He turned to her. Eyes urgent as his mouth moved. What was he saying? She couldn’t hear anything beyond the thudding of her heart.
“Svetlana!” The vacuous bubble burst. Sound and understanding flooded in, shocking her with its force. “Here.”
She shook her head to clear the vestiges of fog and hurried to his side on wobbly legs.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” Wynn’s question rolled in her ear, but the ability to discern its meaning eluded her as she stared at the hurt man’s face. Sickly pale and dotted with rain, he clenched his crooked teeth behind thin lips. Wynn’s voice prodded her once more. “Svetlana. Look at me.”
Slowly Svetlana turned her attention to him as the vacantness threatened its hold once more. Wynn’s gaze was calm, steadying her against the trembling moving through her body.
“Do you have a handkerchief?”
She felt her head shake no.
“Your shawl. Take it off and wrap it around his shoulder while I hold him up. Do you understand?” The man moaned and convulsed. Red seeped between Wynn’s fingers as he pressed against the shoulder. “Svetlana. Look at me. Do you understand?”
She felt herself nodding. So much blood.
“Do it now.” His sharpness cut through the haze, severing her from the stupor it trapped her in.
Whipping off the shawl, she carefully wrapped it under the man’s thick arm and over his shoulder as Wynn propped him up. She tried to focus on her task. Up, over, under. Red splattered the sidewalk. Up, over, under. It feathered out between cracks in the pavement, turning blotchy as raindrops collided with the red rivulets. A life washing into the gutter. She wrapped faster, water squeezing between her fingers.
“The material is too wet to soak up the”—she swallowed against the roil of sickness—“the blood.”
“Better than nothing.” Wynn steadied the man’s head as it lolled to the side. “No you don’t, mate. I need you awake.”
Svetlana didn’t blame the man. If she’d been shot, she’d rather remain unconscious throughout the ordeal as well.
“What shall I do with the ends?”
“Tie them. We don’t need the dressing slipping off before we get to hospital.”
“Nyet!” The man wrestled awake as he cried out in Russian. “No hospital! Do no take me there. Nyet.”
Fresh blood seeped out from the shawl as he flailed in an effort to throw them off. Svetlana had gone to too much trouble wrapping the wound. This fool wasn’t going to undo it all now.
She slapped his pudgy cheek.
“Calm yourself. Do you not see this doctor is trying to help you?”
The man froze and stared at her in disbelief. “Russkaya?”
“Da.” She knotted the ends of the shawl and looked at Wynn, who didn’t seem the least bit distressed by the terrifying situation in which they found themselves. “He says he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”
“He’s been shot. He doesn’t get much of a choice.”
“There choice, da,” the man said in broken English, bobbing his head and sending rain from his hair streaking into his eyes.
Wynn’s brow lifted. “Oh, speak English, do you? Good. Makes things easier.” He glanced at Svetlana. “Not that I don’t appreciate hearing your lovely interpretations. Grab the umbrella and try to keep it over his wound. Hospital is three blocks over. Can you make it, mate?” Swiping his hands against his trouser leg and leaving a swath of red on the dark gray material, Wynn stood and hooked an arm around the man’s thick waist and hauled him to his feet.
Staggering, the man grimaced in pain. “There choice. Apartment street over. Mine.” He jabbed his finger in the intended direction.
Wynn secured the man’s uninjured arm around his shoulders while maintaining a steady arm around the man’s waist. “I understand we all want the comforts of home when we’ve taken a beating, but this isn’t going to be cured with an aspirin and a lie-down.”
The man turned flat brown eyes to Svetlana. Flat face. Flat nose. Flat lips. All Russian. “You tell him. You russkaya. Make him understand. English hospital no good. They find me again. Only safe in apartment.”
Svetlana formed a protest but snuffed it cold at the terrifying prospect of truth in his words. What was to stop those men from finishing their heinous murder at the hospital? All those innocent people. If it was the Reds, the last thing they should be offered was open grounds to exact vengeance on opposing soldiers too injured to fight back once they’d taken this man’s life.
“We’ll take him to the apartment,” she said.
Wynn shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’m the doctor here and this man needs—”
“He needs you to attend him and you can do that anywhere. Though preferably not in the street, yes?” Walking back to where she’d dropped the umbrella, she picked it up along with Wynn’s package, then stared down a curious woman watching them through her window. The woman crossed herself and made a hasty retreat behind her curtains. Others who had fled at the gunshots crept back onto the sidewalk and watched with unabashed curiosity. Ignoring them, she returned and held the umbrella over the man.
“For the safety of all your patients it is best we take this man to a quiet place. I will retrieve anything you need.”
He stared at her. His stubborn need for medical superiority warring with concern for all involved patients transpired like a shifting wall across Wynn’s face.
At last he settled on a decision. “Where’s the flat?”
* * *
Wynn scrubbed his hands in the basin of water and soap as his patient slowly regained consciousness on the ornate bed. The man had passed out no sooner than they had entered the building. Rather rude of him considering the four flights of stairs they had to traverse before arriving at his door with limp body in tow, but the blackout proved to be a blessing. Wynn was able to make a quick examination of the entry and exit wounds, clean away debris, and dress the injuries with a few shirts Svetlana had found in a bureau and cut into strips.
After checking his patient once more, Wynn left the bedchamber and stepped into the sitting room. Expensive furniture and artwork crammed the space with plush Aubusson rugs covering the parquet floor. Faux columns stood in the corners with spiky green plants sitting on top while a marble fireplace was half hidden behind a trolley loaded with amber liquid–filled decanters and tumblers.
Not knowing what to make of the gaudy taste, Wynn ambled to the kitchen where Svetlana brooded over a silver contraption with a spout that looked suspiciously like an oversize tea kettle. Her hair rested in a limp coil at the base of her neck with escaped silvery strands straggling off in all directions. Her dark blue dress was wrinkled and water stained, but her erect posture didn’t sag under the mistreatment. Nor did her odd foot arrangement, one flat and the other pointed to the side. Snapped to the front. To the side again.
If one thing could be said for this princess, it was that she was a brick. Not once had she complained or backed away when he requested assistance. If another thing could be said, it was that this princess was no nurse. She’d managed to jab their patient in the exit wound as the dressing was applied and brought Wynn cologne water to wash his hands instead of soap, arguing he had worked up quite the “aroma” on the trudge through the streets and up the stairs. The sweat dampening the back of his shirt couldn’t deny that statement.
“Espèce de rate.” Svetlana smacked the silver contraption with her palm.