Page 17 of The Book of Lost Hours

Ernest stopped resisting, wincing in agony as she slid his arms through the sleeves.

He had begun shaking even though he was glistening with sweat from the effort of walking.

She needed to move quickly. She examined the bullet hole.

It wasn’t deep, but she could see the bullet lodged inside the wound.

That was a problem. They would need to take it out.

She turned around in search of supplies.

She needed to test something on Ernest to make sure it wouldn’t pass through him before she went any further.

A half-empty bottle of pain medication was perched on a nearby shelf, and she reached for it.

“Can you take this?” she asked.

Ernest tried to grasp the bottle. He could touch it when it was in her hand, but as soon as she let go, it fell through his fingers and hit the floor. “What the…” he sputtered in confusion.

Lisavet cursed under her breath. She needed to think.

She turned back around to watch as the nurses prepared to remove a bullet from another man’s shoulder, assessing what supplies she could use that wouldn’t pass through him.

Metal tongs she could use so long as she didn’t drop them.

She had no idea what to do about disinfectant.

Bandages wouldn’t work. She needed something else.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she shrugged off her coat and pulled the blue dress up over her head.

Beneath it she still wore the remnants of her childhood nightgown, faded and shrunken as it was.

She removed that, too, feeling the cold air hit her skin.

She pulled the blue dress back on as quickly as she could and secured her coat around her waist. When she turned back around, Ernest had his eyes fixed pointedly on the ceiling, cheeks tinged pink even in spite of the blood loss.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, worried the pain might have gotten worse.

“You could have warned me,” he said uncomfortably.

“Warned you?”

“That you were going to… you know… I could have turned around or something.”

Lisavet giggled. Given the circumstances, his embarrassment seemed preposterous. After a moment, he too cracked a smile.

“Glad my discomfort is amusing to you.”

Lisavet began tearing her nightdress into long strips, pulling threads from along the hem to use for stitching.

“What’s that for?”

“Bandages.”

“Why not just use those?” He gestured to the shelf.

Lisavet hesitated. She didn’t want to alarm him by saying everything here would fall right out of him if she used it. “We’re in Spanish influenza time. There’s a shortage of supplies and I don’t trust them not to reuse bandages.”

“Then why did you bring us here? All the wars in history and you pick the one in the middle of a plague?”

“You’re the one who chose to get shot in the Ukrainian section,” Lisavet fired back.

“Chose to get shot? I took a bullet for you! What were you doing running out in the open like that?”

“If you hadn’t been following me, I wouldn’t have done it at all.” She handed him a piece of wadded-up fabric that had once been the neckline of her nightgown. “Here. Bite down on this.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Why?”

She lifted a pair of tongs like the ones the nurse was using to remove the bullet. “I’m going to get the bullet out.”

“Like hell you are.”

“You want to bleed to death? I need to stitch you up and I can’t do it if there’s a bullet in there.”

Behind her, the man with the bullet in his arm started screaming at the most inopportune time.

Ernest’s face went even paler. “Oh no. No way, crazy lady. You’re not coming anywhere near me.”

Lisavet dropped the tongs and held up her hands. “Fine. Die then.” She started to walk away.

“Wait!” Ernest called, a little bit choked.

She turned back to look at him, meeting his eyes with unflinching steadiness.

After a moment, he put the piece of fabric in his mouth and bit down in compliance.

Lisavet broke away from him briefly to watch the nurse, feeling faint as she considered the reality of the situation.

This man had just been shot in the stomach.

He had taken a bullet for her and was lying in a makeshift medical tent in the middle of a Ukrainian battlefield.

And now she was about to attempt to perform the wartime equivalent of abdominal surgery simply by mimicking the actions of a few nearby doctors.

It was insane, she knew that. But it was also real.

This wasn’t a memory, and if she messed this up, the only person in the world who knew she existed was going to die.

She banished these thoughts from her head as she turned back to face Ernest again.

He had his eyes closed, teeth clamped over the fabric.

In lieu of disinfectant, Lisavet took a small bottle of vodka from the top shelf.

She’d seen the nurses giving it to the patients before working on them.

