Sighing when he heard tires rolled to a stop on nearby gravel, Vaslav instantly regretted not downing what remained of the almost two liters of vodka when he still had the chance. That time ran out the second his newly appointed nurse, Igor did not think that joke was funny, knew Vaslav had access to the liquor.
“Where did you get the vodka? Did you hide that from me?” Igor demanded, his every word punctuated by a stomped foot through the grass.
Vaslav didn’t dignify Igor’s question with a response, but he did straighten up a little more in the chair. Just in enough time to watch the man yank the bottle up from the ground. Then, he promptly tipped it over and dumped the two or three mouthfuls that remained onto the ground at his feet.
“Waste of good vodka,” Vaslav cursed at his friend. “I should kill you—”
Igor let out a hard exhale, and his stare nailed into a suddenly still Vaslav in the chair. “Do you want the fucking seizures to stop, or not?”
“Right now, it’d just be good if the sky would stop swirling.” Vaslav glanced down, muttering, “And the ground, too.”
Igor spat a Russian curse and whipped the bottle to the ground. The thick glass didn’t even crack, and even bounced a little before coming to a stop at Vaslav’s feet.
“No alcohol, no Vicodin, you know this!”
“But I didn’t agree,” Vaslav replied through a grinding jaw.
He half agreed, to be frank. Hence the molar pain from his sore jaw because he’d been twenty-four hours since his last dose of an opioid narcotic, and of any pill, actually. He couldn’t say as much for the liquor, but that wasn’t because he’d been craving vodka.
Vaslav simply wanted to sleep.
It wasn’t asking much, but if he couldn’t take his regular cocktail of medication to get through a day and night, then living was a second-by-second battle for survival at times. Like now.
Who would have known that mixing nearly a liter of vodka a day with a handful of pills meant to either help his head, his gut, or his sleep wasn’t exactly great for his health? Once Igor learned Vaslav had been in contact with the doctor responsible for the newest file on his desk, the one full of reports on brain scans and imagery, he didn’t waste time getting on the phone.
To the doctor in question, that was.
Vaslav wasn’t interested in being the guinea pig for anyone’s game of Ring Around the Medications, but a conversation with the doctor over the phone, while Igor listened in, at least convinced him of one thing.
The seizures were likely his own doing.
Accidentally, of course, as Doctor Bogdan Nikitin had opted to carefully explain to Vaslav. He couldn’t just mix pills to his liking even if he did have ready access and it seemed to make things better for a short time. Add liquor into his cocktail, and blood toxicity was a real possibility. The man offered to do bloodwork to confirm, which Igor said Vaslav should do, but he refused.
He’d go clean first.
No pills.
No mixing.
Less stress could help too, the doctor had said just before Vaslav ended the conversation without a proper goodbye.
He’d barely wanted to make the phone call, let alone get an entire list of orders he was required to follow that would do nothing to make his days bearable.
Bullshit.
Every bit of it.
Unless it worked, he mused.
Vaslav chuckled at his inner thoughts, and the action wasn’t missed by Igor who shot him a curious, but not amused, glance.
“Did you really have to guzzle it while I was down the hill?” he asked Vaslav.
He shrugged. “You would have tried to take it from me.”
“You sound like a child.”
Vaslav chuffed. “You’re entitled to your wrong opinion.”
“Vas.”
Ugh.
“I need to sleep tonight,” he said. “Give it twenty minutes, and the vodka will finish me right off.”
“Try a hot shower. I’ll even help you back to the house.”
“While a knife stabs through your eyeball?” Vaslav shot back. “That’s going to be a hard task for you.”
“Knock it off.”
“Ah.” He waved Igor off. “I let you clean out the house of any pills.”
“I thought liquor, too.”
Vaslav squinted at that. “I need something.”
And it couldn’t be a half of a pack of sleeping tablets, according to that prick in the city. Not on top of everything else.
“At least tonight—Christ, it’s only been a day,” Vaslav added.
Not even a good day, for that matter. If he were an honest man, Vaslav might admit that having Vera as close as he did, but not within the four walls of his own home, did not help the matter of his mood or the constant churning in his gut.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” Igor said.
Vaslav let out a heavy breath. “Maybe, yeah.”
“You don’t have to speed it up, no?”
The morbid joke landed perfectly for a tipsy Vaslav who knew better than to down nearly two liters of vodka within the time span it would take his man to drive the ROV down to the guesthouse and power off the generator system for the evening. That didn’t mean he intended on telling Igor he was right, though.
“Are they fighting, do you think?” he asked without warning.
Igor seemed to know who he meant without the explanation. “Wouldn’t you know better than me? I found you pounding in fence posts with the man this morning again.”
Vaslav rolled his eyes, refusing to admit that the entire time he was down the hill earlier in the day, Vera had all but refused to speak to him. Clearly, she still had feelings about their discussion the day before. “That’s the only thing I like about him; he’s willing to do a job with me.”
“I offered to do that job with you,” Igor pointed out.
“You talk while we do it. And you didn’t answer me. Are they getting along?”
Igor sucked on his two front teeth, muttering, “I’m not sure. He’s not that interested in having a conversation with me whenever I’m around. I don’t take offense. Her father isn’t exactly here to chat with me, is he?”
Vas tipped his head to the side in silent agreement, but then he replied, “He also doesn’t have a choice but to be where he is.”
Neither did she, in a way.
Igor passed Vaslav a wary glance. “Kiril still doesn’t believe you won’t cut off his dick for going into Vera’s place last night to pack a weekend bag.”
“He does understand that it would have been already done, yes?” Vaslav asked back. “I told him to do it. I got on the phone myself.”
The other man only shrugged.
“Explains why he’s been missing all day,” Vaslav said to himself.
“Yeah, well ... You know you’re going to puke all that vodka up, yeah?” Igor asked, his concerned tone warring with his disgust.
Yes.
Yes, he did. Vaslav could already feel it sloshing because he’d taken that forty-percent way too fast for his stomach and liver. Yes, he’d puke until he couldn’t anymore.
And then he would feel like absolute death.
“But I’ll sleep,” Vaslav mumbled.
Like a fucking rock.
That’s what mattered.