The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski

Hours had passed according to the sweep of shadows from one wall to the opposite, yet it was as if time stood still, holding all in its unrelenting grip. Decorated in flocked damask wallpaper with faded squares indicating where portraits once hung, the space had previously been part of the hotel’s second floor of suites. The whispers of silk gowns and polished shoes were naught more than echoes of the past stifled among the coughing and moaning of the current inhabitants. The elegance surrounding them mocked the battle for life.

Svetlana used the sleeve of her dress to wipe the perspiration from her brow, careful not to dislodge the mask from her face, as she changed Marina’s sheets for the third time. Every part of her body ached from standing so long and bending over so often, but it was nothing to the agony of watching her sister writhe about in delusions or lie deathly still, so still that Svetlana kept a hand to Marina’s chest to ensure she still breathed. Her own heart had yet to quiet as she’d found a routine in sponging Marina off, checking her temperature, offering a sip of water, adding blankets, removing blankets, and starting the routine again until the sheets needed changing.

As Svetlana gently dabbed the wet sponge along Marina’s arm, she noticed a gritty texture. Salt. Disturbed by this new development, she inched open the privacy curtain and stuck her head out in search of Sister Elton. She’d been ordered to be seen as little as possible lest she arouses suspicion in the other nurses. Catching sight of Sister Elton across the rows of beds, she motioned for her.

The matron came into the cubicle and pulled the privacy curtain closed. Svetlana didn’t wait for her to ask. “There’s salt.”

Sister Elton swiped a finger along Marina’s arm. “She’s losing too much sodium from the excessive perspiration. I’ll order a bowl of broth. Ladle as much as you can into her.”

Svetlana managed two spoonfuls before Marina began coughing so violently that the broth and other substances came up. She quickly wiped away the mess with a napkin. Phlegm shook in Marina’s lungs like a death rattle.

“She’s congested.” Like a summoned angel, Wynn appeared next to her.

Svetlana fought the urge to throw her arms around him in relief. He always seemed to appear when she was in need of assistance. Even if he didn’t, she knew he would always come if she called. Her relief splintered. Of course he would come. He was a doctor. Their rift could be cast aside in the face of illness, but tension lingered in the perimeter.

“We need to remove the congestion before it settles into pneumonia,” he said. “Retrieve the cupping trolley next to the supply station. It’s the one with little glass cups no bigger than a whisky tumbler on it.”

Like the day Leonid was shot, fear rang in her ears. Only this time she wasn’t staring down at a bleeding stranger. This was her sister. And she could die.

“Glass cups. Yes.”

She raced for the trolley and wheeled it back inside the curtain. He’d turned Marina onto her stomach with her nightgown peeled down to her waist.

“Due to the severity, I’ll need to make an incision first.” Wynn reached for a sharp-looking knife that fit slimly in the palm of his hand. “You can look away if this distresses you.”

Svetlana swallowed against the terror of seeing her sister cut open. “Tell me what to do.”

“Pour alcohol into that pan.”

With a slight tremble in her hand, she did as instructed while Wynn made the shallow cut on Marina’s back. Taking a rod with cotton wrapped around the tip, he dipped it in the alcohol, then lit it afire with a match. He popped the burning cotton end into one of the glass cups, then immediately yanked it out and placed the cup on Marina’s back. Three more times he did this.

“The fire helps create suction, which will loosen the mucus. The Chinese have been practicing the art for centuries, and it’s become popular in French hospitals.” He set his extinguished cotton rod on the trolley. “It’s the best option we have.”

“I trust you.” She did, she realized with a start. With no reservation.

It was difficult to decipher his entire expression with the lower half of his face covered by a mask, but she knew he weighed her words carefully.

“I’m glad,” he said at last.

Was that relief she heard? The shame of the words spoken to him that night so many weeks before burned through her as thoroughly as the fire had those bits of cotton. Apologizing was not a task she was entirely familiar with, having done so only on limited occasions. In circles of nobility, opinions were often treated as facts and boastful comments taken as law. It was then easy to accept every instinct and word issued as the right one. Never doubt; only confidence. Until meeting a man who forced her to look beyond the shallow waters in which she’d tread her entire life.

She cleared her throat. “That night we last spoke—”

The curtain ripped open and the towering Sister Elton stared at her. “I saw you take the cupping trolley. Is there— Oh. Dr. MacCallan.” Her eyes swiftly took in the scene. “Congestion, is it? She take any of that broth?”

