“I believe so.”
“Not worried about the Bolsheviks, are you?” Svetlana’s hand slipped in his. He caught it and held tight, forcing her attention to him. “Is that why you won’t trust me? I might be the enemy?”
Memories of that red night with Petrograd burning around her and screams renting the streets flashed through her mind rapidly as gunfire. The aftermath of horror, of starving, of freezing, of hiding among beasts to avoid capture snapped at her heels. Always the same nightmare relived each time she closed her eyes.
“You don’t understand. You weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t, but I can promise—”
“You cannot commit promises on things you know nothing about. Your world is of sterile hospitals, treating patients, and a home tucked safely on an island across a channel from war. This is not your world. These, the White émigrés, we are not your people. I am grateful for all you’ve done, truly, and I’m glad Leonid was able to express his gratitude for you saving his life, but you should take your leave after tonight.”
He had the gall to look not the least bit taken aback. “And miss the opportunity to become the premier physician to the fleeing nobles of Russia? Not likely.”
“This is nothing to jest about. You do not belong here. Please see to your priorities elsewhere.”
“Rather snobbish of you.”
“Do not make this more difficult than need be. You have your place as I have mine. I see no reason for our paths to cross again. After this evening we will say goodbye.” It was for the best. It had to be. Her life was without certainty, a position she despised. She would not allow a man, a near stranger, to rock her further from the shaky ground upon which she hovered, and Wynn MacCallan came at her with every ability to distract her focus.
“No.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“No. It means to refuse or decline. You’re familiar with the term, yes? Must be a shock when you’ve never been on the receiving end of such a preposterous notion.” He had the nerve to wink. Right there on the dance floor surrounded by dozens of people.
“You mock me.” She tried to pull away, but he held fast.
“Only because you make things much more difficult than need be.” He pulled her closer until his face was inches from hers, and she could see the soft dent in his full bottom lip. “Give me a chance.”
Svetlana hesitated, caught somewhere between the soft look of his lip, the persuasive charm in his eye, and an instinct of protection holding her back. “I—”
Crash!
Cymbals clashed, stopping the music as Sheremetev hauled himself onto the bandstand. Sweat dripped from his pale face as his diminutive eyes skittered around the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Unspeakable horror has struck our beloved motherland.” A telegram shook in his hand. “Tsar Nicholas and his family have been executed. The Imperial family is dead!”
Chapter 7
An incision on the left side of the chest exposed the beating heart. Wynn angled his head to see where the slug had entered, but after a moment of gentle probing, the bullet refused to be located.
“Where’s it gone?” he muttered.
“Right ventricle or passed to the spine?” Gerard offered as he stood opposite the operating table.
Wynn shook his head. “Not possible with the trajectory of the entrance wound. Or based on the X-ray findings. Let me see that shot again.”
A nurse scrambled to put the X-ray on the light board. A fuzzy black image of bone, organs, and cavities flickered. Barely out of its infancy, this new technology in medical diagnosis was a miraculous gift to surgeons. Countless were the lives saved by its internal depictions, a view once reserved for the Creator alone.
Glancing from the X-ray to Harkin’s exposed heart, attempting to merge the two images together in his mind, Wynn’s frustration mounted. He worked his fingertips over the organ. Smooth muscle, bumpy interventricular artery and cardiac vein, and aortic arch. No bullet.
“It’s not here.”
“What do you mean? Of course it is. The X-ray shows it. Unless Harkin decided to perform his own surgery that we don’t know about since the images were taken.”
“It’s hiding.” Instinct nudged. Wynn rationalized the possibilities and outcomes, but intuition wouldn’t be denied. “Breathing status?”
The anesthesiologist checked the gas apparatus that kept the patient sedated before taking his pulse. “Steady, Doctor.”
“Stand by. I’m going to rotate the heart for a posterior examination.”
Gerard fumbled a pair of forceps. They bounced off the floor and skittered across the room. “You can’t do that! It’s impossible.”
“It’s the only recourse to finding the bullet.”
“Doctor MacCallan.” Gerard took a shaky breath and lowered his voice. “Wynn. You’ll kill him.”
He might, but he also might save his life. The risk was worth it. “Stand by for rotation.”
Clearing his mind of the assaulting doubt and apprehension, Wynn focused on the life-sustaining piece as it beat in time with the clock on the wall. His own heart calmed to follow the pace, its steady rhythm narrowing the room and all its distractions to a single moment captured in his hands. The familiar comfort of knowledge quietly settled within him. He knew what he was doing, and moreover, knew what needed to be done.
Turning Harkin’s heart in minuscule fractions, he slipped his fingers around to the posterior side and closed his eyes, blocking out visual distractions. The mind often worked best in darkness as it was forced to rely on truth and not vision’s desensitization. The inferior vena cava carrying deoxygenated blood from the lower half of the body into the right atrium. Pulmonary veins carrying oxygenated blood from the lungs. Right ventricle. Left ventricle. A bump.
Wynn’s eyes flew open. He ran his finger over it again.
A smooth cylinder. The bullet.
“It’s here. Lodged between the posterior left and right ventricle. Angle the lamp here. Doctor Byeford, take the forceps while I hold the heart steady.” A small gag brought Wynn’s head up to Gerard’s pale face. “If you’re going to be sick, there’s a bucket in the corner.”
“I’m a surgeon, not a green-nosed VAD. I’ll hold. You extract.”
Gripping the forceps, Wynn slowly withdrew the obstruction from its hiding place and held it up to the light.
“There you are, bonny beastie.” A slug from a German 8mm Mauser rifle. He’d pulled out thousands of them since the start of the war, yet it never failed to amaze him the amount of pain a single body could endure. Nor the amount of horror a human could inflict upon another. How senseless was war in its incessant drive to destruction. If the human race could see the wonders that composed their bodies, the intricacies of veins, the precise perfection of the humerus in its rotating cuff, or the delicacy of a heart pumping, they would not be so quick to sacrifice themselves at the altar of fevered battle. Sheer waste.
He dropped the bullet into a sterile dish the nurse held and then the forceps into another.
“Breathing dropping,” the anesthesiologist said.
Words no surgeon wanted to hear.
“Heart stopped.”
Even worse.
“Stand clear.” Wynn waved back the flap of nurses and positioned himself over the patient’s heart once more. Every fiber of his being tuned to the absent heartbeat.
“Begin manual resuscitation.” He gently massaged. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Again. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Wynn gritted his teeth, refusing the well of panic. He hadn’t given in to it before and he wouldn’t start now. One. Two. Three. “Come on, laddie. Don’t go out on me in front of the nurses. Bad cricket, that.”