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Dropping the pipe onto the floor, she folded her arms around her stomach

"Tania"

"Don’t, Doctor"

"You haven’t eaten, have you?" the doctor asked gently

Tatiana shook her head "I’ about food at all," she replied

In the ht they stopped by the side of the road Dimitri had already slipped on the Finnish unifor," Tatiana heard him say to Dr Sayers "I hope I don’t have to stand up in it Anyone will see it doesn’t fit me Do you have any more morphine? I’ive hiive hilish

Dr Sayers was quiet "He was nearly killed," he said at last "He has a very nasty open fracture" He paused "He ht I thought he’d be in a co" Sayers shook his head

Tatiana didn’t speak How could he still be standing? she thought How could the rest of us -- strong, resolute, spirited, young -- be falling on our knees, be de?

"Solish, "you will have to explain toto the back of the truck "Because I swear to Christ, I don’t understand at all"

"I do not think I could explain," whispered Tatiana

On the way to Lisiy Nos they were stopped half a dozen times at checkpoints for papers Sayers presented papers on hiton Dimitri, as a Finn na with the deadtaken back to Helsinki for a prisoner exchange All six tiht in Dimitri’s battered face, and then waved Sayers on

"It’s nice to be protected by the Red Cross flag," said Sayers

Tatiana nodded

The doctor pulled over by the side of the road, turning the engine off "Are you cold?" he asked

"I’h "Do you want a, when she was sixteen, the summer before she met Alexander, Tatiana had befriended an are Soviet The corporal let Tatiana and Pasha drive around in his truck for the whole su because he alanted to be behind the wheel, but the corporal was kind and let her behind the wheel, too She drove the truck well, better than Pasha, she thought, and the corporal told her she was a quick learner

"I kno to drive"

"No, it’s too dark and icy" Sayers closed his eyes for an hour

Tatiana sat quietly, her hands in her coat She was trying to remember the last time she and Alexander had made love It was a Sunday in November, but where was it? She couldn’t recall What did they do? Where were they? Did she look up at hia outside their door? Was it in the bath, on the couch, on the floor? She couldn’t reht? He made a joke, he kissed her, he s across to Volkhov to get pro to her?

He had been treht he was cold What else did he say? I’ll see you So casual Not even blinking What else? Remember Orbeli

What was that?

Alexander often told her fascinating little tidbits he picked up in the arenerals, stories about Hitler, or Rorad, about Richthoffen, von Paulus, El Alaomery It wasn’t unusual that he would say a word she didn’t understand But Orbeli was a word she hadn’t heard before, and yet there was Alexander -- asking her to reed Dr Sayers awake "Dr Sayers, what is Orbeli?" she asked "Who is Orbeli?"

"Don’t know," Sayers replied sleepily "Never heard of it Why?"

She said nothing

Sayers began driving again

They got to the silent, sleeping border between the Soviet Union and Finland at six in the

Alexander had told Tatiana it wasn’t really a border, it was a line of defense, which meant there was anywhere from thirty to sixty meters between the Soviet and Finnish troops Each side marked its territory and then sat and waited out the war

To Tatiana the Finnish conifer and oods looked like the Soviet conifer and oods they had been driving through for the last long hours of the night The headlights from their truck illuminated a narrow strip of unpaved road ahead Sunrise was slow in coested that if everyone was sleeping, maybe they could just drive across and present their papers to the Finns instead of to the Soviets Tatiana thought that was an excellent idea

Suddenly someone yelled for them to halt Three sleepy NKVD border troops came up to the doctor’sSayers showed the over the doculish, "A cold wind, isn’t it?"

And in clear English, she replied, "Very bitter They say it is going to snow"

The soldier nodded, and then all three men went around to take a look at Dimitri in the back of the truck Tatiana waited

Silence

The flashlight shined

Silence

Then, "Wait," Tatiana heard "Let ht shined

Tatiana sat immobile and listened intently

She heard one of the soldiers laugh and say so to Dimitri in Finnish Tatiana didn’t speak Finnish, so she couldn’t guarantee that it was Finnish, but the Soviet soldier spoke to Die Tatiana didn’t understand, and obviously Dimitri hadn’t understood either, because he did not reply

The Soviet officer repeated his questionin what sounded to Tatiana like Finnish After a short snickering silence from the troops, one of them said, in Russian, "Get out of the truck"

"Oh, no," whispered Dr Sayers "Are we caught?"

