“Oh.” His smile evaporated.

“It’s that Tatiana nurse,” said Ina. “She is . . . well, frankly, I think she’s concentrating too much on the terminal cases. She ought to be helping the critical, but she’s always in the terminal ward trying to save the hopeless.”

So that’s where she was. “How does she do?” muttered Alexander.

“Not too good. They’re dying left and right there. But she stays with the patients until the end. I don’t know what it is with her. They still die, but—”

“They die happy?”

“Not happy, just — I can’t explain.”

“Not afraid?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, bending over and looking at Alexander. “That’s it. Not afraid. I say to her, ‘Tania, they’re going to die anyway, leave them alone.’ And not just me. Dr. Sayers keeps telling her to come and work in the critical wing. But she doesn’t want to hear it.” Ina lowered her voice. “Not even from the doctor!”

That brought a smile back to Alexander’s face.

“She’s got some mouth on her, too. I don’t know how she gets away with a tenth of the things she says to that nice man who is running ragged around this hospital. When they first brought you in, like I said, the doctor looked at you and shook his head. ‘He is bled out,’ he said, and he said it sadly. I could tell he was upset.”

Bled out? Alexander paled.

Ina continued. “ ‘Forget him,’ he said. ‘There is nothing we can do.’ ” She stopped washing Alexander for a second. “And do you know what that Tatiana said to him?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Alexander. “What?”

Ina’s voice was full of gossipy, hot frustration. “I don’t know who she thinks she is. She came up really close to him, lowered her voice, looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Well, it’s good thing, Doctor, that he didn’t say the same thing about you when you were floating unconscious in the river! It’s a good thing he didn’t turn his back on you when you fell, Dr. Sayers.’ ” Ina laughed gleefully. “I couldn’t believe her nerve. To talk that way to a doctor.”

“What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania.

“She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—”

“Where did she get it from?”

“Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.”

Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut.

Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.”

Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing.

“The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?”



That afternoon, when Tatiana came to feed him, Alexander took her hand and for a long time couldn’t speak.

“What’s the matter, darling?” she whispered. “What hurts?”

“My heart,” he answered.

She leaned from her chair to him. “Shura, honey, let me feed you. I need to feed ten other very sick people after you. One of them doesn’t have a tongue. Imagine the difficulty there. I’ll come back tonight if I can. Ina knows me. She thinks I’ve taken a shine to you.” Tatiana smiled. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Alexander still couldn’t speak.

Later that night Tatiana came back. The lights were out, and everyone was asleep; she sat by Alexander’s side.

“Tatia . . .”

Quietly she said, “Ina’s got a big mouth. I told her not to upset my patient. I didn’t want you to worry. She couldn’t help herself.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Alexander, what do you think? You think I was going to let you die when I knew we were meant to get out of here? I couldn’t get that close and then lose you.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he repeated.

“Husband,” she said, “did you forget Luga? God, did you forget Leningrad? Our Lazarevo? I haven’t. My life belongs to you.”


6


Alexander woke up and found Tatiana sitting in the chair. She was sleeping, leaning forward on his bed by his side, her blonde head covered with a white nurse’s kerchief. It was quiet and dark in the large room, and cold. He pulled the kerchief off her and touched the wispy strands of hair falling on her eyes, touched her eyebrows, traced his fingers around her freckles, her little nose, her soft lips. She woke up. “Hmm,” she said, lifting her hand to pat him. “I’d better go.”

“Tania . . .” he whispered, “when am I going to be whole again?”

“Darling,” she said soothingly, “you don’t feel whole?” She bent over him, cradling him. “Hug me, Shura,” she said. “Hug me tight.” She paused, and added in a whisper, “Like I love . . .”

Alexander put his arms around her. Tatiana’s arms went around his neck as she tenderly kissed his face, her hair brushing against him. “Tell me a memory,” he whispered.

“Mmm, what kind of memory are you looking for?”

“You know what I’m looking for.”

She continued to kiss his face lightly as her breathy voice whispered, “I remember one rainy night running home from Naira’s and putting our blankets in front of the fire, and you making the most tender love to me, telling me you would stop only when I begged you to stop.” Tatiana smiled, her lips on his cheek. “And did I beg you to stop?”

“No,” he said huskily. “You are not for the weak, Tatiasha.”

“Nor you,” she whispered. “And afterward, you fell asleep right on top of me. I was awake a long time holding your sleeping body. I didn’t even move you, I fell asleep, too, and in the morning you were still on top of me. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “I remember.” I remember everything. Every word, every breath, every smile you took, every kiss you laid upon my body, every game we played, every Bronze Horseman cabbage pie you cooked for me. I remember it all.

“You tell me a memory,” she whispered. “But quietly. That blind man across the ward is going to have a heart attack.”

Alexander pulled the hair away from her face and smiled. “I remember Axinya standing by the door of the banya while we were alone and inside and so hot and soapy, and I kept saying to you, shh.”

“Shh,” Tatiana whispered breathlessly, glancing over at the sleeping man across the ward.

Alexander felt her trying to pull herself away. “Wait,” he said, holding her to him and looking around the dark ward. “I need something.”

She smiled into his face. “Yes? Like what?” Alexander knew she knew the look in his eyes. “You must be healing, soldier.”

“Faster than you can imagine.”

Bringing her face flush to his, she whispered, “Oh, I can imagine.”

Alexander began to unbutton the top of her nurse’s uniform.

Tatiana backed away. “No, don’t,” she said softly.

“What do you mean, don’t? Tatia, open your uniform. I need to touch your breasts.”