Nikolas whispered, “I’m so thirsty.” It broke Ben’s heart. Nikolas had never pleaded for anything in all their time together. He was failing.
The flare had softened the top layer of snow crust just enough to dampen a strip torn from Ben’s shirt, and he mopped and squeezed a few drips into Nikolas’s mouth, picturing the whole time a fearful shying away, foam, but Nikolas took the offering gratefully then nodded that he could continue.
Checking the direction once again, Ben took the lead.
In other circumstances, he would have enjoyed the silent ski across the polar ice, the vast dome of the Milky Way above them—stars so bright that it saddened him to think how dull they actually appeared to most people. They cast shadows on the slick ground. Blue star shadows. It was incredible. The swish-swish of the skis was calming, the physical effort familiarly reassuring. But Nikolas fell again, only a few minutes since the last time they’d stopped, and this time Ben couldn’t rouse him.
He placed icy fingers to Nik’s hot neck and could just detect the faintest of pulses. Nikolas’s breath was laboured, as if he breathed through a lungful of deep ocean. Ben bent close. “Hey, baby, wake up. We have to go. You have to keep moving.”
There was no response.
Ben knew then that he’d made a huge error. If he’d left Nikolas safe in the Hagglund he would have made it to the town by now. His own fear of confronting the police, of being examined and found to be so wanting had killed Nikolas.
Ben lifted his head, swallowing deeply, regarding the bright stars overhead.
“Please.”
It was the first time in his entire existence he’d prayed—although he remembered as a small boy screaming out futile fury to a remote sky to return his mother to him. Had that been prayer? Surely God, if He existed, didn’t mind the fervour of your appeal? Perhaps He preferred it rabid and desperate. “Please!”
Ben sensed an intelligence observing them once more by the small ridge of ice that cast a shadow onto the landscape twenty feet behind them. It spurred him on to do what he had to. He removed Nikolas’s skis, hoisted him over his shoulder and began to move.
He had asked for something and something had been given.
He’d been given this—his superb body, and he’d never once thanked God for it. God had given it to him for this one purpose, so he could save Nikolas.
The silence of the endless night betrayed the bear’s attack. Ben turned, dropped to one knee and brought the gun up once more, this time firing directly toward the hunched, running form. The light exploded. He rose, hefting the body on his shoulder back into position and skied, hard and fast until there was enough distance to stop, lay Nikolas down, assess.
No sign of the bear.
This time, when he checked for a pulse, he could feel nothing.
“Please. I’ll do anything.”
With Nikolas once more on his shoulder, he picked up the pace. He should be seeing a faint glow of the township by now, but there was only darkness.
“If you save Nikolas’s life, I’ll do anything you want. Anything.”
He didn’t care what he had to promise. He meant it: anything. He would give his own life in a heartbeat if it would save Nikolas’s.
Sacrifice.
Isn’t that what God always wanted?
For Nikolas’s life that oblation had to be something very, very special.
Even if God wanted his warrior angel back, Ben was willing to come home.
§§§
The bear was in pain now. It had been starved for many weeks, confused. Freshly gorged on the unexpected meal it had found, it was invigorated, now greedy for more of the snuffling pleasure of hot blood. But something had stung it like the lash of a rival’s claw across its face. It burned and throbbed, and the need for blood was mixed with a desire to rip and tear.
Ben could hear the bear’s thoughts now. They were as loud and confusing as his own. All he wanted to focus on was moving, unbalanced, carrying this burden. If he stumbled, if he went down, they would both die.
He sensed more than heard the bear closing in on them. He laid Nikolas down on the frozen surface of ice and turned. At the last moment, he dove and rolled as the bear came crashing into them, ignoring the inert, supine form in favour of the enticing, warmer one. Ben whirled around, gun raised, and fired again. Direct hit to the bear’s flanks, and it made a high-pitched squeal of pain.
Ben lifted Nikolas once again and began to ski.