Svetlana shook her head. “She started coughing.” Marina mumbled incoherently. Svetlana dabbed a wet cloth across her fevered forehead.

“When she rouses we’ll try Bovril with milk. She’ll need nourishment. They all do.” With that terrifying truth, Sister Elton returned to her duties on the floor. Marina’s labored breathing filled the small space. She wasn’t alone. Harsh breathing, hacking coughs, gasping, and cries of pain spiraled through the ward as the rows of patients struggled for life. Svetlana had overheard a nurse say six of the men had died since that morning after being struck down only the night before.

Pulling the single chair close to Marina’s head, Svetlana sank onto it. “What happens next?”

Crossing his arms, Wynn leaned against the wall. His critical gaze swept over Marina, possibly analyzing every drop of sweat, shiver, and erratic breath.

“We wait. The first twenty-four hours are the worst. If she makes it through, she stands a good chance at recovery.”

Svetlana followed Wynn’s gaze, but instead of a patient or medical prognosis, all she could see was her sweet little sister. Always kind and trusting. The peacemaker who bound their mismatched family together. Svetlana pushed a wet strand of hair from her hot cheek.

“She doesn’t deserve this. If anyone must be sick, it should have struck me.”

“No one deserves this. Every patient in this hospital has been battling for far too long. Your sister in the Revolution and the soldiers in the war. To survive four horrendous years of bombing and killing only to be taken down by a fever. It’s beyond reckoning.”

“What is this reckoning?”

“Beyond reckoning. It means beyond understanding. Difficult to come to terms with.”

The prolonged tension throbbed. “Much the same could be said of our acquaintance.”

“If one was attempting to define the thing, yes, I suppose they could.” His gaze moved to her, piercing skin and bone straight to the spikes of her pride. “Though I’ve never been called difficult a day in my life. They must be referring to you.”

She opened her mouth for a retort but promptly closed it as she realized she’d been about to prove his point. If he was set on taking her down a gilded peg, then she would return the favor. After all, he wasn’t completely blameless in provoking her hurtful words.

“One could say charm is rather difficult to come to terms with.”

Instead of being insulted as she intended, he laughed. “Not in my case, so I’ll take that as a compliment.” Pushing off the wall, he stood next to Marina’s bed. One by one, he popped the glass cups from her back and placed them on the trolley. Round bruises now marred the pale skin. “The bruising will go away in a few days. Her breathing should be easier.”

Marina twitched away from him and mumbled.

Svetlana pulled the blanket over her sister’s bare back. The sheets needed to be changed again. “She’s not sleeping well.”

“And likely won’t until the fever breaks. It’s the body’s way of fighting off the virus.”

“Is Dr. MacCallan here?” The voice came from the other side of the curtain.

Wynn stuck his head out of the curtain and spoke using words like X-ray and cranial suture. He popped back in and rubbed the back of his neck, bringing Svetlana’s attention to the brush of whiskers trailing his jawline just below his mask, the faint red lines creeping into his eyes, and the husky tiredness coating his voice. The desire to fetch him a blanket and pillow and stroke his hair as he fell asleep swelled over her.

She tucked her hands in her lap before they got ideas. “You should rest.”

“I’ll rest when the work is done.”

“The work of war may never be done. You’ll die on your feet and then what will your patients do?”

“You’re a rather morbid encourager.”

“Russians are firmly rooted in the dramatic. We know no other way.”

“Don’t I know it.” He moved to open the curtain. “Try to get some rest yourself. For your sister’s sake as well as your own.”

“‘I’ll rest when the work is done.’” The words rushed from her heart before she could stop them. Before he would be too far gone to hear them. “Dr. MacCallan. Wynn. It’s good to see you.”

He looked at her for a long moment. The corners of his eyes crinkled, a telltale sign of the smile beneath his mask. “It’s good to see you too.”

*  *  *

Wynn stood aside, the book in his hand forgotten, as three more covered bodies were carried down the stairs to be taken out back of the hospital to await transport to the mass grave being dug outside the city. One of many constructed lately to accommodate the influenza victims. There were simply too many.

“Are these all?” he asked the last orderly.

“Two more. Civilians. We’ll come back and fetch them once the Sisters have finished washing the bodies.”

Dread filling him, Wynn waited until the grim procession passed out of sight before sprinting the remaining stairs to the infectious ward. Death steals boldly in the dark night of a sick ward, seizing those in rest who otherwise remain vigilant in light of day. He heard the rattles of breath and the shivers leaving bodies weak and exposed to searching Death.

