Then he'd gone back upstairs and finished the oxygen panel. He had not asked her name. Looking at her now, standing beside that same black car in a charcoal coat that probably cost more than his monthly rent. He understood why she hadn't looked like a patient. Saraphina Vale was the CEO of Veale Nova Medical.
He'd seen her face on the equipment manuals. One of the most powerful figures in medical technology, known publicly for being brilliant, private, and entirely without weakness. She held out an envelope. He didn't take it. I know what this looks like, she said.
Do you? He said it wasn't a question. I need a husband legally. I need someone whose name is on specific documents before the end of this week. She didn't look away.
I'm told you just became available. The anger came fast and quiet. The way it always did with Malik. Not loud, not hot, just a door closing somewhere behind his eyes. You had someone looking into me.
I had someone confirm what I already suspected when I looked up who filed the service call that night. She paused. You saved my life and walked away. I needed to know who does that. Someone who wasn't interested in being thanked, he said, or hired.
She didn't flinch. I'm not offering you a job. I'm offering you a legal arrangement. 6 months, possibly less. Something moved behind her eyes.
Not emotion exactly, but the memory of it. I'm dying, Mr. Reading. And there are things I need to finish before I run out of time. He should have walked away.
He knew that instead, 40 minutes later, he was standing in the hallway of a brownstone on the north side of the city, looking at a door that Saraphina had pushed open without ceremony. It was a child's small bed with a white frame, still made up as if someone might sleep in it tonight. Drawings tacked to the wall, a child's drawings faded at the edges, a mobile above the bed, the kind with paper stars slightly yellowed, everything preserved, everything exactly as it must have been 16 years ago. I was 25, Saraphina said from the doorway. She didn't come in.
My family told me that if I kept her, the veil name would be the first thing that destroyed her. They had lawyers and I had nothing. I signed the papers they put in front of me and I have been trying to find her ever since. Malik looked at the mobile. One of the paper stars had come half loose, trembling slightly in the air from the open door.