Sasha unlaced Miri’s boots. He was so gentle she didn’t feel him slip them off. He helped her out of her doctor’s coat. The white had turned gray, matted in red, and he unwound her braid so all her curls hung loose over her shoulders. She’d cried for as long as she could, and now the sun streaked bright through the window. The bustle from the market kept the room from being silent. “Do you want water?” Sasha asked.
“It wasn’t them,” Miri said. How many times had she repeated herself?
“You should sleep, Miriam.” He reached for the blanket and she grabbed his arm.
“I need to say it.”
“What?” Sasha asked.
A woman outside yelled after a child. “I—I realized I didn’t want to find Yuri.”
“Of course not. That poor doctor downstairs will be dead within hours.”
“No.” She held him tighter. “It’s awful to think it. Now. When there’s such horror downstairs. But I can’t help it.” Sasha sat there, on his knees in front of her. The stubble around his lips blazed red in the sun, and she could feel him trying to figure out what she meant. “I didn’t want to find him. Not yet. And I feel so guilty.” She took a deep breath. “Yuri, I know he loves me. And I’ll marry him. But I didn’t want to find him.” She put a hand on Sasha’s cheek, over his scar, and then she leaned in to kiss him. His tongue was sweet the way she’d remembered, now tinged with the sugar that seeped through the cracks in the hospital. Sasha seemed unsure, but Miri pressed closer and he stopped holding back. This kiss was different from the kiss on the train. Here they had privacy, a locked door. They were slow and deliberate, but with a need that kept her out of breath. The tragedy had them both starving for life.
Sasha trailed his lips down the side of her neck, to her chest, along the seam where her dress ended and the curve of her breast began. Miri fumbled with his belt. He helped and then stayed still while she eased his shirt up. When he stood there, bare, she ran her hand over his abdomen, over the ridges and along the pale scar she’d seen the very first night in the cellar. She kissed the wound she’d stitched so carefully.
He unlaced her skirts and ran his tongue over her knees as he rolled her stockings down, one leg at a time. And he left a soft, lingering kiss on the scar where Zubov’s knife had nicked her arm. He guided her, and what she imagined would seem awkward felt natural, with Sasha. When he pushed inside her, she cried out as much from the shock of pain as from the unexpected sensation of him. While she’d imagined this moment, she’d never anticipated what it felt like to hold him there, in that way. “Should I stop?” he asked.
“No.”
Miri woke first, after noon. She tried to untangle herself from Sasha, but when she moved he held her tighter, pulled her closer and smiled, revealing that dimple she adored. In the new morning light, she noticed a scar just below his eye that she hadn’t seen before. It was so faint, barely even there. She ran a finger over it lightly, and he smiled again. “I need to check on my patients,” she whispered.
Sasha kissed her ear and she smelled him, his delicious smell that had drawn her in even that first day they met. She opened her mouth to say something, and he kissed her raw lips. Feeling him was exquisite. He ran a finger down the length of her spine.
“Doctor!” There was a rap on the door. Anya. “Doctor, we need you back in the ward.”
Miri grabbed for her stockings, her skirts, and her surgeon’s coat as Anya clopped back down the hall. Another second and Miri would have stayed with Sasha, in bed. His skin, his taste. She wanted it all. But how could she do that with so many burned and dying downstairs? And Yuri. How could she do this to Yuri?
“Please, don’t regret what happened,” Sasha said.
“So many people are suffering. And look at what we did.”
“We were honest with one another.”
“I’m engaged.”
“You said you don’t want to find Yuri.”
“A promise is a promise.”
“You’re Dr. Petrov. Why shouldn’t a man and wife sleep together? Love each other?”
“We’ve never stood under the chuppah.” She pulled her skirt up over her shirtwaist.
“Miriam, if that’s what you want, I’ll find us a rabbi today.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the stethoscope. Sasha wrapped his arms around her. Next to them, staring up from the white sheets, was the bloodstain that marked the end of her virginity.
“We need to change the sheets.” She untucked them quickly. Sasha was on his feet, naked, in front of her. She kept her eyes down and realized he made no move to cover himself or to help. If anything, she could feel him holding himself back, keeping himself from reaching for her. And if he had reached for her, was she so sure she would resist? Why not find a rabbi in Podil? Didn’t Baba tell her that paths change?
Baba. What Miri had done was reckless. Shameful. Baba might approve of her marrying Sasha but not of her giving herself to him before they were married. And Yuri? He was protecting Vanya for her. Risking his life for her. Miri ran down the stairs, terrified one of the nurses would see the sheets she carried and know what Miri and Sasha had done.