The Sisters stood guard as they patrolled up and down the aisles, but none stood by the curtained bed. Wynn hurried toward it and pulled back the flimsy material. Marina lay on the bed with red blotching her cheeks. Svetlana sat in the chair next to her, her cheek resting on her arm beside her sister’s hand. Asleep.

He released a shaky breath. Death had not visited. He checked the medical chart attached to the foot of the bed, then performed a quick examination of the patient, careful not to disturb her. She was still feverish, but the sheets were dry. The crucial twenty-four hours had passed, yet she remained in some danger. Patients often seemed to recover the second day only to relapse.

Wynn’s attention drifted to Svetlana. Thin and pale, with purple smudging under her eyes. The months of fleeing had not been gentle to her. Would that he had a medicine or surgical instrument to alleviate the fear she must carry.

“It’s good to see you.”Her admission had sparked a part of him he’d all but shuttered. A place he’d allowed hope to root, only to be cut down. It had been nothing more than fanciful thinking, and for what? A woman he barely knew with foreign ideas on humor (or lack thereof) and sentimentality (also lacking). An enigma wrapped in silvery stubbornness and topped off by a challenge, that’s what she was.

And there was nothing he loved more than a challenge. It was a lifelong pursuit of his, claiming the endeavors others thought out of reach and exploring them until he understood them inside and out, until he alone could reveal the hidden treasure within, like the life-pumping valves of a heart.

No cardiological study sent his heart racing the way she did. There was something about her that called to a lost part of him. She possessed a strength of character that bolstered his own. When problems seemed insurmountable in the operating theater, he would remember her fortitude not to cower at the Red Army, instead braving Russia’s bitter winter to escape, and confining herself to a dank basement for the safety of her family. She inspired him.

Across the bed, Svetlana stirred awake. Her eyes widened at the sight of him and she jerked in her chair to grab Marina’s hand.

“She’s asleep,” he reassured her.

She took a shaky breath, much the same as he had done a few minutes before, then tugged at the kerchief covering her hair. While her nurse’s uniform was nothing of a shock to see on a hospital floor, she wore it with the discomfort of an unfamiliar skin.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Are you still on duty?”

He nodded. “Surgery is quiet for the moment. I came to see how you’re doing.”

“You did not return home.”

An accurate observation that he felt to the weariness of his marrow. “I managed to close my eyes for a few minutes in my office.”

“That is not resting.”

“Neither is sleeping in a chair.”

“No, but I suppose we both do what we can under the circumstances.” Rising, she stretched her arms fully above her head, then straightened each leg in turn with toes pointed. “I have full admiration for your nurses. They never come off their feet.”

He’d missed her unique way of phrasing words. Particularly when they weren’t barbed insults aimed at him. “You seem to hold your own as a nurse.”

“It is not my gift.”

Taking the chair from the empty bedside next door, Wynn carried it around to sit next to her chair. His knees popped as he sat.

“Then what is? What have you always wanted to be?”

“I am a princess.” She said it as if it were the only natural conclusion in the world. Her skirt rustled and peeking out from the shortened hemline were two black boots at perpendicular angles.

“Yes, but what did you want to do besides wear a tiara?”

“There is no wanting for a princess. This is what I am.” So self-assured. So confident of her placement in life. So devastating not to glimpse beyond her mold.

“Forget the title for a minute. Humor me.”

One eyebrow arched in regal disapproval. “Humor you? I am not some jester at court provided for your amusement.”

“No, it means to pretend. Let the inhibitions go and allow yourself to dream for one unguarded moment.”

She continued to eye him with questioning suspicion, but slowly her expression drifted inward as if her mind’s eye caught the glimpse of a fleeting dream. “A dancer.”

Spoken so low, he almost missed it, but there it was. A dream for herself outside the stuffy titles. “Ballerina?”

“The most beautiful kind there is.” She spoke softly, as if the dream were fragile enough to shatter in the open air.

He glimpsed a carefree woman living under the full sun beyond the cold shadows of duty and expectation. A chill he narrowly avoided himself.

“I was six when I began ballet. Eight when I slipped on my first pair of toe shoes. I remember feeling like Cinderella in her glass slippers.”

“Do you still dance?” He could have guessed given the muscle structure of her calves and her odd stretching, but he wanted to hear her tell it.

Sitting, her mouth turned down as she knotted her fingers together. “Not in the way I would like.”

Whatever tension his question had provoked was ruining the moment. He scrambled to rescue it before it was lost for good.

