She was deeply touched by his concern, but her life, for so long, had been nothing but risk and mortal danger that this was nothing new. She lifted one hand up and placed it against his cheek. “The choice is mine, and I accept it. If I’m going to live on, I don’t want it to be in the shadows anymore. I want a life I’m not ashamed of. Can you understand that?”
She could see that he did understand, but he looked, if anything, more apprehensive than she felt herself. After all that she had been through, over such a span of time, even death held no great fear for her. With everything she had ever known—her family, her friends—already gone, how much lonelier could her life become?
And as for Sinclair…even if they were reunited, what would become of them? All that they could really do—she knew this in her very bones—was share their own profound loneliness and isolation from the rest of humanity.
“Should I go and get Darryl and Charlotte then?” Michael asked, and she nodded her agreement.
Michael left, and Eleanor remained, to sort through a tumult of emotions. Despite herself, she recognized that some sense of hope, of redemption, had been rekindled in her. And though she was reluctant to admit it, she knew it had something to do with the way that Michael Wilde looked at her.
And the way she found herself looking back.
A few minutes later, the door to the sick bay opened again, and this time Michael was accompanied by the others. Darryl, with his red hair sticking up like the comb on a rooster, was carrying a clear bag of fluid and Charlotte had a tray with several items on it—cotton balls, needles, alcohol, and a kind of bandage that conveniently adhered to the skin. Eleanor had seen the tray several times and knew the protocols by heart.
Charlotte took the chair that Michael had vacated and put the tray on the bed. Eleanor rolled up the billowing sleeve of her dress and watched as Charlotte applied the rubber tourniquet.
“Michael told you about the dangers of touching ice?” Darryl said, as Charlotte filled the syringe, an unusually large one, from the bag.
“Several times.”
“Good. Great,” he said, nervously. “And you might feel a certain flushing at first, from the sudden glycoprotein overload—it’s a highly concentrated solution—but I think it should pass pretty quickly.”
Charlotte shot him a glance and swabbed a spot on Eleanor’s forearm.
“I am prepared for anything,” Eleanor said. “And I have complete faith in my doctor.”
Which was true. After her initial shock, she had come to respect Dr. Barnes for her bold but friendly nature, and her reassuring bedside manner. That was something Eleanor had seen in Florence Nightingale, too—an ability to reach out to any patient and communicate a sense of calm and caring. Of course, in her own day, no one like Charlotte could ever have become a doctor—even if her sex had not barred her, her color most certainly would have done—but in this modern world that Eleanor might be about to join, many unimagined things were clearly possible.
The prick of the needle was barely noticeable, but the immediate effects of the fluid entering her veins was pronounced. Far from feeling flushed, she experienced a strange cooling sensation, like the trickle of a mountain stream running just beneath her skin. She shivered, and Charlotte looked up at her while still holding the syringe and said, “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Eleanor said. “I think so.” But was she? What would happen when the chill, which she could feel creeping up her arm, descended upon her heart?
“What are you feeling?” Darryl asked, and Michael, speechless, simply knelt by the edge of the bed, studying her face.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” Eleanor replied. “A bit, perhaps, like stepping into a cool bath.”
Beads of sweat—a cold sweat—dotted her brow as Charlotte withdrew the needle and hastily swabbed the puncture wound. “Maybe you should lie down,” Charlotte said, dropping the syringe on the tray and helping Eleanor to rest her head back on the pillow.
The room was swimming around her, and she tried closing her eyes, but that only made it worse. Opening them again, she saw Michael hovering above her, and she focused her gaze on his face. He had taken her hand, and she could feel the nervous sweat from his palm dampening her own.
Charlotte and Darryl stood behind him, also looking anxious, and Eleanor was moved that she had already been able to find three such friends in this strange and alien place. It bolstered both her hope and her incentive to live. Perhaps the loneliness that she had felt from the moment that she and Sinclair had absconded from the Barrack Hospital in Turkey might not be her permanent lot, after all. Perhaps there was an alternative. The internal chill had spread across her shoulders and into her breast, like the petals of a night flower blooming beneath her skin. She shivered again, and Michael quickly fetched a blanket from the closet and tucked it around her. She was inevitably reminded of the voyage aboard the Coventry, the ill-fated trip that had ultimately brought her to the Southern Pole, and the night that Sinclair had bundled her in every blanket and coat he could find…before he was attacked by the crew.