Chapter Forty-Two: The Neutral Ground
The car moved through the wet, sleeping city with a quiet, liquid grace. Amaya sat stiffly, her injured ankle propped awkwardly on the dash at his terse instruction, the paper bag with the forgotten pastry resting in her lap like a peace offering she didn't know how to accept. The pain had settled into a deep, persistent throb, a grounding counterpoint to the surreal disorientation of the night.
She didn't ask where they were going. The options seemed limited and equally fraught: the ER of his own hospital, where their professional and personal catastrophes would collide under fluorescent lights; or a late-night urgent care, where she would have to explain why her supervising consultant was bringing her in. The silence stretched, filled only with the hum of the engine and the soft swish of tires on damp asphalt.
When he turned into the underground parking garage of a sleek, modern high-rise, her confusion deepened. This wasn't a medical facility. It was residential. Expensively, impersonally so.
He parked in a reserved spot, killed the engine, and turned to her. The dim light from the concrete pillar cast his face in severe planes of shadow and pale gold. "My apartment is on the seventeenth floor. It has ice, elevation capabilities, and basic first-aid supplies. It is the most logical option."
His apartment. The inner sanctum. The place where he slept, where he lived outside the white coat. The idea of being taken there, injured and vulnerable, was more terrifying than any emergency room.
"Aris, no," she said, the protest weak even to her own ears. "This is... too much. Just take me to an urgent care. I'll call Richard, he can—"
"Richard is at the Warwick," he cut in, his voice devoid of inflection. "By the time he navigates crosstown traffic, your swelling will have worsened, complicating assessment and treatment. This is inefficient and illogical." He opened his door. "The decision is made."
He came around to her side, opened the door, and once more, before she could formulate another objection, he lifted her into his arms. This time, she didn't have the will to fight. The pain was a relentless drumbeat, and the sheer, exhausting strangeness of the night had worn her down to a numb acquiescence.
He carried her through the hushed, marble-lined lobby, nodding once at the night concierge who merely blinked, too well-trained to show surprise. The elevator was mirrored and silent. Amaya kept her eyes fixed on her own reflection—a pale, disheveled woman in a ruined silk dress, cradled like a broken doll against the crisp, grey wool of a man who looked like he'd never held anything so messy in his life.
The elevator opened directly into a private foyer. He shouldered open a heavy, dark wood door and carried her inside.
Aris Rowon's apartment was exactly what she expected, and yet it stole her breath. It was vast, open-plan, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering a breathtaking, dizzying panorama of the glittering city sprawled like a fallen galaxy below. It was impeccably clean, minimalist to the point of austerity. The furniture was low, modern, and sculptural in shades of charcoal, slate, and cream. There were no personal photographs on the stark walls, no knick-knacks on the glass and steel shelves. It looked like a showroom for a very expensive, very lonely life. The only signs of habitation were a stack of medical journals on a glass coffee table and a single, dense-looking hardcover book left open on an armchair.
But then, her eyes adjusted to the subdued lighting, and she saw the exceptions. Tucked in the corner of the living area, partly visible behind a low room divider, was a small, neat space. A child-sized table and two chairs. A box of wooden blocks, meticulously stacked. A few well-loved picture books aligned with geometric precision on a low shelf. And on the back of the larger chair, draped with care, was a small, faded yellow blanket.
Rihan's corner. The only spot in the entire sterile expanse that spoke of softness, of childhood, of love. It was a heart-breaking island of color and potential mess in a sea of controlled order.
Aris didn't pause to let her take it in. He carried her straight through the living area to a spacious, equally minimalist guest bedroom. It held a large bed made with hospital-corner precision, a nightstand, and a chair. He set her down on the edge of the bed with surprising gentleness.
"Wait here," he instructed, and disappeared.
She sat, hands clutching the edge of the mattress, her ankle screaming, her mind reeling. She was in his home. She could hear him moving in what she assumed was the kitchen, the clink of ice in a bowl, the rustle of a plastic bag.
He returned with a professional-looking first aid kit, a bowl of ice, a towel, and a glass of water. He knelt before her without ceremony, his focus entirely on her injury. He helped her swing her legs onto the bed, then carefully arranged pillows to elevate her foot. His fingers were deft and impersonal as he wrapped an elastic bandage around the swelling, his touch clinical, his gaze fixed on his task.
"You should take an anti-inflammatory," he said, not looking up as he opened the first aid kit and produced a packet of ibuprofen. He handed her the pills and the water.
She swallowed them obediently, the cold water a shock. He then applied the ice pack, wrapped in the towel, to her ankle with precise pressure. The immediate, numbing cold was a relief so profound she nearly groaned.
"Keep it elevated. Ice for twenty minutes, off for twenty. I will wake you to rotate." He stated it like a treatment protocol. He stood, looking down at her, a doctor having completed an initial intervention. "There are spare toiletries in the ensuite. Do you require assistance to use the facilities?"
The blunt, practical question made her face flame. "No. I can... manage." If hopping on one foot while clinging to walls counted as managing.
"Very well." He turned to leave, then paused at the doorway. He didn't look back. "The door has no lock. You are safe here. Try to sleep."
And then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him.
Amaya sat in the dim room, the city lights painting shifting patterns on the blank walls. The pain was subsiding to a bearable ache under the ice. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a hollow, shaky exhaustion. She was in Aris Rowon's apartment. In his guest bed. He had carried her here, treated her, and now he was somewhere in the vast, quiet space beyond the door.
She looked at the closed door, then at the empty glass in her hand. The utter surrealism of it all pressed down on her. The last time she had been in a bedroom of his, she had been a teenager proposing marriage. Now, she was a woman with a sprained ankle, a failed engagement, and a heart that still did a traitorous stutter at his proximity.
This wasn't a reunion. It wasn't a romance. It was a clinical solution to a logistical problem. She was a patient. He was a doctor. The neutral ground of his home was just another, more comfortable treatment room.
She set the glass on the nightstand, lay back gingerly against the pillows, and closed her eyes. The clean, faintly citrus scent of his laundry detergent on the sheets surrounded her. From somewhere in the apartment, she heard the soft, distant click of a door—his own bedroom, perhaps.
She was safe. She was cared for, in the most detached, efficient way possible. And as she drifted into a pain-dulled, uneasy sleep, the last thing she saw against her closed eyelids was not the glittering city, but the small, faded square of a yellow blanket, a lonely beacon of warmth in a cold, perfect world.