“What is it about ballet that you love so much?”

“The controlled elegance. Some believe it too rigid and confining, but I find a freedom in the structure of steps. My feet are grounded while the rest of me is allowed to express what cannot be formed in words.” Her eyes, softened by lantern light, sought his. “Can you make sense of that?”

“It’s how I feel as a physician. Surgery is a precisely controlled state of elegance that must answer to the needs of the body. I never feel more myself than when I’m standing at an operating table.”

“At the expense of the unfortunate person lying there.”

He gave a short laugh. “From their position I suppose they might think that, but when they arise—and they will if they’re my patient—they’ll be alive and mended and have gifted me with knowledge I can then use for the next patient. And the next after that. Like new partners for dances ever evolving.”

“I cannot comprehend your fascination with blood and cutting open people.” She shuddered. “But I am glad for it. The lives you save are immeasurable. I doubt many marquises can claim the same. Russian noblemen often consider it below their rank to put their hands to work.”

“I need to prove I’m something more than a title. My hands weren’t created to be idle, and I’ll push them to the limit every way I can.”

“And your family finds this agreeable?”

“My father told me before he died not to let being the second son keep me from making my life useful, while my mother encouraged me to reach for the impossible. Their support means a great deal to me. With stalwart Hugh to carry on the family legacy, I was left free to pursue my own passions and will continue to do so for as long as I’m able. We know so little of how the heart works, despite it being the center of our living bodies. Cardiology must be taken seriously if we are to—” He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck with embarrassment. “Sorry. My excitement on the subject gets out of hand.”

“I do not mind your excitement. It stems from a desire to help. I see that now.” She straightened her posture and clasped her hands in her lap. “I should not have said those things to you that night, and I sincerely apologize. My desire was only in protecting my family, but that does not excuse my blatant rudeness when you have been nothing but kind.”

He could see the hit the apology took to her pride. She wasn’t a woman to consider herself in the wrong often. It humbled him to witness her humility.

“Do you accept my apology?” she demanded.

And then she hit him with that.

“It is customary to allow the other person to offer acceptance on their own. Since you’re new at this, I’ll forgo the dictates of formal apologies and acquiesce to your demand. Yes, I accept your apology in hopes that you’ll accept mine. My words were harsh and ungentlemanly. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” She settled back in her chair looking smug. “What have you there?”

He looked down to where the book rested forgotten on his knee. “Ah, this. A book on botany I found among the research journals and periodicals. It’s mostly filled with medicinal plants, but there’s a chapter on creating the ideal garden from the correct type of soil—do you realize how many types of dirt there are?—to allow proper root drainage. I thought you could use it as a guide for when you plant your own garden.”

She took the book, running her fingers through the pages until stopping on one with the painted picture of a small daisy.

“Chamomile. We have them all around the city and Russian countryside. They smell sweet, like apples. Whenever I was sick our cook would make tea from the crushed petals.” She reverently closed the book and looked at him. “Thank you.”

“Friends again?” He stuck out his hand as the final peace offering.

She stretched her hand out, palm down, in answer. Grasping her fingers, he brushed a kiss over her knuckles. Or as best he could with a mask on.

Perhaps it was the midnight hour darkening her eyes or the lantern light that melted the striking angles of her face into a pale blur. Perhaps it was exhaustion that softened the mask she held in place, for in that moment time inhaled deeply on a breath that existed only for them. In that precious space something new was forged. The shape wound ubiquitously around them, giving no hint of what it would become, only that it could become.

The corners of her eyes creased, indicating a smile beneath her mask. He had the sudden desire to see what that curving mouth felt like against his own lips.

A door banged open. Feet scurried across the floor.

“Madam, you cannot be in here!” One of the Sisters hissed. “This is a contagious ward.”

“Svetlana!” Ana.

Svetlana jumped to her feet and raced out of the tiny cubicle with Wynn fast on her heels. The older princess was dressed in silk and pearls with panic seared across her face. As Svetlana reached her, Ana grabbed her shoulders and spoke in rapid French. With each word, more color leeched from Svetlana’s face.

Sister Elton bore down on them like a U-boat with sights fixed. Wynn took Svetlana and Ana by their elbows and steered them out of the room.

“A sick ward cannot be treated as a hotel with guests coming and going as they please.”

Ana didn’t spare him a glance as she continued her screeching. Wynn’s French was faulty at best, but he picked out money, White Bear, and want. No, that was voulez. This sounded more like—

“Has someone stolen from you?” he interrupted.