Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 93984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93984 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
“Please don’t hit the pedestrians,” Gabriel said calmly as Justin slammed on the brakes. The car came to a sharp halt just inches away from some visitor stepping outside to smoke a cigarette. When the guy finally moved his slow ass out of the way, Justin swung the car into a parking spot. The lot was reserved for those in the emergency room and would hopefully keep his car from getting towed.
“How are we doing this?” Justin asked. They should have settled this before they’d climbed into the car, but they’d gotten into an argument over where Gabriel should cut himself and why Justin wasn’t allowed to help. “Family?”
“Like you could fake your way through pretending to be related to me,” Gabriel sneered.
Justin tried not to think about the fact that his companion was already starting to look pale. How much blood had he fucking lost? “Lovers?”
“No,” Gabriel snapped. “My interpreter. You’d have to stay by my side.”
“Sure. What do you speak?” Justin said as he jumped out of the car. He rushed around and opened the door for Gabriel.
“Spanish.”
“Nope. Common around here. I’m sure half the ER speaks it.”
“French.”
Justin shook his head. “My French is really weak. I can’t fake that.”
Gabriel growled and narrowed his eyes on Justin as he got out of the car. He clutched his hand to his chest, the blood soaking into his black button-down shirt. “Russian.”
“Da!”
Gabriel muttered something under his breath that sounded a hell of a lot like, “I hate you,” in Russian.
Justin’s spoken Russian wasn’t perfect, but he could fake it better than French, and it was the little tidbit of information he’d been looking for when it came to Gabriel’s accent. There was something in the r’s and the occasional vowels that suggested his native tongue was one of the Slavic languages. He didn’t necessarily know if Gabriel was Russian, but he was definitely from that region. And he was confident that the more he heard the man speak, the more he’d be able to pick out clues.
As they walked to the ER entrance, Justin kept close to Gabriel’s elbow. He didn’t look steady on his feet, and Justin hated to admit that he wasn’t sure if it was an act or if the blood loss was affecting him more than Justin had expected.
“Are you really injured?” Justin asked in Russian.
Gabriel looked over at him as if he’d lost his mind, and he held up his bloody hand. “Da!”
Justin wanted to elaborate, but the automatic doors had already whooshed open and they were surrounded by coughing, crying, shouting people. Hospital workers rushed from one place to another. Some people were lined up to talk to the receptionist while others filled out paperwork. Everyone looked miserable in some form or fashion.
Gabriel walked up to the first person he spotted in scrubs, held up his dripping hand, and started shouting in Russian. The poor person instantly paled and took a step back as if Gabriel were waving around a gun.
“My friend has deeply cut his hand. We think he needs stitches,” Justin said, placing a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder as if to calm him. He forced himself to ignore what Gabriel was saying in Russian because it sounded too much like a translated nursery rhyme.
“Oh, yes. Yes. This way.” The nurse motioned toward a set of double doors that led out of the waiting room and into treatment.
That was a nice surprise. He’d never seen anyone moved through the emergency room that quickly—but then, dripping blood and ranting like a madman in a scary language didn’t help to keep the other patients calm. The nurse was probably thinking that stitches could be handled by anyone, and it was better to keep the mad Russian away from the rest of the people.
“Keep up the scary act because I really don’t think you can be seductive. That woman obviously has no interest in your dick,” Justin instructed in Russian as they followed the nurse.
“I’m not trying to be seductive, you fucking asshole. I’m in pain. And your accent is horrible,” Gabriel snapped back.
Justin pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. They followed the nurse through the busy ER to an open station with a bed and a small selection of machines. Curtains were pulled around them to give privacy, and then she snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves. “What’s your name?”
“Ivan Denisovich,” Justin quickly answered, earning a dark glare from Gabriel. There was a flash of some other emotion in his eyes that Justin couldn’t quite read. He’d picked the same name as the main character in the famous Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn novel. It was the first thing that came to mind, and they both knew the nurse wasn’t going to buy the name of Gabriel Prescott when Gabriel only spoke Russian. Was Gabriel a fan of the book, or did the name mean something else to him?