Chapter Five : Himself

The air in the VIP suite was still, thick with the silence that followed Lucien’s exit. Dmitri Morozov did not move, his gaze fixed on the door that had just closed. The ghost of a true smile, one that held no pain, no performance, touched his mouth for a single, fleeting moment.

The doctor’s walls were not just high; they were beautifully, intricately constructed. And Dmitri had always enjoyed a complex demolition.

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Later that night, long after the shift change, Lucien found himself in his office. The hospital was a different creature in the dark—a sleeping beast whose heartbeat was the hum of generators and the soft, distant footsteps of the night staff. He should have been at home, reclaiming his five hours and fifty-three minutes. Yet, the pristine silence of his penthouse suddenly felt… insufficient.

His eyes fell on the leather-bound Rilke. He had not touched it. It sat on the corner of his desk, a dark, uninvited artifact.

“You have my body in your care, Doctor. Is it so strange that I wish to understand the mind that holds the scalpel?”

The words echoed, a persistent, low-grade fever in his thoughts. It was an intellectual virus, designed to bypass his defenses. Annoying. Profoundly so.

A soft chime from his monitor broke his reverie. The vitals feed from Suite 401. Dmitri’s heart rate had spiked, then sharply dropped. A common post-surgical fluctuation, but one that required note.

Lucien stood. This was protocol. This was logical. It had nothing to do with the conversation earlier.

He entered the suite without knocking. The room was lit only by the city lights filtering through the windows, painting Dmitri in shades of silver and shadow. He was awake, his face pale, a sheen of sweat on his brow. The tablet was dark, the book of poetry now resting on his chest, rising and falling with his labored breaths.

“The pain,” Dmitri stated, his voice strained. It wasn’t a question.

Lucien moved to the bedside, his movements silent and efficient. He checked the monitor, his fingers then going to Dmitri’s wrist, feeling for the thready, rapid pulse. The contact was clinical, but the skin was fever-warm. Alive.

“Your body is reminding you of its limitations,” Lucien said, his tone devoid of sympathy. He adjusted the IV, increasing the flow of a non-narcotic solution. “The pain is a teacher. I suggest you listen.”

Dmitri’s eyes, dark pools in the dim light, locked onto his. “And what does it teach, Doctor? That I am fragile?”

“That you are temporary. A concept men like you often forget.”

A sharp, pained exhale that was almost a laugh. “And men like you?”

“We are all temporary. The difference is, I have made my peace with the machinery. I do not rage against its inevitable failure.”

He went to withdraw his hand, but Dmitri’s own moved, startlingly fast. His fingers closed around Lucien’s wrist. The grip was weak, sapped by surgery and blood loss, but its intent was absolute. It was the first time Lucien had been willingly touched by another person in years.

He froze. Not in fear. In sheer, incandescent shock.

“Your pulse is elevated, Dr. Armand,” Dmitri murmured, his thumb resting over the frantic beat in Lucien’s wrist. “Is that the machinery raging?”

Every rule, every boundary, screamed in Lucien’s mind. Do not touch. Do not be touched. His own body was betraying his core philosophy, its rhythm shouting a truth his face would never reveal.

He wrenched his hand back as if scalded, the motion sharp and ungraceful. It was the first clumsy thing he had done in a decade.

“Do not,” Lucien’s voice was low, venomous, “ever touch me again. Your life is in my hands, Morozov. Remember your place. It is on that table, broken.”

He turned to leave, his own heart a wild, traitorous drum against his ribs.

“Lucien.”

The sound of his first name, spoken in that ruined, intimate voice, stopped him dead at the door. No one called him that.

He didn’t turn around.

“The poem,” Dmitri continued, his voice fading slightly with exhaustion. “The one I marked. It speaks of being victorious over strangers… but defenseless against the touch of a familiar hand.”

Lucien stood rigid, his back to the man, to the words, to the unsettling accuracy of the strike.

He left without a word, retreating to the sterile light of the hallway. But he could still feel the ghost of that warm, weak grip on his wrist, and the echo of a name he never used.

The game was no longer just about control over a patient’s body. It had become a battle for the soul of the surgeon himself. And as he walked back to his office, he knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, that he was no longer sure who was the healer, and who was the one being dissected.

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