The Don Tore Up Our Divorce (Gemma and Cassian) novel Chapter 447

447 /448

Chapter 447
Gemma's POV

I stare at him. How am I supposed to answer that? I’m not Huckleberry Finn. How would I know? The question feels like it’s coming from another planet.

“Gemma,” he continues, as if we’re discussing the weather, “have you ever met Mark Twain?”

He’s unusually talkative today. It must be the pre-surgery nerves, manifesting in bizarre, trivial inquiries. “Mark Twain died before I was even born,” I reply, my voice flat. “Where would I have met him?”

“Oh.” That’s it. Just “oh.” He drops his gaze back to the book, the conversation apparently satisfying him.

When a nurse arrives to wheel him off for his battery of pre-op tests, I step over and pluck the book from his hands. “Focus on the tests. You can read when you get back.”

He gives me a long, inscrutable look but says nothing, allowing himself to be maneuvered out of the room.

The tests are a tedious, bureaucratic dance through the hospital’s sterile bowels—second floor for blood, fourth for scans, back to second for cardiology. I stick by his side as much as they’ll allow, a silent chaperone. In a corridor between X-rays, he looks up at me from the wheelchair. “Gemma, why don’t you read to me?” he asks again, like a child.

“It’s fine if you don’t read for a while,” I say, my patience wearing thin.

By the time he’s returned to his ward, it’s past six. The evening light is fading. With his surgery tomorrow, he’s on a restricted diet. I leave the book on his bedside table and head to the hospital’s small kitchenette to try and make something plain and edible.

The kitchen is a stark lesson in cultural difference. It’s bare, functional. No bread, no simple staples. I’m rummaging through empty cupboards, feeling utterly helpless, when a woman walks in. She’s middle-aged, with a kind, tired face.

“You speak English, right?” she asks in our shared language, her voice warm. “You want to make something?”

Relieved, I nod. “Yes. I want to make some sandwiches.”

To my surprise, she pulls a small induction cooker from a personal tote bag and hands it to me. “You can use this.”

I take it, bewildered. Do I really need to bring my own induction cooker to a hospital abroad?

She then bends and retrieves a fresh bag of bread from a lower cabinet I’d missed. “If you don’t have bread, you can use mine.” She explains that bread isn’t common here; the hospital doesn’t stock it.

The gesture is so kind, so unexpectedly generous from a stranger in a foreign land, that a genuine warmth spreads through my chest. “Thank you,” I say, meaning it, and set to work.

“What illness are you here for?” she asks conversationally, watching me.

I hesitate, then say, “I’m here with a friend. He has surgery tomorrow.”

She nods slowly. “Oh. Will it be okay?”

It’s a vague, odd question. “It should be okay,” I reply, though the complexity of Mikhail’s procedure sits uneasily in my gut. I believe he’ll make it. I have to.

Then I notice her mannerisms. She’s clasping and unclasping her hands. Her eyes dart to me, then away, then back again. It’s not friendly curiosity anymore; it’s something shifty, nervous.

“Do you have something to say?” I ask, my guard rising.

She takes it as an invitation. She sidles closer, her voice dropping to a confidential murmur. “You could buy insurance for your friend. Or, if you don’t want insurance…” She leans in, her breath too close. “You can sign a consent form for organ donation. If he doesn’t make it, you could sell his organs. Make some money.”