"Shh," said Tatiana

The soldiers repeated their order to Diet out of the truck He didn’t move

Dr Sayers turned around and said, in Russian, "He is wounded He can’t get up"

And the Soviet officer said, "He’ll get up if he wants to live Talk to your patient in whatever language he speaks and tell hiet up"

"Doctor," whispered Tatiana, "be very careful If he can’t save himself, he will try to kill us all"

The three NKVD soldiers dragged Dimitri out of the truck and then ordered Sayers and Tatiana out The doctor came around and stood by Tatiana’s side near her open door His slender body was slightly in front of her Tatiana, feeling herself weakening, touched Sayers’s coat, hoping for soth She felt ready to faint Diht a few meters away from them, dwarfed by the Finnish uniforer soldier

Laughing, their rifles trained on him, one of the NKVD troops said, in Russian, "So, hey, Finn, we ask you how you got your face wound, and you tell us that you are going to Helsinki You want to explain?"

Dily at Tatiana

Dr Sayers said, "Look, we picked hirievously wounded--"

Ied Dr Sayers "Keep quiet," she whispered "It’s trouble"

"He rievously wounded," said the NKVD rievously Finnish" The three soldiers laughed One of the NKVD nizeup "It’s ood arm "Keep your hand above your head!" the NKVD soldier yelled, laughing "Keep it up" Tatiana saw they were not taking Di Where was Dimitri’s weapon? she wondered Did he have one on him?

The two other soldiers stood a short distance away fro his rifle

"Know him?" Rasskovsky exclaiotten how arettes? And how I had to pay because I just couldn’t be without hed "Just four weeks ago I saw you Have you already forgotten?"

Dinize you just because of the pretty color on your face?" Rasskovsky see, can you explain what you’re doing wearing a Finnish unifor in the back of a Red Cross truck? The arm and the face I understand Someone didn’t like your extortionate prices?"

One of the other two soldiers said, "Rasskovsky, you don’t think our runner is trying to escape, do you?" Everyone roared with laughter

Under the glare of the lights Diaze for only an instant Then she turned her whole body away and ht around herself "I’m cold," she said

"Tatiana!" yelled Dimitri in Russian to her "You want to tell them? Or should I?"

Rasskovsky turned to look at her, and said, "Tatiana? An Aoing on, here? Why is he talking to her in Russian? Let ain"

Dr Sayers showed Tatiana’s papers They were in order

Looking right at Rasskovsky, Tatiana said in English, "Tatiana? What is he talking about? Listen, what do we know? He said he was Finnish Right, Doctor?"

"Absolutely," Dr Sayers replied, stepping forward and away from Tatiana and the truck, his friendly hand on Rasskovsky’s back "Listen, no trouble, I hope He came to our hospital--"

At that moment Di in front of Tatiana

She wasn’t sure who with his left arm -- but she wasn’t about to stand there to find out She dropped down He could have been ai at the NKVD man He could have But he missed and shot Dr Sayers instead Orat her -- standing behind the two men -- and missed Tatiana didn’t want to think about it

Rasskovsky ran toward Di Rasskovsky Dih to turn his fire on the other two NKVD soldiers, who, as if suspended in still life, struggled to remove their rifles from their shoulders Finally they opened fire on Dimitri, as thrown several meters by the force of the impact

Suddenly there was return fire from the woods This fire was not slow and methodical bolt-action fire -- the es, flip open bolt, thu ated, flattop front end and the entire windshield The two NKVD men disappeared

Theof the cabin door above her shattered, and Tatiana felt soe itself in her cheek She tasted liquidsharp inside her mouth When she opened her mouth, blood dripped out She had no ti under the nose of the truck

Tatiana saw Diround out in the open There was an endless barrage of fire, a stifling ringing, a constant popping against the steel hood of the Red Cross truck

Tatiana crawled out, grabbed hold of Dr Sayers, and dragged hishi, or was it the strobe lights of gunfire? No, it was hi to crawl to the truck From the Soviet side a mortar shell flew into the air and burst in the woods Fire, black smoke, screams From here? From there? She couldn’t tell There was no here or there There was just Diruous headlights, searching for her, finding her, and in the second or then there was no noise she heard hi for her: "TatianaTatianaplease" with his hand outstretched Tatiana closed her eyes

He will not co noise, a flash, and then a charge that exploded so close that the wave pushed her head into the undercarriage of the truck, and she lost consciousness

When she came to, Tatiana decided not to open her eyes She couldn’t hear very well, having just come out of a dead faint, but she felt warm, as if she were in the hot bathhouse in Lazarevo when she would throw hot water on the rocks and the rocks would sizzle and release steam Dr Sayers was still partially underneath her body There was nowhere for her to go Her tongue ran over the sharp object in her ain She tasted metallic salt

Sayers felt clammy Blood loss Tatiana opened her eyes, felt around on him A small flame behind the truck illuminated the doctor’s pale face Where was he hit? With her fingers she felt around under his coat and found the bullet hole in his shoulder She didn’t find the exit hole, but she pressed her gloved hand into his arain There was a blaze behind her, but there were nodid that take? Twoto slip down into a black abyss Not only could she not open her eyes, she did not want to

