Both sisters closed their eyes so as not to look at the woman and her dead baby and her dead husband. Tatiana put her hand on Dasha’s head. Dasha did not push it away.

They got to Kobona at daybreak—daybreak, a purple haze on the dark horizon. The features on Dasha’s face became dim instead of vague. Why was Tatiana noticing Dasha’s rasping breathing all of a sudden?

“Can you get up, Dasha?” Tatiana asked. “We’re here.”

“I can’t,” she said.

Nadezhda was shouting for someone to help her and her husband. No one came. Rather, a soldier came, lifted the tarpaulin off the back of the truck, and grunted, “Everybody off. We’ve got to load up and drive back.”

Tatiana pulled at Dasha. “Come on, Dasha, get up.”

“Go and get help, Tania,” Dasha said. “I can’t move anymore.”

Yanking at her sister, Tatiana pulled Dasha up on all fours. “You crawl to the edge, and I’ll help you down.”

“Can you help my husband down?” said Nadezhda plaintively. “Help him, please. You’re so strong. You see he is sick.”

Tatiana shook her head. “He’s too big for me.”

“Oh, come on, you’re moving. Help us, will you? Don’t be selfish.”

“Just wait,” said Tatiana. “I’m going to help my sister down, and then I will help you.”

“Leave her alone,” Dasha said to Nadezhda. “Your husband is dead. Leave my poor sister alone.”

Nadezhda shrieked.

Dasha crawled, pulling herself like a soldier across the truck floor. At the edge Tatiana swung Dasha around, lowering her off the truck, legs first. Dasha’s legs hit the ground, and the rest of her body followed and fell. She remained in the snow.

“Dasha, come on, please. I can’t pull you up by myself,” said Tatiana.

The driver of the truck came around and in one motion lifted Dasha to her feet. “Stand up, comrade. Stand up and walk to the field tent. They’re giving you food and hot tea. Now, go.”

From inside the truck Nadezhda shouted, “Don’t you forget me in here!”

Tatiana didn’t want to stay to hear Nadezhda discover the truth about her husband and baby. Turning to Dasha, she said, “Use me as a crutch. Put me under your arm and walk with me.” She pointed up a shallow slope. “Look, we’re at the river Kobona.”

“I can’t. I couldn’t walk with you and Alexander downhill on the other side, I can’t walk uphill with just you.”

“It’s not a hill. It’s a slope. Use that anger you feel at me. Use it, and walk up the damn slope, Dasha.”

“So easy for you, isn’t it?” said Dasha.

“Is that what it is?” Tatiana shook her head.

“So easy. You just want to live, and that’s all.”

I do want to live. But that’s not all. They stumbled through the snow, Dasha holding on to Tatiana.

“And you? Don’t you want to live?”

Dasha made no reply.

“Come on,” said Tatiana. “You’re doing so well. There is nobody to help us.” She squeezed her sister and whispered intensely, “It’s just you and me, Dasha! The soldiers are busy, the other people are all helping their own. Like I am. And you do so want to live. In the summer Alexander will come to Molotov, and you will get married.”

Dasha summoned enough strength to laugh softly. “Tania, you never stop, do you?”

“Never,” said Tatiana.

Dasha fell in the snow and would not get up.

Swirling around in despair, Tatiana spotted Nadezhda walking up the hill alone, no baby, no husband. She went up to her. “Nadezhda, please help me. Help me with Dasha. She’s fallen in the snow.”

Nadezhda ripped her arm away from Tatiana’s hold. “Get away from me. Can’t you see, I’ve got no one with me now.”

Tatiana saw. “Please help me.”

“You didn’t help me. And now they’re all dead. Leave me alone, will you?” Nadezhda walked away.

Suddenly Tatiana heard a familiar voice. “Tatiana? Tatiana Metanova?”

Turning in the direction of the voice, she saw Dimitri hobbling to her, supported by his rifle.

“Dimitri!” She walked up to him. He hugged her. “Help me, Dima, please. My sister! Look, she has fallen.”

Dimitri quickly got to Dasha. “Come on,” he said. “I’m still wounded. I can’t carry her myself. I’ll get you another soldier.” He turned to Tatiana and gave her another long hug. “I can’t believe we ran into each other like this.” Smiling. “It must be destiny,” he said.

Dimitri got someone else to lift Dasha and carry her to the hospital field tent as Tatiana trudged after them in the mauve light of the sky.

In the hospital tent near the Kobona River, a doctor came to see Dasha. He listened to her heart, to her lungs, felt her pulse, opened her mouth, shook his head, stood, and said, “Galloping consumption. Forget about her.”

Tatiana took a step toward the doctor. “Forget about her? What are you talking about? Give her something, some sulfa—”

The doctor laughed. “You’re all the same, all of you. You think I’m going to be giving away my precious sulfa on a terminal case? What are you, crazy? Look at her. She doesn’t have an hour to live. I wouldn’t waste a piece of bread on her. Have you seen how much mucus she’s bringing up? Have you listened to her breathing? I’m sure the TB bacteria has traveled to her liver. Go and get some soup and porridge for yourself in the next tent. You might actually make it, if you eat.”

Tatiana studied the doctor for a few moments. “Am I all right?” she asked. “Can you listen to my lungs? I don’t feel all right.”

The doctor opened Tatiana’s coat and pressed the stethoscope to her chest. Then he turned her around and listened through her back. “You need some sulfanilamide yourself, girl. You’ve got pneumonia. Let me have the nurse take care of you. Olga!” Before he left, he turned to Tatiana and said, “Don’t go near your sister anymore. TB is contagious.”

Tatiana lay on the ground, while Dasha lay in the clean bed. After a while she became too cold. Tatiana lay down on her side in the narrow cot very close to her sister. “Dasha,” she whispered, “all my life whenever I had nightmares, I would nestle like this with you, in our bed.”

“I know, Tania,” whispered Dasha. “You were the sweetest child.”

Outside wasn’t light so much as blue. Dark blue tints on Dasha’s trembling face. She heard Dasha’s hoarse voice. “I can’t breathe…”

Tatiana knelt on the ground in front of the bed, opened Dasha’s mouth, and blew into it, blew into it cold, brusque, stunted, pitiful breath, breath without soil, without roots, without food. She breathed from her own lungs into her sister’s. Tatiana tried to breathe deeply, but she couldn’t. For endless minutes Tatiana breathed into Dasha’s mouth, into Dasha’s lungs, the shallow whisper of life.

A nurse came up to them and pulled Tatiana away. “Stop it,” she said in a kind voice. “Didn’t the doctor tell you to leave her alone? Are you the sick one?”

“Yes,” whispered Tatiana, holding Dasha’s cold hand.

The nurse gave Tatiana three white pills, some water, and a hunk of black bread. “It’s dipped in sugar water,” she said.

“Thank you,” gasped Tatiana between pain-soaked breaths.

The nurse put her arm on Tatiana’s back. “Do you want to come with me? I’ll try to find you a place to lie down before breakfast.”

Tatiana shook her head.

“Don’t give her any of the bread. Eat it yourself.”

“She needs it more than I do,” said Tatiana.

“No, darling,” the nurse replied. “No, she doesn’t.”

As soon as the nurse left, Tatiana crushed the sulfa tablets against the bed frame, crumbling them into her hand and then into the water, and after taking a small gulp, lifted Dasha’s head slightly off the pillow and made her drink the dissolved medicine.

Tatiana broke off a little piece of the bread and fed it to Dasha, who swallowed with obvious pain and choked. Spluttering, she coughed up blood onto the white sheet. Tatiana wiped Dasha’s mouth and chin and then blew her breath into Dasha’s mouth again.