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What was she thinking?_ muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania.__he was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,_ Ina said. __he gave the doctor a liter of blood for you____here did she get it from?___erself, of course._ Ina smiled. __ucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.__f course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut.Ina continued. __he doctor told her she couldn__ give any more, and she said a liter wasn__ enough, and he said, __es, but you don__ have more to give,_ and she said, ____l make more,_ and he said, __o,_ and she said, __es,_ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.__lexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound.He was barely breathing.__he doctor told her, __ania, you__e wasting your time. Look at his burn. It__ going to get infected._ There wasn__ enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was solow._ Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. __o I__ making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She__ sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to acatheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won__ believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV._ Ina__ eyes bulged. __ watch herdraining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, __re you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You__e siphoning blood from yourself into him?_ She said to me inher calm, I-won__-stand-for-any-argument voice, __na, if I don__, he will die._ I yelled at her. I said, __here are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don__ you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?_ And she said, __e__ not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine._ Can you believe it, Major? But that__ what she said. __h, for God__ sake,_ I said to her. __ine, die yourself. I don__ care._ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn__ following procedure,told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her._ Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. __e found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, __aybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?_ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment outof you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage,to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That__ when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, __ania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,_ and she said, __ou think so?_ _ Ina tutted again. Paused. __re you all right, Major? Why are you crying?