He needed to reach a rocky outcrop about a hundred feet in front. Make his stand there. But his legs were failing on the rising ground. The bear knew this, of course. Ben had no doubt the creature could read his mind just as clearly as he was hearing its scattered thoughts.
He concentrated on his promise. Reaffirmed it. Please. Tell me what you want. Send me a sign.
He fell toward the rocks at last, his legs quivering with the strain and weight of Nikolas’s body.
He laid him safely down in a shallow gully between two of the largest rocks, snapped off his skis and spun around to face out toward the polar night.
He couldn’t see the bear, wondered if it could smell him, gripped the gun, checking again that it had a fresh cartridge. He crept one hand back to Nikolas, just a touch. Still no pulse. Could he hear him breathing? He held his own breath to listen, and that’s when he heard the stealthy approach from above—on top of the boulders.
He whirled around and fired, and as the flare burst to life, he reloaded, sure and steady and knowing he only had one chance left. The light illuminated a vast mouthful of yellow teeth and redness, and he raised his arm, held it without a tremor as the mouth descended upon it, and then he fired again. Something caught alight. Something slammed into him. He was knocked away, his head hit the rocks, and the gun spiralled from his hand.
But he’d promised God.
Did not God hold such promises close and treasure them?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ben learnt a great deal about sepsis shock while he waited in a small anteroom in the medical centre at Longyearbyen. He also read a lot about the hospital, its services, charter, and mission statement. They gave him nothing to research about rabies, because Nikolas didn’t have it, they were pretty sure. But sepsis apparently killed far more people than rabies per year, so this wasn’t particularly good news. The one thing Ben actually took in and held in his heart from all this bombardment of new information was that it was illegal to die on Svalbard. He didn’t analyse this odd pronouncement, didn’t allow Miles’s voice to come into his head with the inevitable and very reasonable questions that might be asked about it. It was illegal to die on Svalbard.
God, it appeared, was sending him a sign.
This message became a little confusing when he discovered that Nikolas had to be transported to Tromso, on the mainland, and the big university hospital there. Still, promises were promises, and Ben had now put his faith entirely in God and reasoned that had He not wanted Nikolas to live, He wouldn’t have provided air ambulances in the first place.
Statistics meant nothing to Ben given his new, unswerving faith in divine intervention. That forty percent of people who went into sepsis shock died was dismissed as another test of his commitment. Half a million people in America alone lost their lives each year to this extreme form of blood poisoning. Two from rabies. So he was told. Be careful what you wish for. But God would have known this, Ben surmised, so when he’d prayed that Nikolas wouldn’t die from rabies, God would have known he’d meant sepsis. Faith was faith; it had very little to do with common sense or logic.
Not only did this buoyant optimism prevent his own incipient panic, it seemed to invigorate the medical staff too—those who’d been present when frozen and exhausted he’d carried his dead friend into the reception of their little yellow hospital and croaked that he’d skied from Jasper Bay. He’d staggered and fallen to his knees, but still he’d managed to lay his burden down with a care and concern that belied his own terrible physical condition.
>
Ben was lucky they hadn’t believed him—that his companion was dead. Instead, they’d immediately checked for signs of life and found them. He was even more fortunate that on the medical team treating Nikolas was a major contributor to the ‘Surviving Sepsis’ campaign—a man who had, in fact, written the antimicrobial therapy section. This American doctor, just on a visit to Svalbard, had immediately given Nikolas oxygen, intravenous fluids, and multi-spectrum antibiotics until, as he’d informed his sceptical colleagues, the specific microbe could be identified.
When Nikolas was stable, this gift from God had arranged for transport to the much larger medical facility on Tromso.
With one shaky phone call to Peyton Garic, Ben set in motion Nikolas’s onward transfer to Derriford Hospital in Devon. Home. Sunshine, although only for an hour here or there, and nothing that Nikolas saw, unconscious as he was in his private room. But Ben saw it. Ben welcomed it as more than sunshine. It was a visible reminder of the power that came from Heaven, of the commitment he had made, and the promise he now had to fulfil.
