and the black eyes met her green. “What do you mean, there's nothing left to say?”
“Just that. What can one say after all we've been through? I'm sorry? Good luck? Good-bye?”
“We could try again.” His voice was sad and soft. But to her he still looked like a junkie. To her he always would. She would never forgive him.
“Could we? Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“That's what you said before.” She looked at him accusingly then. “If you'd been around and sober, I might not have almost died having this baby. Did you know that I almost died and we almost lost the baby? If Vanessa hadn't come to find me and called Teddy, we'd both be dead now.”
“I know.” The tears crept slowly out of his eyes. “Andreas told me.”
“Could you have lived with that?” He shook his head, and then looked up at her again.
“I can't forgive myself for anything I've done, and I will understand if you can't forgive me either. But I'm different now, I came so close to losing everything, both you and the baby, and even myself. If we tried again, I know that this time everything will be different.”
“I don't believe that anymore. How can you even say it?”
“I can't be sure. But I can tell you that I'll try with my whole soul. I can't give you more than that.” He approached the bed slowly and reached for her hand and gently kissed it. “I love you. It sounds like very little, but it's the best I've got. I'll do anything to keep you. I'll beg you … I'll crawl … Serena, you don't know how much I love you.” Her eyes filled with tears and spilled over as she listened. She bowed her head, and stricken, he reached out to hold her. “Oh, darling, please—”
“Go away … don't touch me.” She didn't want to want him again. She couldn't let herself go through that.
He forced her face up to his then. “Do you still love me?” She shook her head, but her eyes said she did, and when he looked at her, he could see all that she had suffered at his hands and at the birth of their child, and he hated himself for it. “What have I done?” He began to cry, and then suddenly he took her into his arms, and the only sound in the room was that of Serena sobbing. He begged her for another chance, but she was too overcome to answer. And then at last she asked him if he wanted to see the baby.
“I'd love to.” And then he remembered something. “Are you going home from the hospital tomorrow?”
“I'm leaving here.” Serena blew her nose and avoided his eyes. “But I'm not sure yet if I'm going to the house or a hotel.” She was thinking of staying at the same hotel as Teddy, the Connaught, before she made up her mind. He wasn't leaving for the States for a few more days.
“I see.” Vasili offered her an arm, and laboriously she took it, making her way slowly out of her room again and down the hall to where they could see the baby through the window. The nurse smiled when she saw Serena, and looked with interest at the man at her side, and then she remembered him from his pictures in the paper, but he looked very different. Nonetheless she recognized him and she was impressed, as she picked up his baby girl and held her up for him to see for the first time. He stood mesmerized by the tiny child with Serena's face and his shining black hair, and tears filled his eyes again as he watched her