Her face fell, and I wanted so badly to see the approval and pride and admiration that I had grown used to seeing when she looked at me. I reached for her other hand and gently shifted it off my shoulder. I had known intense pain before, but this time the skin on my neck and my arm and even the side of my face felt like it was still on fire. It was maddening, but I wouldn’t let it stop me.
I couldn’t stop. Not until Poland was free.
I moved to rise from the stretcher just as Elz·bieta slammed her hand at the edge of the burn on my neck. When I howled in shock and pain, she pushed me back down, leaving me limp on the stretcher. She shifted her hand away from the wound to rest it on my shoulder as she brought her face close to mine. Her eyes were fierce, burning with a fury and determination that I had never seen in her.
“I’m not letting you go until you listen to me, damn you,” she hissed. “The time will come for you to fight again, but for now you need to rest and wait for a doctor to see you. You cannot make a difference if you are dead.”
“You don’t understand,” I snapped, shaking her hands from my shoulder, this time the movement not nearly as gentle as the first time I’d done it. She was ruthless, and while a part of me admired that, I knew she didn’t understand my rage or the urgency. How could she? “They murdered my family—”
“I’ve lost my family, too.”
I couldn’t hide my irritation. I knew her loss was raw and new, but it hardly compared to mine. I slid my legs away from Sword, who was still crying like a baby at the other end of the stretcher, and rested my feet on the floor, ready to stand.
“I know you and Piotr were close—”
“No. My real family.” Elz·bieta drew in a deep breath, then gave me a miserable look. “You knew I had secrets.” All of the fight drained out of me. I sank back onto the stretcher, and between the pain in my face and the pain in my heart, I was finally silent and still. “My real name is Emilia Slaska. They executed my father in front of me just after the invasion. They executed my brother because he was helping Jews. That’s why I am living under this identity, in case someone is looking for me because of his work. His girlfriend—my best friend—had to flee, and she is probably in England. My mother died giving birth to me.” Her voice shook, and her gaze grew hard. “I have no one, Roman, other than Truda and Mateusz now. You are not the only person in Poland who has lost everyone who mattered to them.”
I sank farther back, numb with shock all over again. I couldn’t tear my eyes off her: the pain in her gaze was so vivid and so breathtaking, I wanted to weep for her. She was telling me this to shock me, in a last-ditch effort to convince me to stay. For a moment, the tactic worked. I was ready to ignore the war, to pull her into my arms and to keep her safe from any more pain.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her.
“I wanted to, but Truda could see this in you,” she said, smiling sadly. “She knew you would run straight back to the underground in some fashion. She was worried that if you knew, you might give me up if you were interrogated.”
“I never would,” I whispered, staring into her eyes. “I would die before I betrayed you.”
“You’re my best friend, Roman,” she murmured, then she bit her lip and glanced at me hesitantly. “When I see the future—when I see my future—I see you. Do you understand that?”
“If we don’t fight, there is no future.”
“So you would have me go out there to join in combat, too?”
The very idea of it filled me with panic. She was tough and strong, but I couldn’t bear the thought of Elz·bieta seeing the things I had seen during combat.
“Of course not!”
“The reason you don’t want me to go out and take up arms is that you care about me. How can you not understand that I feel exactly the same about you?” She huffed out a frustrated breath, then snapped, “You stupid man. Do you not understand that what I feel for you is more than friendship?”
I sucked in a breath, and she did, too, as if she hadn’t meant to say the words.
“Don’t say it,” I said, dropping my voice low. “It’s better that you don’t say it, because when I’m gone you’ll—”
“I love you,” she interrupted me, eyes flashing fire. “Don’t you dare talk to me about when you’re gone. I need you to survive, and I need you to survive for me.”
I took her hand, and I held it to my uninjured cheek. Her words made me fly, but the knowledge that I was about to break her heart left me sick with guilt.
“I love you, too,” I said. Maybe I had known it all along, right from those early days when I couldn’t stay away from that back room at the youth center.
Over her shoulder, Truda and Mateusz came into focus. They were both in tears, heads close and eyes locked, comforting one another and making a plan for what came next. That was the kind of connection Elz·bieta and I shared, or could have shared, if the world were different.
“When the war is over, we could be together,” she whispered. “We could have a family, build a home. You could study—become a lawyer like your father. I could paint and keep the house and raise our children. We would have a big family, and our house would never be quiet, and it would never be still, but we would love it that way. The noise would remind us that we were alive. The noise would remind us that we had survived. Can you see it?”
“I can,” I whispered. I wanted the picture she painted so badly it hurt my chest to think about it, because that wasn’t what lay ahead of me, and as much as I wished that things were different, I couldn’t ignore the reality. The Red Army was sitting on the banks of the Vistula, but it was increasingly evident that they would come no farther. The insurrection was all but doomed. There would be no happy ending for Elz·bieta and me because there would be no happy ending for our nation.
“Stay,” she said. “Stay for me.”
“I wish I could,” I said, my voice breaking. “Elz·bieta—Emilia—I wish I could.”
I sat up and this time she didn’t try to stop me. Instead, she dropped her hand to her lap, and her head lolled forward as if she were too disappointed to hold it up.
“Elz·bieta,” I whispered, stricken by the pain in her gaze. I reached to cup her cheek in my hand, the most intimate touch we had ever shared, but one that felt so natural. She slowly raised her gaze to mine.
“I am so scared for you,” she said.
“You don’t need to be.”
“You are kidding yourself if you think that you can survive out there. You are so badly injured...so reckless with your life,” she said sharply, but then her voice trailed off to a pained whisper as she added, “You are so reckless with my heart, Roman.”