Vanguard (20 page)

“It’s quite clear what’s happening in here!” she shouted back. “I have dysentery!” She suddenly cried out in pain, and Michael slammed his palms against the door in frustration. “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have cholera, for God’s sake! It’s fucking dysentery again; I get it all the time.”

Michael waited for a few minutes. Finally the lock clicked, and he pushed the door open. She lay on the floor with her arm over her face, humiliated. He sidled in and took a long, dispassionate look into the toilet.

“How long have you been passing blood?” His knees were weak with relief. None of the telltale signs of cholera was present. But the blood and mucus in the bowl concerned him.

“It started about half an hour ago. Happened the last time I had it too.”

He flushed the toilet and carried her back to bed. Her body shivered under his hands, burning with fever. A few minutes later, she threw up again, and he decided to get an IV into her before she became any more dehydrated. It took him three tries to get the needle in.

Michael didn’t know when the sun set and evening fell. Sophie lapsed into a state that was half sleep, half unconsciousness. He went upstairs to update his hosts, administering doses of the appropriate medications. The likelihood of transmission was low given their brief, casual exposure, but he couldn’t take any chances. He took the drugs as well, knowing he had a higher risk of exposure as Sophie’s primary caregiver and having just recovered from a serious disease himself.

When he ran out of things to do, panic came boiling up, so he called Anjali again as he sat by Sophie’s bedside.

“How is she?”

“Asleep, I think. Still febrile. Moderate internal bleeding. I have put an IV into her to keep her hydrated.”

“Sounds like you’re doing just fine,” Anjali said encouragingly. “Make sure you wear gloves and take the meds yourself. Does the kit have everything you need?”

“Yes, thank you.” Michael took a damp cloth and wiped Sophie’s forehead again, taking care not to catch the stitches on her forehead. It occurred to him that this could provide something else for him to do. “Anjali, do you want me to remove her stitches?”

“Sure, they’re due to come out.”

Michael disinfected the area, clipped the ends and removed the thread. The wound had healed well, but she’d have a scar running diagonally between her eyes now.

“One less thing to worry about,” he grunted. “Do you think this is where the infection entered the body?”

“Unlikely,” Anjali said. “It’s not like she split her forehead open in a latrine. It was a knife wound, and it was cleaned thoroughly before stitching. Mind you, she used her scarf to stop the initial bleeding in the Commandant’s office. Hardly a sterile item, it had been all over the camp. So it’s not out of the question.”

“Yes.” Michael mumbled a few more things without knowing what he was saying, then hung up.

A knife wound. In the Commandant’s office.

Michael had seen the men in Parnaas who had the symbols on their faces. They whispered that the Commandant himself cut it into the flesh of Orlisian men who had been called upon to offer their services to the camp. It was said to be done with the Commandant’s special knife, right in his office. Some had died of the subsequent blood infection.

He could feel his body start to tremble, and he groped blindly for a chair. He sat down before he fell down.

I will kill him with my bare hands.

Sophie twisted in bed behind him, moaning. Michael knew why the Commandant had chosen to mark her. The knife had been payment for allowing him out of the camp. The only question was how she had managed to escape with a single slash as opposed to the entire hammer and sickle the other men had borne.

She allowed a madman to put a knife to her face to protect me.

Michael heard a noise in the room and realized it was coming from him. He crammed his hand into his mouth to muffle the rising shriek inside him. He sat there, numb, as his world crashed down around him. Every barrier, every defense he had built over the last ten years collapsed in a heap at his feet.

I am a fool.

After all she had done for him…

“
How do you think I feel? I had to be rescued by a woman.”

Had he thanked her? Michael searched his memory for some evidence that he’d shown appropriate gratitude to her. He found none. His eyes stung with tears.

Sophie Swenda. The woman he loved more than his own life. She was everything,
everything
to him.

When were you planning on letting her know that?

She knew. Did she not? Did she not know how much he loved her? It always seemed to be such a natural part of who they were.

How would she know? When was the last time you told her?
He knew the answer to that question. Once. He had told her once in the last ten years that he loved her.

His mind whirled back. All the years, all the time that had passed since they had met. He had never visited her at Stanford. Her calls, emails, friendly texts had arrived regularly. His had been sporadic. Michael had used her a dozen times to get out of bad dates, yet he had never asked her out on one. Never taken her out for a nice dinner. Never even taken her to the movies.

But we both knew we had to be apart while we finished school and started our careers!

The unspoken agreement – that they had to wait until they had established their careers until they could truly be together. Now, ten years and four academic degrees between them, he had yet to lower the last wall and bring her into his life forever.

When they’d ended up in New York City together the previous summer, he’d dreamed of spending every minute with her. In fact, he had declined his second field placement with Médecins Sans Frontières so that for once he and Sophie could be in the same place at the same time. They would have done all the things they’d missed out on in the previous years. The summer of a lifetime, perhaps capped off by him asking her to share the rest of her life with him.

Instead, he’d stormed off to Orlisia, convinced he could save his country. And she had let him go…
given him her blessing
. Because he had asked it of her. Yet when she had begged to come with him, he’d lost his temper and said no.

She had thought of him as she lay with other men.

Michael was been jealous of every man who had ever dated her, ever made love to her. All through their GYL year together, he’d longed for her to leave Matthew – how he had come to despise that man! But she never had. He’d believed at the time that her unwillingness to do so had meant she did not truly desire a relationship with him. Eventually he’d understood that Sophie had not chosen Matt over Michael…she had chosen herself and her bright dreams. And for that, he could not fault her, for he had done the same.

