“Sam.” Daniel’s voice sharpened. “You know the rules. You are supposed to be together at all times on an island stay. I’ve never heard you be irresponsible. What happened?”
Sam said nothing for a moment. When he spoke his voice was low and wretched. “I fucked up.”
I wanted to say no. No, you didn’t. I wanted to reach out and squeeze him tight. To reassure him that it was a stupid bump to the head. He had seen far worse in others. He was one of the most experienced field guides. This was nothing. He never lost his cool. Why was he doing it now?
“Sam…” I willed my mouth to move.
“Viktor!”
I risked another squint. His handsome face swam in my vision. Was he crying? His dark eyes were wet. He looked awful.
I tried to smile up at him. Sam’s expression crumpled. I’d never seen him like this.
“Please, baby. Don’t die.”
Die? Who was dying? What the hell?
A touch of something wet and soft on my lips had me focusing hard on the present moment. I kept drifting away. He was kissing me.
“Promise me, please…” He was saying between feather-light touches. “Don’t leave me. I…I am so fucking sorry. I just needed time to process… I never—”
“Sam?” Daniel’s voice cut him off.
Sam straightened up. “Yeah? Am here, Doc.”
My eyes closed in exhaustion.
“How’s he?”
“He opened his eyes for a moment and seemed to recognize me.”
“Thank god. Is he still unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I think transporting him via Zodiac is out of the question then.”
“Agreed. What do we do, Doc?”
“I’m trying to get medevac.”
What? Medevac? For me? This was ludicrous. Waypoint didn’t have an airstrip, so that meant they would need to get a pilot from McMurdo, our nearest big station, to fly all the way here for my dumpy ass to be airlifted to Daniel.
I needed to sit up right now. I tried to roll away from Sam’s warm embrace but shards of hot glass poked my head immediately. With a groan I gave up.
Sam said something in alarm but I lost my battle with consciousness yet again.
***
I wasn’t sure how Daniel had managed to get a medevac so quickly, because it was next to impossible. It was one of the things we were always told when taking a job at Waypoint or any of the remote field stations. It was also the reason Daniel kept such a strict watch on our health — we needed to be healthy to even set foot on Antarctica, and while we were here he had strict protocols in place to make sure nobody keeled over. There was no hospital nearby, no where to go if somebody needed urgent medical attention.
I was feeling marginally better — enough to realize that we were flying, and that the voice speaking next to me was Sam’s.
“I’m a coward,” he was saying. “When you showed up in Alaska all those years ago, full of enthusiasm and your smiles, nothing had prepared me for the way you would turn my world upside down. I was grumpy, mad at the world, given up on humanity after what my parents did to me.”
My mind reeled as the words slowly settled in.
“And you — you just waltzed right past all my walls. And the selfish bastard that I was, I clung to you. I was supposed to be your older mentor, somebody who taught you the ropes about life in the US. But as the years went by I fell so hard for you, Viktor.”
