“So why is a surgeon examining me, not a neuropathologist?”
“It doesn’t take a specialist to identify post-traumatic neurosis. Besides, I told the man I was your husband, and so he should leave you to me.” Alexei smiled easily, looking as golden and healthy as a sun. “I know you wanted to finalize that divorce of ours, but we didn’t quite get around to it, did we? And maybe that’s not so bad. I’m in a position to help you here. I can make that political officer forget about the apology. If you ask nicely.”
“I will walk to Vladivostok barefoot before I ask you for a thing.” I wanted to leap up and sink my hands into his throat, but they were trembling too badly. I kept them clenched in my lap so he wouldn’t ask to see them and I wouldn’t have to admit they hadn’t stopped shaking in three days.
“Two weeks’ rest,” Alexei went on, ignoring my venom. “Valerian root infusion and a bromide solution to calm your nerves—”
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
For the first time since I’d known him, Alexei looked truly startled. “What?”
“Did. You. Kill. Lyonya.” The words jerked out in near gulps. “You had him on your operating table. You knew we wanted to marry. He comes in with seven splinters, and you can only get three of them out—” I stopped, rage boiling in my throat. The suspicion had haunted me since I saw Alexei coming blood-gloved out of the operating theater. “You son of a bitch, did you kill him?”
Alexei’s face shuttered. I saw anger there, but a vast, exhausted sadness as well. “You think I’d do that? Murder a man on my operating table?”
I refused to look away. “Did you?”
“Look, maybe you think I was a shit husband, and maybe you think I’m a shit father—”
“You are a shit father,” I hissed.
“—but you can never say I am a shit surgeon. I put in fifteen hours in that operating theater every day; you think I notice names and faces anymore? I didn’t realize it was your golden-boy lieutenant until it was done. I broke the news to you myself as a courtesy—”
“You are never getting thanks from me. Not for doing your sworn duty by a wounded man. If you did—”
“I couldn’t have saved him if he’d been hit by those splinters right on the operating table in front of me. Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker couldn’t have magicked them out of his lungs.” Alexei pushed back from my chair. “Believe me or not, Mila.”
He walked away, looking like the weariest man in the world. I simply sat there. My head ached dully. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I barely knew what I was saying or seeing or thinking; I hadn’t slept in three days and nights. When I tried, I just lay aching and exhausted on the cot in Lyonya’s dugout, which I’d probably have to vacate soon for the new company commander.
“We have a bed for you, Comrade Senior Sergeant.” An orderly helped me up when it was clear I wouldn’t rise on my own. “Two weeks’ hospital rest, starting now.”
No, I thought. I want to be out hunting. Killing the men who killed Lyonya. But I wasn’t up to it, and that was the terrible truth. The day of the funeral I came back to the dugout, ripping off my parade uniform for my camouflage smock, picking up my Three Line . . . and I realized my hands were trembling too badly to push a single bullet into the chamber. They kept spilling from my fingers as I tried. The rifle might as well have been a club, not my deadly midnight partner with her inaudible song. If I tried to take her out, I’d miss every shot I tried. I’d get myself or my platoon killed.
Get over it, Pavlichenko, I tried to tell my shaking hands as the orderly showed me to my cot—but all I could think was that if I hadn’t dragged my damned heels on my divorce for so long, I’d be calling myself Kitsenko instead. “I should have married you,” I whispered, sinking into the cot.