Reality Bites - Wattys 2018 Shortlist

Chapter 70 - Man Up and Be Babied

It was him! He'd made his way back to me!

"Oh, Comrade!" With two words I managed to express all my fear and grief. Pulling myself closer to him, I was stroking my man's bare chest. "Dimitri I love you. I love you so much. Stay with me," I whispered, tears in my eyes.

"Love you too. Not going anywhere" I heard him whisper. "Keep talking. Like hearing you..."

He sounded exhausted, so I didn't press him to talk any further. After the worst six hours of my life, I'd heard his voice tell me he loved me again. It was more than I'd dared to have hoped.

Leaning up to kiss Dimitri on his jaw, I was rewarded with a soft smile.

And then I talked, interspersing my words with kisses on his shoulder and jawline. Crying with every word, I told Dimitri how much I loved him; told him how excited I was to be meeting his family soon. I told him of places I wanted to go in Europe. Ideas for what we'd do when we were there. I could feel myself getting more tired and tired, and the pauses between each thought were longer. Dimitri seemed to be sleeping and was starting in on the second transfusion bag.

I lay my head against his left shoulder, vaguely aware of people leaving the room. In the background, I could hear Abe talking to Dr. Olendzki about how Dimitri was going and her thoughts on his prognosis. He was still being monitored closely, and a nurse would be sitting with him throughout the day, but his heartbeat, respiration and blood pressure were coming back to acceptable levels.

"Rose? Dimitri's going to be ok. Why don't you let him rest now?" Baba suggested.

"He is resting."

"You know what I mean, darling. Come back to the unit and rest and get changed. You'll be back here before he even knows you're gone" he cajoled.

"Yeah. Not going to happen. Get us a blanket – I'm not leaving him."

Baba sighed, not sounding in the least bit surprised.

"Baba? Mom needs rest – so do the others. I'll stay here with Dimitri and sleep. If anything happens, I'll get them to call you. Come back tonight and bring us both clothing then, ok? And food. I'm too tired to eat, now, but the infirmary food sucks. Bring something meaty - he's going to need to rebuild his strength. Oh – and black bread with butter if you can find it. It's Dimitri's favorite."

Recognising a lost cause when he saw one, Baba just nodded.

Patting Dimitri down, I felt for his phone. Wiggling it out of his pocket, I saw it was unbroken. While I was so damned weary I could barely keep my eyes open, I held it out in front of me, pressing the 'connect' button on Skype. I made sure it was mostly me in frame – Dimitri was in the background sleeping. Thankfully his neck wound was on the other side.

The call was answered on the second ring by Olena and Yeva. Unsurprisingly, Yeva being Yeva, they seemed to be waiting for a call. Before they had a chance to say anything I started, "I'm too tired to go into it all right now, but he's ok. There was a Strigoi attack, and we were separated. For six hours Dimitri was missing, and we thought he'd died, but he is still alive. He lost a lot of blood but managed to hang on. He's in the infirmary now. He's having transfusions, but he's spoken briefly with me, and the prognosis is good."

Olena burst into tears. "You poor thing. Are you ok?"

I looked into the tiny image of her and Yeva on the screen, tears welling again in my eyes.

"It was the worst six hours of my life" I admitted. "The idea of life without him was unbearable."

Olena nodded. She was mopping her eyes but recognized I was too tired to discuss it any further. After she extracted promises for us to Skype once Dimitri was awake and up to speaking, I was about to sign off when I addressed Yeva.