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Paullina Simons

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“What are you so worried about? What makes you think if we got together that we’d even stay together? We wouldn’t, most likely. Nothing is permanent, especially in this town. Everything is just another set, waiting to be dismantled and hauled to the dumpster. We’d hook up, have some fun for a few weeks, a few laughs, nothing wrong with that. And then we’d go out separate ways. It would end the way most things end. I’d think about you for a while. Maybe you’d think about me. I’d ache for you a little bit, the way one does when things are over, even things that aren’t meant to be. I’d get busy with my life. You’d get busy with yours. We’d say we’d keep in touch. But we never would. And when people asked, we’d say we had a thing once, you and me. One minute it was, and the next it wasn’t. It didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It just wasn’t forever. And years later maybe we’d run into each other on the street somewhere, and you’d barely remember my name. And I’d barely remember yours. I’d say to you, hey, remember how you once loved me? And you’d say sorry, not really. And I’d say yeah, me neither.”

“For what?" "I don't know," she said, lowering her gaze. "To go with you." "Go with me where?" he gasped. "Anywhere." She turned her eyes up. "Anywhere you go." Tatiana said, "I will go with you." Alexander tried to speak but couldn't; he found himself without words. "But, Tania...I'm going back to the front." She was looking down at the ground. "Are you, Alexander?" she asked quietly without looking up. "Of course. Where else would I be going?" Her eyes stared at him with profound emotion. "You tell me." Blinking and stepping away from her, as if being too close to her left him unprotected, Alexander said, still holding her backpack, "Tania, I'm going back to the front. Colonel Stepanov gave me extra time to come here. I gave him my word I would return." "And that's one thing about you Americans," she said, "you always keep your word." "Yes, that's one thing about us," Alexander said bitterly. "It's no use talking about it. You know I have to go back." Shivering. Tatiana raised her seaweed eyes to him and in a small voice said, "Then I'll go back with you. I'll go back to Leningrad.”

“(...) it's a good thing we were just having fun, Antman. Makes it easier for you to go. Thank you for having a good time with me. Thank you for the moonlight waltzes you and I have never had, thank you for the promises we never made, for the sun that didn't shine above our heads. Aren't you glad you're not breaking my heart? Aren't you glad now, when you are leaving, that you're not in love with me?”

“What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania. “She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—” “Where did she get it from?” “Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.” Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.” Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing. “The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?”

“They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on his chest, on his heart, on his lungs that took air in but could not move air out, on his open wound; her eyes were on him, and in their eyes was every block of uncounted, unaccounted-for time, every moment they had lived since June 22, 1941, the day war started for the Soviet Union. Her eyes were filled with everything she felt for him. Her eyes were true.”

“Lupe would have a lot to say about this. I can almost hear her gravelly voice in my head. There is no hate without fear, she'd say. Hate is fear crystallized, fear objectified. We hate what threatens our selves, our dreams, our plans, our freedom, our place in the world, our place in the hearts of the people we love. We fear first. Then we hate. And I know what I would say to her in response. Lupe, I'd say. My troubles are just beginning.”