Since she’d personally run all their errands while they’d been in port in Sardis, renting the bike so she could haul fresh stores of food and water, it had seemed only fair that she be allowed to stay a little longer. And she’d promised they could be gone before the state dinner began.
Now Lillian questioned the wisdom of her decision as the rickshaw picked up speed, careening toward the pier. She laid on the brakes as she blew past the rickshaw rental stand, and just managed to skid to a stop next to her parents’ yacht.
“Lillian!” Her mother, Sandra, gasped when she saw the soldier’s bloody form slumped on the back of her bike.
Her father’s jaw dropped.
But by the time he found his voice to insist that Lily take the soldier right back to where she’d found him, Lillian had already dismounted from the bike. The rail of their yacht bobbed a little higher than the dock, but the bike sat higher still. Lily tipped the rickshaw, and the unconscious soldier keeled toward the cushioned bench that encircled the deck of the yacht.
“Lily, no!” Michael Bardici demanded, rushing forward to stop her, an instant too late.
With a hefty heave, the soldier tumbled gracelessly onto the cushion. Lily hopped onboard after him, rearranging his arms and legs to settle him flat on his back.
“Lily.” Her mother approached, wringing her hands. “Did you see what was going on up there? It’s like a war zone.”
“Mom, please. Can you push the rickshaw back up the pier? We have to get out of town.”
Her mother paused, surprise on her face, then obediently climbed onto the dock and took the bike back up to the rental stand.
Lifting the man’s eyelids to check his pupils for signs of concussion, Lillian listened with one ear to her father’s protests.
“What are you thinking bringing that man onboard? There’s been some sort of violent attack up there, and now you’re getting us mixed up in it. What will your uncle David say?”
Lily focused on her examination and didn’t respond. The man’s pupils were even, with no telltale red streaks that would have indicated his capillaries had burst. A good sign. Hopefully the alleyway had blocked much of the force of the blast, preventing a traumatic concussion. It boded well for the likelihood of minimal internal injuries.
Her father inserted his face in her line of sight. “I know you think you have to rescue every injured creature that crosses your path, but this is going too far. He’s a human being. You can’t take him out of his country—”
“He asked me to take him out of the country.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
“Yes.” She checked the soldier’s pulse. Strong. “He specifically asked me to help him, to get him out of the country, and to hurry.”
“Did he say anything else?”
She looked her father full in the face. “Don’t let them find me.”
“Who’s he hiding from?” Michael Bardici sputtered. “Did he have something to do with those explosions? He could be a criminal!”
Before Lily could respond, her mother returned. “Let’s do hurry and get out of here,” Sandra Bardici requested. “There are soldiers with guns everywhere. Whatever those explosions were about, I don’t like it. What if they try to lock down the marina?”
Lily felt grateful her mother had so quickly sized up the situation. “She’s right, Dad. We should get moving. Do you need me to help you get under sail, or can I bandage his face?”
“You should do nothing of the sort,” her father protested. “Surely there’s somewhere in the city.” He looked at Sardis beyond the bay, black smoke rising above the limestone buildings, and his protest lost a little power.
“We should get out of the marina while we still can.” Sandra sounded almost frantic.
“Of course we should go.” Michael Bardici faced his wife. “But we can’t take this man with us! We don’t know anything about him. What if he’s dangerous?”
“He looks to be out cold right now. She’s brought him this far. It’s chaos up there—I suppose the local hospital will be overwhelmed. She’s a trained medical professional.”
“She just graduated from veterinary school.”
Sandra took a step closer to her husband and lowered her voice. “She wants to help. This is the first time she’s wanted to do anything medical since…”
Lily heard her mother’s sentence hang in the air, and knew exactly what words she hadn’t spoken. Since she’d failed to save the horses. The painful memory taunted her, but she pushed it away. Thinking about the tragedy in her past wasn’t going to help her now.
Michael Bardici huffed. “Fine. We’ll set sail. But I’ll warn you both—I intend to get rid of this fellow at the first opportunity.” He stomped over and untied the boat.
“Thank you, Dad.” Lily sprinted into the top-level pilothouse and pulled out the first-aid kit, which she had personally assembled in a small suitcase years before, and kept stocked for emergencies.
The unconscious soldier didn’t flinch as she cleaned the wound on his face. To her relief, the abrasions didn’t appear to be deep, though they stretched from his nose to his ear, covering much of his forehead, down to his chin. Still, if she bandaged his face quickly and kept the injuries clean, he’d likely heal with minimal scarring.
Once she had the blood cleaned off and a fresh white bandage wrapped around his head to hold the gauze and batting in place, she pulled out her otoscope and checked his ears, sighing with relief when she saw no sign of blood.
Excellent. Ears were particularly susceptible to primary-blast injuries. The fact that they’d sustained no damage reduced the likelihood that he’d been hit with enough concussive force to injure his lungs or his brain. She’d heard horror stories of those with blast-force injuries to the brain who’d lost their memories, and developed short tempers as well as ongoing headaches. Only time would tell the extent of the soldier’s injuries, but for the time being, Lillian’s hopes were buoyed by her discovery.