How long for her life to end, to continue? How long for Dr Sayers to sleep, how long for Di for Tatiana? Howdid it take for Alexander to rescue Dr Sayers and get hit himself? Tatiana had watched it all from the Red Cross truck, positioned behind the trees on the clearing leading to the slope to the river, the slope dohich Alexander ran for Anatoly Marazov

Tatiana had watched it all

Those twoAlexander run for Marazov, shout at Dr Sayers, run to Dr Sayers, pull hiest two minutes of Tatiana’s life

He had been so close to safety She watched the shell from the German plane fall on the ice and explode She watched Alexander fly headfirst into the arrabbed a box full of cylindrical plas, jumped down from the back of the Red Cross truck, and ran down the eht near the ice by a corporal who yanked her down and yelled, "What are you, crazy?"

"I’m a nurse," she said "I have to help the doctor"

"Yes, you’ll be a dead nurse Stay down"

She stayed down for exactly two seconds She saw Dr Sayers hiding behind the armored vehicle that protected hi for help She saw Alexander not getting up Tatiana jumped up and ran out onto the ice before the corporal could utter a sound She ran at first and then got scared by the crashing artillery shells and dropped onto her sto the rest of the way Alexander was ing red stain on the right side of his back, surrounded by black ash Tatiana crawled on her hands and knees to him and pushed the helmet away from his blood-covered head

One look at Alexander’s face told Tatiana he was about to die

He was gray and flaxen The ice underneath hi in it Tatiana said, "Hypovolereed While he was searching for a surgical instrument to cut open Alexander’s sleeve, Tatiana took off her hat and pressed it hard into Alexander’s side to slow his blood loss Reaching down into his right boot, she pulled out his ar, "Here, use this" She didn’t think she breathed once

Sayers cut open Alexander’s coat and his uniform to expose his left foreare, a tube, and a plaset the stretcher and so on Alexander’s wound, cut open his other sleeve, got out another bottle of plase, another catheter, and attached it to a vein on his right foreare so that it dripped the fluid into Alexander’s body at sixty-nine drops ainto him as hard as she could, her white hat and her white coat saturated in his blood, waiting for the stretcher and , "Come on, soldier, come on"

By the time the doctor came back, her plasma bottle had e off her stained coat, Tatiana laid it on the stretcher sideways, and when they lifted Alexander onto it, she wrapped her coat tightly around his wound He was excruciatingly heavy to lift, because his clothes et Dr Sayers asked how they were going to carry hi to pick him up on three and carry hi to carry hi, yes, I will carry hiled with the Soviet doctors, with the Soviet nurses, and even with Dr Sayers, who had taken a look at Alexander’s blood loss and the hole in his side and said, forget it We can’t do anything for hiram of morphine, but no more

Tatiana hooked an IV to Alexander’s vein herself and fed hih, she gave Alexander her blood And when that wasn’t enough, and it looked as if nothing was going to be enough, she trickled blood from her arteries into his veins

Drop by drop

And as she sat by him, she whispered All I want is for h your pain I sit here with you, pouringyou’ll lift your head to ain Shura, can you hearyou know you’re still alive? Can you feelyou know I believe in you, I believe in your eternal life, I believe you will live, live through this and groings to soar over death, and when you open your eyes again, I will be here I will always be here, believing in you, hoping for you, loving you I’ht here Feel me, Alexander Feel me and live

He lived

Now as Tatiana lay under the Red Cross truck in the coht, did I save him so he could die on the ice without ed body, the body that loved ht? Could my Alexander have fallen alone?

She would rather have buried hih this Would rather have known she had given hih another starless second of this

Tatiana could not endure another moment of herself Not anotherleft of her

Dimly she heard Dr Sayers moan Tatiana blinked, blinked away Alexander, opened her eyes, and turned to Sayers "Doctor?" He was semiconscious The forest was still The daas steel blue Tatiana disentangled herself fro her face, she saas covered in blood Her fingers touched a chunk of glass stuck in her cheek She tried to pull it out, but it hurt tooit by one side, Tatiana wrenched it out, screah

She continued to screah the barren woods Her hands gripping her legs, her stomach, her chest, Tatiana knelt in the snow and screamed as the blood dripped froround and pressed her bleeding cheek into the snow It wasn’t cold enough It couldn’t nu sharp in herup, Tatiana sat in the snow, looking around It was eerily quiet; the bleak, bare birches contrasted somberly with the white earth No sound anyray branch out of place Deep in the s were out of place The Red Cross truck was ruined One NKVD ht of her Diround within a meter of the truck His eyes were still open, and his hand remained extended to Tatiana, as if by some providential miracle he expected to be delivered from his own eternity

Tatiana stared for a moment into Dimitri’s frozen face How Alexander would enjoy the story of Dinized by the NKVD She looked away

Alexander had been right -- this was a good spot to get through the border It was poorly htly armed; they had their rifles, and froh to keep theer shells On the Finnish side of the border things were quiet, too Despite the size of their shells, were they also all dead? Looking through the trees, Tatiana could see no movement She was still on the Russian side What to do? New NKVD reinforcements would no doubt be here soon, and she would quickly be whisked away for questioning, and then?