Ben knew it wasn’t luck that one of the world’s experts on the treatment of sepsis shock had been present in that tiny hospital in Svalbard.
God had placed him there.
But he still didn’t know what God wanted from him.
He needed a sign.
God had saved Nikolas’s life—forgiven the Morningstar.
What was the price of that?
§§§
The results of Nikolas’s blood tests got to Plymouth before he did, so the clinical specialists there were able to put him on the correct drugs as soon as he was admitted as a critical patient to the ICU. This raised his chances of surviving almost as much as the fact he’d gone into sepsis shock in the arctic. According to the young physician who held most of the daily consultations with Ben, the most modern thinking on sepsis shock was that it could be delayed, reduced, by quickly lowering the patient’s body temperature. Nikolas’s fever would possibly have killed him had he not been frozen to the core for the hours it had ravaged through his body. When the fever was lessened so effectively, so quickly, his chances of survival had doubled. No one was sure however. It was only a theory. The cold also put a lot of pressure on the body’s organs, and they’d suffered enough damage with…
Ben got used to medical people trailing off as they spoke to him. He didn’t know whether they sensed his fury or his faith. He wasn’t sure himself, day-to-day, hour-to-hour, which he was radiating most.
Nikolas was moved from the ICU to a private room within a day, which was also a very positive step, according to the medical team treating him. They were impressed by his physique and said that if anyone survived this terrible assault to the immune system’s defences, it was those with very strong bodies to start with. Ben also thought it was a good sign, for he got to stay now with Nikolas night and day, sleeping alongside him on a small camp bed and occasionally, if he could face the tubes and the lifelessness, lying with Nikolas in his arms.
Ben had a very strong life force, too, and he spent the hours projecting it into Nikolas as best he could. Even unresponsive, Ben knew Nikolas would know he was there. That’s just the way they were together.
Ben hadn’t shared his truth with these scientific people—oblations and promises. He didn’t think they’d welcome it. All he had was a large seagull and an unswerving commitment to keep Nikolas alive.
At the beginning of the second week in the new room, Ben returned from the canteen to find two people standing alongside Nikolas’s bed.
He thumped the door, and they opened their eyes.
The man murmured, “Amen,” and added, “Hello. Sorry.”
Ben nodded at him and put his tea down on the bedside table.
The young man frowned at something he could read in Ben’s expression. “Sorry…you requested a visit from us? We’re from the New Hope network—the prayer team? I’m Martin, and this is Sarah, my sister…”
Ben took the outstretched hand automatically. “I didn’t request anything.”
Sarah frowned and rummaged for a moment in her handbag. She consulted her phone then showed it to Ben. It was Nikolas’s room number with a one-word message: “Come.”
Ben felt his tired, stress-exhausted body weaken for a moment, and he sank into the chair, putting his head in his hands. Immediately, he felt a touch on his shoulder and someone passed him a cup of water. He could hear hesitant apologies, muttered questions between the brother and the sister, and he waved them to silence. “I’m sorry, only…” He raised his head. “I think you’re the sign.”
§§§
They left Nikolas’s side and went to the Room for Repose, which Martin explained had once been the hospital’s chapel until management had decided that in order to not offend anyone they’d engage with no one. Ben wasn’t really listening. He felt dizzy, spinning away on hope.
Martin was a soft, pale young man who seemed to have a rare ability to actually listen to people when they were talking. Sarah was…Ben wasn’t sure how to describe her. Biblical had come to mind when he’d shaken her hand briefly, but that was a little unfair. She was…wholesome? He sighed and stopped even trying to categorise her. He could hear a wicked Danish voice contributing to the pigeonholing. Someone with a far wider and crueller vocabulary than his. He wanted to hear Nikolas’s voice once more for real, not a ghost of its great passion in his head.