With her attention focused on the soldier, she hardly noticed the progress of their 52-foot vessel as they left the marina and reached the open sea.
“Did you want something to eat, Lily?” Her mother climbed up from the below-deck cabins and handed her a bottle of water.
Surprised, Lily realized the sun had already sunk low on the horizon. “No, thank you. Water’s fine.”
Her mother sat on the bench near the man’s feet. “Your father’s very upset.”
Lily gestured to the soldier as she placed her otoscope back in its case. “He asked me to help.”
“I know. And I’m glad you want to help again. But he’s not an injured animal. He’s a person.”
“Doesn’t that make him even more worthy of my help?”
Her mother sighed.
Lily changed the subject. “Can you help me try to get him out of his suit jacket? There’s blood on his shirt. I just want to make sure it came from his face. I don’t want to miss an injury.”
Her mother agreed, propping up the soldier’s torso while Lily tugged the suit jacket off his arms. She wasn’t sure if it was the humidity or a sizing issue, but the jacket didn’t want to come off. The soldier had been wearing a dark olive dress uniform—maybe he’d been en route to the state dinner. His choice of apparel certainly seemed too formal for an ambush attack. A cluster of medals decorated the garment at the chest, topped by a badge bearing one name. “Lydia.”
When Lillian finally pulled the man’s arms free, Sandra ran her fingers over the name as she folded the jacket neatly. “What do you suppose this means?” She held out the badge for Lily to see.
Lily was already working on the soldier’s shirt buttons, praying silently that he’d be okay. If a shrapnel wound snuck past her, the soldier could bleed out overnight. “Lydia is
the name of the country.”
“But the other soldiers we saw in Lydia didn’t have the name of the country on their badge. They had their last names.”
Lily tried to think. If she was honest with herself, she felt uncomfortable checking the soldier’s chest for injuries because he was attractive—wounded or not. “Maybe Lydia is his last name, then.”
“Why would his last name be the same as the name of his country?”
“I don’t know.” Lily focused her attention on inspecting the man in the dying evening light. One thing was for certain—he’d been in fine physical shape before the attack. Lily felt herself blush as she checked his torso for any sign that shrapnel might have penetrated his uniform. Cleaning off the residual blood on his chest, she determined it had soaked through from the outside, no doubt originating from the injuries to his face.
“Did he tell you his name?”
“There wasn’t time to ask.” Lillian reached for the man’s side pants pocket, where a squarish bulge indicated something was stowed. “Maybe he has some ID on him.” She pulled out the contents of his pocket—a wad of unfamiliar bills, secured with a pewter money clip.
“Those aren’t euros,” her mom observed.
“I don’t know what they are.” Lillian flipped through the banknotes, looking for anything that would indicate which country they originated from.
“Why would a Lydian soldier be carrying foreign currency?” Sandra Bardici mused aloud.
Lillian wondered the same thing. Lydia, a small Christian kingdom squeezed along the shoreline between Albania and Greece, traded in euros, the official currency of most of Europe. “It does seem a little odd.” She shook off a shiver.
“Do you suppose he’s working for a foreign nation? He might have been part of the group that staged that attack.”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for him to wake up so we can ask him.” Lily stuffed the money back into the soldier’s pocket. Satisfied that she’d done all she could for him, she watched his chest rise and fall. He seemed to be breathing easier without the restrictive suit. From what she’d observed, she guessed he wasn’t terribly old, maybe mid- to late-twenties, hardly any older than she was. And in spite of the bandage covering half his face, he was handsome, with sandy brown hair in a military cut, and a strong, square jaw.
Her mother had given up her inquiries. “Don’t put his bloody shirt back on him. I’ll get him one of your father’s old T-shirts.” She retreated back into the cabin, and Lily could hear her footsteps carry her below deck.
As she lowered the man from his propped-up position, Lily’s hands grazed something rough on his back. Afraid she might have missed an injury in the fading light, she traced the ridge with her fingers, then propped him up higher to get a better look.
A network of healing scabs crisscrossed his back, as though he’d been beaten or whipped. As Lily surveyed the extent of the damage, her sympathy for the soldier increased even as she wondered what had caused the marks. It reminded her of the horrors of slavery, and yet, even this far from America, she couldn’t imagine the man having been enslaved, not in the twenty-first century.
She thought of the uniform jacket her mother had carried downstairs. The man was a soldier. “Were you a prisoner of war?” She voiced the question in a whisper, not expecting a response.
Settling the man’s torso back gently onto the cushion, Lily let his head rest on her lap for just a second as she held the edge of the boat, preparing to scoot out from under him.
The man moaned and shifted his head.
Lily froze. She’d been thinking that he ought to drink something, but she didn’t want to shove it down his throat and risk drowning him. She figured if he was reviving, however slightly, now was her chance. She grabbed the water bottle her mother had brought her.