Tatiana felt her sto

She crawled back under the Red Cross truck "Dr Sayers," she whispered, putting her hands on his neck "Matthew, can you hearHe was in bad shape; his pulse was around forty, and his blood pressure felt weak through his carotid Tatiana lay down by the doctor, and from his coat pocket she pulled out his US passport and both their Red Cross travel doculish that one Matthew Sayers and one Jane Barrington were headed for Helsinki

What should she do now? Should she go? Go where? And go how?

Cli It was hopeless Tatiana could see what extensive daunfire to the front end She peered through the woods across the Finnish side Was anyone ? No She saw human forms on the snow and behind theer than their Red Cross one That wasn’t the only difference between them: the Finnish truck didn’t look ruined

Tatiana hopped out and said to Dr Sayers, "I’ll be right back"

He didn’t reply

"All right, then," she said, and walked across the Soviet-Finnish border It felt about the sa in the Soviet Union Tatiana walked carefully a the half dozen dead Finns In the truck sat another et inside she would have to pull hiet inside she heaved him out, and he fell with a thud onto the tra in, Tatiana tried the key, still in the ignition The truck had stalled She put it in neutral and tried to start it again It was dead She tried again Nothing She looked at the gauge on the gas tank It said full Ju down, she went to the back of the truck and clias tank was punctured No, it was intact Tatiana went around the nose of the truck and opened the hood For acaine Hoould she know that?

Kirov

The word Kirov sent a long shudder through her body, and she fought off the iine, and she used to ines for tanks in the Kirov factory "I made you a whole tank today, Alexander!" What did she reines and the woods in Finland so much had happened that she could barely reet home

One

It was tram Number 1 They would take it part of the way home so they could walk the rest down the Obvodnoy Canal Walk, talking about war and Aine

She was cold She pulled the hat down over her ears

Cold Diesel engines had trouble starting in the cold She checked to see how many cylinders it had This one had six Six pistons, six combustion chambers The coet hot enough to cause the fuel to ignite Where was that little gloorm Tatiana used to screw in on the side of the colooret war below-zero air into the cylinders and expecting it to war;C in the one-up-one-down motion of the pistons

Tatiana looked about her Five dead soldiers lay in the vicinity She stuck her hand into the shter Alexander had always kept his lighter in the sht his cigarettes for hihter on, she held the s for a few seconds Then to the second one Then to the third By the tih all six, the first one was as cold as before she had started Tatiana had had quite enough Gritting her teeth and groaning, she broke a low branch off a birch and tried to light it The branch was too wet froht

She looked around in frantic desperation She knew exactly what she was searching for She found it behind the truck in a s a flamethrower Tatiana yanked the flamethrower off the dead Finn, her jaw set and her face dark, and strapped it to her back like Alexander’s rucksack Holding the propellant hose fir in the tank, flicked the lighter on, and pressed it to the ignition

Half a second passed and all was still, and then a white nitrate fla Tatiana backward onto the snow Nearly She re

She walked up to the open hood of the truck and pointed the flaine for a few moments Then a few more moments She could have stood there for thirty seconds, she couldn’t tell Finally with her right hand she popped the ignition lever down, and the handheld fire shut off Flinging the flamethrower off her back, Tatiana cliine creaked once and revved into life She started the truck in neutral, depressed the clutch, put the transear, and stepped on the accelerator The truck lurched forward She drove slowly across the defense line to pick up Dr Sayers

To get Sayers inside the Finnish truck required more out of her than she had

But not ht the Red Cross flag on Sayers’s truck

She found Di over to the truck, Tatiana reached up and carefully cut out the Red Cross badge How she was going to attach it to the tarpaulin on the Finnish truck, she had no idea She heard Dr Sayers moan in the back and then reot the kit, along with a plas away the doctor’s coat and shirt, she attached the plas, she looked over his inflamed wound, which was red around the entry hole and unclean The doctor was hot and delirious She cleaned the wound with sorim satisfaction she poured iodine onto her cheek and sat pressing a bandage to her face for a few lass were still inside her skin She wished she had some undiluted iodine and wondered if the cut would need stitches She thought it would

Stitches

Tatiana remembered the suture needle in the first aid kit

Her eyes clearing, Tatiana took the suture needle and suture thread, jue Red Cross symbol into the brown canvas of the Finnish truck The thin thread broke several times It didn’t matter It just had to hold until Helsinki

After she was done, Tatiana got behind the wheel, turned to the back, said into the small , "Ready?" to Dr Sayers, and then drove the truck out of the Soviet Union, leaving Diround