Almost there.
She got the cannula in on the first attempt, Katya’s scrutiny from the doorway burning the skin on the back of her neck.
She taped it in place, connected the line and opened the drip. Slowly, the first clear drops of antibiotic entered his bloodstream.
Done.
Now her hands shook. She pressed them flat against her thighs and breathed through it.
Katya left the room without a word.
Harper breathed out, grateful for the break from observation.
She took hold of Pav’s hand. It dwarfed hers. Roughened and capable. Familiar already in a way it had no right to be. Heat burned through his skin, the strength in it muted now, slack in her grip in a way that felt wrong on him.
"I got us here,” she said. “You noticed the birch tree and I followed it and Katya has antibiotics and the IV is running and you're going to be okay."
She looked at his face. The bandage on his head. Fever riding high on his cheekbones. Dark stubble. The lines around his eyes that were deeper than they should be for a man his age.
"Pasha," she said, trying the word. It felt foreign in her mouth—intimate, like wearing someone else's clothes.
She went back to the name she knew. "Pav."
The window showed early evening light, winter-blue, fading. The room was quiet. Not the vast, pressing silence of the forest but a contained human quiet. Music from somewhere—the radio in Katya's kitchen? A woman singing in Russian. Floorboards creaked as Katya moved through the house.
There was so much she didn’t know about Pav, and this house was full of it.
She held his hand as the antibiotics infused and waited.
Minutes later Katya returned with tea and a plate of food. Black bread, butter, cheese, sliced sausage. She set both beside Harper without comment.
Harper stared at the bread as if it had arrived from another planet.
Real food.
On a plate.
The sight almost hurt.
“Eat,” Katya said. “You’re shaking.”
“That’s adrenaline.”
“It is hunger.”
Dizziness washed through Harper as she lifted the tea. Strong and black, served in a glass with a metal holder, steam curling up in thin white lines. The first sip was sweet and scalding, dissipating the chill lingering in her belly.
Katya pulled a chair up near the foot of the bed. “I moved the UAZ to the barn, out of sight.”
“Thank you.”
Katya’s nod was curt.
Harper took a bite of bread, thick with yellow butter. She closed her eyes for a moment as she chewed. It was, without a doubt, the best thing she'd ever tasted.
The chair creaked as Katya stood and hovered over Pav—checking the line. Then her attention shifted to Harper.
Harper finished her bread.