They sat on one of the pews, Ben between the earnest couple, and he tried to explain as best he could about the promise he had made, his confusion about the exchange he was willing to make. He didn’t see how his life, taking his life, would bring Nikolas back. Not really. He was willing to jump from the window. He would crash to the concrete beneath or soar with the gull—either way, he would do it and not question the sacrifice. But how would it bring Nikolas back?
There was a strange, passionate intensity radiating from the couple, and they didn’t laugh at him, but they were laughing—with him, for he then discovered that he was laughing, too, and he felt…lighter, enveloped in something stronger than he was, stronger even than Nikolas.
God didn’t want his death—which is what Ben had been envisaging.
God wanted his life.
God wanted everyone’s lives—lived out in perfect harmony and peace.
God wanted love.
Ben didn’t even see it coming. He agreed to it all, bathed in the surety of his commitment, and then they told him about purity. They were the New Hope Through Purity Church. They’d left that bit out earlier. Sorry.
Purity.
§§§
Ben’s descent happened rapidly after that. That was Tim’s term for what was happening. He told Ben in no uncertain terms that Martin Grenney had sensed a man entirely adrift upon confusion and capitalised on the opportunity.
He also begged him not to accept an invitation to attend their church.
Ben ignored his friend’s fury, his scepticism.
What did Tim Watson know?
Martin had merely been a conduit. The summons had come from elsewhere, and like a penitent seeking absolution upon bleeding knees, Ben heeded its siren call and went.
§§§
When Nikolas woke he felt decidedly, surprisingly well. Considering the last thing he recalled was discussing his will with Ben. Well, he remembered his part of the conversation. Ben’s responses weren’t so clear. When they’d had this chat also eluded him, and even after pondering it for some time, he was still very hazy on the details. Whatever. He was alive. The universe still hadn’t exacted its due recompense. He smirked and considered his surroundings.
He was in a hospital room. It seemed bright and pleasant. He wasn’t battered or broken as far as he could tell, just very tired and hooked up to an impressive number of machines.
Most satisfactory.
But where was Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen? Sure, they weren’t joined at the hip, but Nikolas sort of expected Ben to intuit that he was needed and wanted, and so be t
here, holding his hand in a metaphorical we-don’t-touch-in-public way. There was a buzzer. Buzzers were always good. He flicked it and was gratified by the number of green-clad people who arrived to unhook him. For Norwegians, they spoke surprisingly good English. Private medicine was a wonderful thing.
Ben turned up an hour after Nikolas’s second team had departed with their various samples and words of wisdom. Including the confusing information that he was no longer in Norway. He was even more exhausted now, however, and aching hardly described how he felt, but then they’d also told him he’d been hours away from complete organ failure and inevitable death. Yeah, whatever, death had been stalking him for years. It needed to learn to run a bit faster.
Nikolas knew it was Ben approaching before the door opened. He’d deny such a pathetically romantic claim if challenged on it, but he could often sense Ben’s presence these days many minutes before Ben made an appearance. He had a moment to compose his features, therefore, and ran through a gamut of possible expressions from extreme annoyance at the inconvenience of yet again finding himself in an unbecoming gown, to aloof disregard for the whole situation as befitted a Spetsnaz operative—just in case Ben was also being Special Forces and playing the give-Nikolas-absolutely-no-sympathy game.
Apparently not. Nikolas chuckled inwardly at Ben’s face when he entered the room.
Many times over the course of their relationship, Nikolas had privately reflected that a less suitable man than Ben to join the SAS would be difficult to find. It wasn’t a criticism. Not at all. Ben had an indefinable something about his nature that made you want to smile at him, befriend him—love him. As Nikolas was the frequent and sole beneficiary of this inappropriate-for-a-killer inner radiance, he secretly relished it, whilst ostensibly going along with Ben’s misguided belief about himself that he was a hard man who practised tough love on his partner.
There was nothing hard or tough about Ben’s expression as he stood incredulous and delighted in the open doorway.
John Wiltshire - [More Heat Than the Sun 07] Page 14
