“When can I get back to my company?”
Alexei pushed me back down. “It’ll be two weeks before your stitches are even out.”
“Ten days,” I rasped. “On the eleventh I start ripping them out with the nearest broken bottle.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” My husband regarded me, thoughtful. “On the boat I thought you were having me on, all that guff about one hundred and eighty-seven kills. I’ve heard things since then . . . You weren’t joking after all, were you?”
I pressed my lips together, looking up at the ceiling.
“What is it now, kroshka? Over two hundred? Considering the little breadcrumb I once married, I can hardly—”
“You will please address me by my rank, Comrade Lieutenant Pavlichenko.”
“Just teasing, you never could take a joke—”
“Is our problem patient making a nuisance of herself?” Lena, to my intense relief, breezed up with a basin of water. “I’ll check her stitches, Comrade Lieutenant, they need you back in the operating theater.”
Another long thoughtful look, and Alexei strode off in a parade-ground swing. His absence seemed to widen and lighten the whole room; suddenly I was aware of the other cots in my row, the patients stone-still or thrashing under their blankets, the smell of antiseptic and copper. Suddenly I could draw a deep breath, even if it made my stitches feel as though they’d been doused in fuel and set alight.
“All the surgeons in the battalion, why is he the one who ends up working on me?” I demanded, coughing again.
“Because he asked to be alerted if you were brought in. All the doctors do that for the soldiers they know. Same with the orderlies—why do you think it’s always me checking your stitches? Speaking of which, turn over.” Lena helped me onto my side, pretending she didn’t notice the hiss of pain I couldn’t suppress. “So that’s the husband, eh? He’s a looker. Half the women in the medical battalion are trying to get in his pants.”
“They can have him.” I braced, feeling the cold air on my naked back, the bandages unwinding. “Does he ever give you any trouble?”
“I have a feeling I’m too old for him,” Lena said, very dry. “He’s always chasing the young, dewy, wide-eyed ones. He did pretty work on these stitches, though, I’ll say that. The other surgeons, if they’re young they’re inexperienced, and if they’re old they’re drunks. Your Alexei did twenty-hour shifts this past week and never fumbled a single incision.”
Cold conceited bastards make good surgeons, I thought. “The attack—do you know anything about 2nd Company? My platoon?”
“Your partner came by to give blood, stalking around like a wolf until they said you weren’t going to bleed out on him. He left to take command of the platoon, but he gave me this for the moment you woke up.” Lena passed me a folded square of paper. “The casualties.”
Bless you, Kostia. I scanned the names in his handwriting, which was small and square. I’d never seen it before—strange how you could fight beside someone for months, know every intimate detail about them from how they yawned to how they exhaled to how they tapped their fingers against a thigh to expel fear, yet not know what their handwriting was like . . . I breathed shaky relief. Only one death, my youngest recruit, and the rest unscathed except for minor wounds. Old Vartanov had made it, and thickheaded Fyodor, and Kostia . . . and me.
I still didn’t entirely believe I’d made it. I’d been so sure my time was up.
“You’ll heal faster than you have any right to,” Lena was saying cheerfully, bandaging me back up. “You lead a charmed life, you lucky bitch.”
“Charmed.” I eased back into my hard pillow, closing my eyes. I loved Lena, but right now I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even her. Lucky.