Read Online Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams - Free Book Online Page A

again, and the ball of terror was beginning to drop away from my belly at last.
    The doctor stood at last and told me that he was finished, and I should dress the wound. “Not too tight; you nurses are always dressing a wound too tight. I will have to come back with the transfusion equipment. It may take an hour or two. Can you stay awake with him?”
    Yes, I could.
    â€œThen we will put him in his bed.” He signaled for one of the crew, who were hovering anxiously nearby, and somehow made himself clear with gestures and a few scant words of German. Two of the men hoisted Stefan up—he was out cold by now, his dark head turned to one side—and the doctor yelled at them to be careful. He turned to me. “Don’t leave his side for a second. You know what to look for, I think? Signs of shock?”
    â€œYes. I will watch him like a child, I promise.”
    2.
    He
did
look like a child, lying there on his clean white bed, when I had tucked the sheets around his bare chest, and his face was so pale and peaceful I checked his pulse and his breathing every minute or so to make certain he hadn’t died. I turned off the electric light overhead and kept only the small lamp burning next to his bed, just enough to see him by. His skin was smooth, only a few faint lines about the eyes, and his hair was quite dark, curling wetly around his ears and forehead. He was about my brother’s age, I thought, twenty-three or -four. His lashes were long and dark, lying against his cheek, and I wondered what color his eyes were. Stefan Silverman’s eyes. When I touched his shoulder, his lids fluttered.
    â€œShh,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
    He opened those eyes just long enough for me to decide that they were probably brown, but a very light brown, like a salt caramel. He tried to focus and I thought he failed, because his lids dropped again and his head turned an inch or two to the side, away from me.
    But then he said, almost without moving his lips: “Stay, Mademoiselle.”
    I smoothed the sheets against his chest, an excuse to touch him. He smelled of gin and antiseptic. I thought, It’s like waiting forever for the film to start, and then it does.
    â€œAs long as you need me,” I told him.
    3.
    At half past eight o’clock in the morning, Stefan’s mistress arrived.
    Or so I assumed. I could hear a woman on the other side of the cabin door, shrill and furious like a mistress. She was remonstrating with someone in French (of course), and her opponent was speakingback to her in German. Stefan opened his eyes and stared, frowning, at the ceiling.
    â€œI think you have a visitor,” I said.
    He sighed. “Can you give us a minute or two, Mademoiselle?”
    â€œYou shouldn’t see anyone. You have lost so much blood. You need to rest.”
    â€œYes, but I’m feeling better now.”
    I wanted to remind him that he was feeling better only because he had a pint of Annabelle de Créouville coursing through his veins. I rose to my feet—a little carefully, because a pint of blood meant a great deal more to me than it did to him—and went to the door.
    The woman stopped shrilling when she saw me. She was dressed in a long and shimmering evening gown, and her hair was a little disordered. There was a diamond clip holding back a handful of once-sleek curls at her temple, and a circle of matching diamonds around her neck. Her lipstick was long gone. Her eyes flicked up and down, taking me in, exposing the line of smudged kohl on her upper lid. “And who are you?” she asked, in haughty French, though I could tell from her accent that she was English.
    â€œHis nurse.”
    â€œI must see him.”
    I stood back from the door. “Five minutes,” I said, in my sternest ward sister voice, “and if you upset him even the smallest amount, if I hear so much as a single
word
through this door, I will open your veins and bathe in