She doused her hands in it and then paused, looking at the wound in Ernest’s side.

“This might sting a little,” she warned and tipped the bottle back into her mouth.

She spit the burning alcohol directly into his wound, hoping it was strong enough to kill anything that might be festering there. Ernest screamed. Lisavet threw herself across his chest to keep him from curling in on himself.

“Don’t move!” she said, panicking as blood began flowing more freely again. “Deep breaths. You have to keep your pulse down.”

She demonstrated what she meant with long, deep inhales.

Ernest’s hand was groping the ground for something to hold on to.

She grabbed it and squeezed tight while he fought to regain control of the pain.

He clung to her hand like a lifeline. When he seemed to be calming, she let go and reached for the tongs.

She worked as quickly as she could, but the sound of Ernest’s agonized shouts made minutes feel like hours.

When at last the bullet was free, Lisavet dropped it onto the ground and let out a gasp. It rolled a little away from them.

“All that for a dime,” Ernest said through deep, pained breaths.

Lisavet let out a small laugh of relief. The hardest part was over. Ernest didn’t scream while she stitched up his side, mimicking the pattern of the nurse. When she was finished, she secured the makeshift bandages around Ernest’s abdomen, double-checking to make sure the stitches were secure.

“Not half bad, Germany,” he said with an exhausted smile. His eyes were closed, swimming on the edge of consciousness.

She bit her lip. “Lisavet.”

“Huh?”

“My name. It’s Lisavet. Lisavet Levy.”

“Lisavet. Pretty. It’s French?”

“My mother was from Switzerland,” she said.

Ernest made a humming noise. “So was my grandfather. And Levy… that’s Jewish.”

“Where does the name Ernest come from?”

“Oh, you know. As in ‘the importance of being.’ My mother is a big Oscar Wilde fan.”

“Go to sleep,” she said gently. “I’ll take us somewhere where you can rest.”

“Lisavet,” he murmured again. Her name was the last thing on his mind before he slipped into dreams.

E RNEST AWOKE in a place he had never seen before.

He blinked several times, adjusting to the lightening dawn streaming in from the open window.

There was a tightness in his rib cage. An aching pain radiated down one side of his body.

He pushed through it, forcing himself into a seated position with a soldier’s determination.

When he had managed this, he performed a cursory assessment of his condition.

The stitches were holding firm, no more bleeding.

His shirt was gone, and he wasn’t sure what had happened to his gun.

But the watch was still fixed to his wrist, safe and sound.

In lieu of a blanket, a worn brown coat was draped over him.

He recognized it as the one the German girl wore.

Lisavet , he thought to himself. The entire time he’d been tailing her, trying to gain intel for the department, he hadn’t known her name. Lisavet. It suited her.

Satisfied that he was intact, he turned his attention back to the room.

It was a hotel room, simple but comfortable.

A four-poster bed. A pink settee beneath the window.

The door leading out to a balcony was ajar.

This must be where Lisavet had gone. Ernest struggled to his feet as silently as possible, using the walls, which were the only things he seemed able to touch, to brace himself.

He took the coat in one hand and hobbled in the direction of the balcony.

Lisavet didn’t notice him right away. She was standing with her arms folded on the railing.

Her blue dress swayed in the breeze, the sleeves of it stained with his blood.

The rising sun was striking her at just the right angle to bathe her in a halo of golden light.

Ernest had never noticed how long her hair was before.

She wore it loose, spilling down her back like flaxen wheat.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he found himself completely dumbstruck at the sight of her, unable to move or form proper thoughts.

Must be the blood loss , he told himself. A moment later, she turned her head.

“Oh. You’re awake.” She swiped at her eyes with one hand. Had she been crying? “Are your stitches okay?”

“They’re holding.” Ernest took another laborious step out onto the balcony to stand beside her.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking out at the street below.

His eyes swept up and down the cobbled road and narrow alleys across the way.

In the distance, opposite to the rising sun, snowcapped mountains stood like a wall over the city.

Lisavet turned back to the railing. “Geneva.”

“Switzerland?”

She nodded. “1922.”

Right. Another memory.

“How’d we get here?”