You never told her how you felt. Maybe if you had, she would have considered it.

Instead of risking rejection from Sophie, Michael had dated Mirielle Desmarais. It had been years since he had thought of her, yet he’d given Mirielle more in their few silly months together than he’d ever given Sophie. He’d taken her to Orlisia for Christmas. Made love to her. Bought her pretty, meaningless presents. And in the end, she’d left him for Kyle because she’d known all along that his heart belonged to another.

Mirielle had told him in their long, final argument that he was a damn prideful fool for letting Sophie Swenda slip through his fingers. She had been right.

After Sophie had told him, in a casual phone conversation, that she’d lost her virginity to Matthew Cain the year after GYL ended, Michael had become so enraged with jealousy that he’d gotten into a drunken bar fight with a stranger. His Harvard classmates had had to pull him off the other man, and he’d been lucky to avoid being charged.

He hadn’t even known she was a virgin in their year together.

Yet Michael had lost his virginity years before GYL, when he was sixteen, to a girl whose name he could now barely remember. It had been of little consequence, just a rite of passage that every teenage boy went through. He’d told Sophie about it on the road, and they’d laughed about it. She hadn’t thrown a childish fit of temper because she was not his first lover.

Through all of his heartbreaking carelessness, she loved him. Michael had taken so much for granted for so many years. And still she loved him. Loved him enough to risk her life for him.

“Mikael.”

His head shot up out of his hands. Her eyes were glassy with fever, and Michael doubted she was fully aware. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Yes,
mana mila
,” he said softly around the lump in his throat.

“Am I? Am I really?”

“Are you what?”

“You’ve always called me that…
mana mila
. ‘My love.’ Am I really your love, Mikael?” He stared at her, wondering if she could read his mind as well as his soul.

“Yes.” Michael reached for her warm hands. “You are my love. My one and only love. You always have been and always will be.” He felt tears rising in his eyes. “I love you. Do you know that? I love you.”

“I know,” she said in a singsong voice. “I love you too, Mikael. I always have.” The tears brimmed over and ran down his face at her words. “It’s okay.” She switched to Orlisian. “I am here now. I will not leave. We are together now.” They were the same words he remembered from his dreams when he’d been in the grip of his own fever. The tears fell faster, and he knelt beside the bed, holding her hands as he cried.

~~ - ~~

Thirty-six hours later, Michael remained at her bedside. The fever had broken several hours earlier, and she’d slept peacefully all night. He sat back in the rickety chair and rubbed his eyes, exhausted.

He was so tired he couldn’t think straight. Over the last couple of days, he’d slept in short stretches and only because he knew he would be of no use to Sophie if he relapsed into pneumonia while she was still in the grips of the dysentery.

Michael kicked off his shoes and fell into bed beside her. Now he could sleep. Still, he wound his arm around her and pulled her close, just in case.

~~ - ~~

Sophie woke a few hours later, and could tell immediately that the worst was over. She looked down and saw a familiar arm wrapped around her ribs. Carefully, she removed it and hobbled to the washroom. It felt like something had died in her mouth, so she brushed her teeth twice for good measure. That action took most of her energy, so she shuffled back to bed, IV in hand. Michael looked terrible. He’d obviously had little sleep.

He’d been with her the whole time she’d been sick. Through the fever-induced haze, she remembered him saying over and over that he loved her. She wasn’t sure if that had been real or a dream. Either way, she felt both humbled and embarrassed. He’d nursed her through countless hours of explosive diarrhea and vomiting.

But in truth, who else but Michael did she trust that much? She lay down beside him, gazing at his face. She ran her fingers softly over his ravaged features, still unable to believe he was with her. His eyelids fluttered, then slowly opened.

“Hi,” Sophie whispered.

“
Mana mila
. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she replied, “thanks to you.”

~~ - ~~

Michael slept for twelve hours. By the time he woke, Sophie had cooked and eaten a bowl of plain rice. He seemed distraught that she’d gotten up on her own.

“It’s okay, honestly. I’ve done nothing but lie down for two days. It’s all right for me to move around a little.” She eyed him nervously. She wasn’t sure what had happened to him during the time she’d been sick, but he seemed different. Sweeter, maybe. Guilty?

Michael went out at one point and returned an hour later with ripe bananas.
Bananas in the winter in a warzone? Those must have cost a fortune!
He told Sophie that it was early evening outside. She had no idea what day it was.

“Bananas are good, easy on your digestive system.” He mashed them up in a bowl, and would have fed them to her if she’d let him.

“Michael,” she said after she’d finished the fruit, “is there something you want to say? Something you need to tell me?” He looked at her, green eyes wide and unreadable.

“Yes,
mana mila
, there is.” Her stomach dropped to her toes. He was going to tell her it was a huge mistake. “I did a lot of thinking while you were sick.” This sounded worse with every second, and she started to tremble. He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking down at his hands. She could see them shaking as well.

“I…I….” He broke off. “You are too far away.” He held his arms out to her. “Come to me. Please.” She padded over, snuggling into his arms. This wasn’t scary. This felt good.

He pulled her back so that they lay together on the bed. He’d changed the sheets while Sophie ate, and the fresh cotton felt cool. His fingers ran softly over her face, tracing her features, her mouth. She cupped his cheek, and he leaned into her hand. Then he slid forward and kissed her sweetly. She made a sound of disappointment when he pulled away.