“Anjali is here? And also Will?”
“Yes. RCI leads the coalition.” She heard Michael scrubbing months of filth off his body. Sophie couldn’t imagine how good he must have felt right now. She tried not to think about the fact that he was naked a few feet away from her.
He looked exhausted but clean when he emerged in fresh scrubs. A few days of treatment had made an enormous difference in him. His face had filled out now that he was hydrated, and his skin looked dramatically better.
“What?” he asked, noticing her gawking.
“Just looking at you,” she said defensively. “I haven’t seen you for a while, you know. Now do me a favor and brush your teeth. The state of your oral hygiene right now gives me the creeps.”
Sophie could tell it took all his strength to get back into the chair and stay sitting upright on the way back to the infirmary. Not that he would admit it. But neither did he waste time crawling into bed. Within minutes, he was asleep. She hooked up his lines again; she’d become quite adept at this rough-and-ready field medicine. She sat down on the bed beside him to work.
A few moments later, she felt a nudge. Then another one. She lifted her arm, and he snuggled against her body. She tried to concentrate on getting her work done, but it wasn’t easy. Especially when he flung his arm over her ribs and pulled her against him.
Sophie shut off the computer, tossed it on to the bedside table, and wrapped herself around him. She’d lived too long not knowing if he were alive or dead to waste these moments.
She didn’t know what time it was when she awoke. Michael’s face rested just a few inches from hers, his gaze uncharacteristically soft.
“Hi,” she said.
“I believe this is the first time we have shared a bed.”
“Unless you count the last few nights, yes,” Sophie replied. His brow furrowed. “Your fever spiked at 107 degrees. You became disoriented at times, and you wandered.”
“Where did I wander to?”
“My bed. Eventually Anjali agreed to let us share so you wouldn’t pull your lines out anymore.”
His cheeks went red with mortification. “I thought perhaps you were testing a new hospital bed allocation system.” He laughed, looking embarrassed. Then his face became very serious. “I told you not to follow me to Orlisia. Did I not?” She nodded. “Mana mila, why did you disobey me?”
“You should rest…”
“I am resting. See? I am lying down. I took lunch – if you could call that lunch – and received my medications. Now please tell me. Everything.”
“I will tell you what happened after you disappeared,” she said slowly. “But you must promise not to lose your temper.”
“I will try.” He twined his fingers through hers and waited.
So she told him. About receiving the last message from him. Forming the coalition. The New York Times story. The lunches with his parents. Pulling the mission together. The endless negotiations with the Soviet government. The achievements at the camp. As she talked, Sophie watched him struggle with his emotions. She paused for a moment, knowing that the things she would tell him next would be the hardest for him.
“Do you want me to go on?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice.
She described her interaction with the Commandant. The game of strategy she had played to secure Michael’s life. She even told him about the two Soviet soldiers assigned to ensure his eventual return. The only thing she didn’t tell was the truth about the wound on her forehead. That, Sophie could not tell him, even when he asked directly what had happened. He had had enough for today.
She got to the end and waited for the explosion. Michael had clamped his hand so hard around Sophie’s that some of her fingers had gone numb. He looked down at the bed, so she couldn’t see his expression.
“You’re very angry, aren’t you?” He nodded. “I knew you would be. Still, I had to do this. I would have done it even if you’d been safe in New York because this is my job.”
“You took many more risks, did many dangerous things, because of me.”
“Yes, I did,” Sophie admitted. “Risks I never would have taken had you not been caught up in this war. Risks that, in the end, paid off for many people besides you and me. There are more than one hundred thousand Orlisians in Parnaas. More will live because of what I did to find you. Perhaps it will help if you look at it that way.”
She put a finger under his chin and tilted his face up to hers. In his eyes, she could see a wildly shifting array of emotions. Humiliation. Shock. Gratitude. Disgust. Confusion. And dominating it all, the black Nariovsky rage that had undone them a thousand times before.
He jerked his face away, which she took as her signal to leave. Judging by the light, it must have been midafternoon. She could get a few hours’ work done in her quarters before the team returned. Sophie pried her hand loose and slid off the bed, picking up her laptop and notes from the bedside table.