* * *
A dark blanket of pain settled heavily across his face. He wanted to push it away, but it felt so heavy, and his mouth was dry. So dry.
“Water?”
The word came from somewhere beyond him, a gentle, feminine voice.
“Can you sit up a little and drink?”
Who was this creature who knew exactly what he longed for? She’d soothed the pain on his face. She had water. He tried to obey her instructions, to lift his head.
He opened his mouth. Couldn’t she just pour it down his throat? He couldn’t see. There was too much darkness, and too much pain. His head throbbed.
“Can you swallow?”
Something touched his lips, and he felt a tiny pool of cool liquid. “More.” He tried to speak, but it came out as a groan.
“Here—slowly.”
He gulped too much, and sputtered. Afraid the woman would remove the water before his thirst was remotely quenched, he felt relieved when the bottle touched his lips again. He focused on each cool swallow that soothed his parched tongue and dry throat.
Then the water was gone, and he moaned, wanting it back.
“You’ve got to have a horrible headache.” Gentle fingers touched his forehead. “Can you swallow a pill? It will help with the pain.”
If the woman with the water could make his headache go away, he would know God had sent her. He tried to answer, to nod—anything—but the blanket was too heavy for him to push past. Gratitude swelled within him as he felt her place something just inside his mouth.
And then more water. Ah, sweet water. He swallowed it greedily until the bottle held no more.
“That’s enough for now. We don’t know if you’ve sustained any internal injuries, and we don’t want to overwhelm them.”
The gentle voice hinted at something. Injuries? That would explain the pain. Who was this gentle woman who eased his pain?
Come to think of it, who was he? Fighting back against the throbbing in his head, he tried to think, but the pain only pounded louder, the blanket of darkness heavier. He tried for a moment to resist it, then gave in to its pressing darkness.
TWO
Lillian left the soldier sleeping on the cushioned bench and headed for the pilothouse, where her father was bound to be sulking at the wheel, resenting her for rescuing the man. After helping her squeeze the soldier into an old T-shirt, her mother had gone belowdecks, where the 52-foot sloop housed three cabins, two bathrooms and the freshly stocked kitchen. Night had fallen, and Lily knew her mother was tired from the events of the day. No doubt she’d gone on to bed.
Padding silently up the steps to the pilothouse, Lily heard her father’s voice and realized he was on the phone. Not wanting to interrupt him, she held back, trying to evaluate how long he might spend on the call.
“Ha! I wish it had been a dolphin. I’d even take a shark. No, this time she rescued a human. What’s that? Yes, you heard right. A person. A soldier, actually. He was injured in all those explosions. Now he’s passed out on deck with some sort of concussion.”
Lily listened intently, hoping to discern how upset her father really was about her new project.
“If he has a name, I haven’t heard what it is. His uniform said Lydia. Yes, right above his medals, like it was his last name.”
Heart thudding hard, Lily wondered if her father might learn something that would help identify the man she’d rescued. She and her parents had sailed to Lydia to visit her uncle David, who was a general in charge of the Lydian Army. If that was who her father was speaking to, he might well know their mystery soldier’s identity.
Her father sucked in a breath. “But, Dave, we’re already twenty miles out to sea, and he’s unconscious. If I throw him overboard, he’ll drown.”
Lily clutched the doorframe and ducked back, suddenly aware that her innocent intentions had turned into serious eavesdropping. Her uncle David wanted the soldier tossed overboard? Surely her father would talk him o
ut of it.
“I understand. Yes, yes, I see your point. I don’t know much about those kinds of injuries myself, but we don’t want him lingering for days just to die on our boat. No, she didn’t have any luck with the horses, and she’s still torn up about that. I suppose it’s better this way.”
What? Was her father actually planning to push the man overboard? He’d die for sure! Lily tried to think. Her father was upset with her for rescuing the soldier in the first place. She’d overreached his favor already, so there would be little use begging him to change his mind. Besides, she’d learned over the course of their visit to Lydia that her father’s older brother had tremendous influence over her dad—far more than she had.
As Michael Bardici went on about the soldier’s injuries, and his fears that the soldier might awaken in a terrible rage and murder them all in their sleep, Lily tiptoed back to the injured man’s side. He’d roused earlier, when he’d taken the pain relievers she’d given him. If those had gone to work, maybe she could wake him up all the way. He’d have to defend himself against her father. She didn’t see any other way out of the situation.
Crouching by his side, she patted his uninjured cheek. “Excuse me, sir? You’ve got to wake up!” He emitted a low moan, but didn’t move. She shook his shoulders. If she could just rouse him, surely the strong soldier would be able to ward off her father, even in his injured state.
“Please—you’ve got to wake up.” She bent close to his ear. “My father wants to toss you overboard. We’re way out into the Mediterranean. There’s nowhere to go if you go overboard. You’ve got to wake up!” She shook him hard, her alarm increasing as she heard footsteps crossing the deck behind her.
“Lillian.” Michael Bardici’s voice was stern. “What are you doing?”
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