Chapter 8: The Fever Break
The world shrank to the kitchen table, to the metallic stench of blood, to the ragged sound of Bahri’s breathing. Zana’s orders cut through the panic, sharp and clear. Vanja moved on numb legs, filling the kettle, her hands shaking so badly the spout clattered against the sink. She shoved it onto the stove, flame roaring blue. Vera thrust a stack of folded linens into her arms—old sheets, towels, someone’s torn shirt.
Burim and the other man, Agon, were cutting away Bahri’s jacket and shirt with a knife. The fabric peeled back with a sickening, sticky sound. The wound was a ugly, dark mouth high on his chest, just below the collarbone. It wept dark blood with a slower, sinister pulse. A through-and-through. Vanja saw the smaller, neater exit hole on his back.
“Not the lung,” Zana muttered, her fingers probing with terrifying clinical precision. “Missed the artery. Lucky idiot.” Her voice was steady, but her hands, coated in her son’s blood, trembled for a second.
“Hold him,” she ordered.
Burim and Agon pinned Bahri’s shoulders and hips. His body arched off the table as Zana poured clear rakija from a bottle directly into the wound. A guttural, choked scream tore from him. The smell of alcohol and blood mixed, sharp and nauseating. Vanja felt her own throat constrict. She forced herself forward, handing Zana a clean cloth wadded into a pad.
“Pressure,” Zana said, guiding Vanja’s hands. “Here. Push. Hard.”
Vanja leaned her weight onto the wound. The heat of his skin, the slippery give of damaged flesh beneath the cloth, made her stomach roll. Bahri’s eyes, wide and unseeing with pain, found hers. His lips moved. No sound came out.
“He’s losing too much,” Agon said, his voice tight.
“He’ll keep it,” Zana snapped. She was threading a needle with steady hands, the suture black against her bloody fingers. “Vanja, move.”
Vanja lifted the sodden cloth. Zana bent to her work. There was no anesthetic beyond the rakija. Each puncture and pull of the needle drew a sharp, hissed breath from Bahri, a jerk of his muscle. He bit down on a leather strap Burim shoved between his teeth. The sinew in his neck stood out like cables. His gaze never left Vanja’s face. It was an anchor, that look. She let him cling to it.
The stitching seemed to take hours. Zana closed the front, then they rolled him, his body heavy and limp, to close the back. More rakija. More stifled agony. Finally, it was done. Bandages were wrapped tight around his torso, white blooming quickly with pink.
They carried him to his bed upstairs. The weight of him, the utter dead weight, was worse than the blood. They laid him on the clean sheets. His skin was clammy, his breathing shallow. Zana listened to his chest with an old stethoscope, her face grim.
“Fever will come,” she said, wiping her hands on a bloody apron. “Infection is the fight now.” She looked at Vanja, truly looked at her. “You will sit with him. You know what to watch for.”
“I don’t—”
“You have seen it before,” Zana stated, no question in her tone. “You know the signs. Call me if he shakes. If his breath changes.”
The others left, heavy with exhaustion. Vanja pulled a chair to the bedside. The room smelled of iodine, sweat, and blood. Night deepened outside the window. She watched the rise and fall of his bandaged chest. The arrogant commander was gone. In his place was a pale, vulnerable man, his lips parted, his brow already beginning to gleam with sweat.
By midnight, the fever had him. It came in a wave, burning up from his core. He began to shiver, the tremors starting in his hands, moving through his limbs until his teeth chattered. She piled more blankets on him, but the shivering was a deep, cellular cold. She soaked a cloth in cool water from the basin, wiping his face, his neck, the powerful line of his chest above the bandages. His skin was furnace-hot.
He muttered in Albanian, disjointed phrases. “The wire… cut it… don’t trust the blue car…” His head tossed on the pillow. “Nena…” A long, low groan. Then, clearer, laced with pain: “Vanja.”
“I’m here.”
He didn’t hear. The fever had him in its own past. “The field is muddy,” he slurred, his English thick. “So cold. Why is it so fucking cold?”
A bolt of pure terror shot through her. The field. Her field. The one from her memory. He was dreaming it. Seeing it. Was her knowledge contagious, a poison seeping into his dreams? She gripped his hand, hard. “You’re not in the field. You’re home. In your bed. Listen to me. You’re not there.”
But he was gone again, mumbling about checkpoints and radio codes. She kept cooling his skin, the water in the basin growing tepid. The helplessness was a physical weight on her chest. She had changed the bridge, shifted a patrol, but this—the slow, intimate siege of infection—felt like history’s relentless undertow, pulling back.
A tear fell, hot on her own cheek, then another. She didn’t sob. She just sat, holding his burning hand, tears cutting silent paths through the grime on her face as the room greyed towards dawn.
His breathing changed. The rattling shallowness deepened. The violent shivering subsided into an occasional tremor. She pressed her wrist to his forehead. The terrible, dry heat was receding, leaving damp sweat in its wake. The crisis had passed.
His eyes opened. They were hazy, glassy with exhaustion, but they were lucid. They found her face, saw the tear-tracks. For a long moment, he just looked at her. Then his hand, weak, lifted from the sheet. His thumb, rough and warm, smudged a tear from her cheek.
“I told you,” he whispered, his voice a shredded rustle of sound, “I wasn’t going to the field.”
A laugh broke from her, wet and ragged, more tears coming with it. She brought his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles, the salt of her tears and his sweat on her lips. “Arrogant bastard,” she choked out.
He managed a faint, crooked smile. His eyes closed again, but this time it was sleep, not a fevered battle.
For two days, he slept and woke, drank the broths Vera brought, tolerated Zana’s brisk wound checks. The color returned to his face. The arrogance, too, in smaller doses, mainly directed at his confinement. He chafed against the stillness.
On the third afternoon, the house was quiet. Zana and Vera had gone to return borrowed medical supplies. Burim and Agon were elsewhere. Sunlight, weak but clear, streamed into the bedroom.
Vanja was sitting on the edge of the bed, updating him on the small, closed world of the house. He listened, but his attention was on her—the way her hair fell over her shoulder, the curve of her neck, the movement of her lips.
“Enough talk,” he said, his voice stronger now.
He reached out, hooked a hand behind her neck, and pulled her down into a kiss. It was slow, deep, a reclamation. When he let her up, his eyes were dark. “I need to feel alive,” he murmured against her mouth. “Not like a patient. Not like a ghost waiting.”
“Your wound—”
“Fuck the wound.”
His hands were on her, impatient, pulling at the hem of her sweater. She helped him, tugging it over her head. He unhooked her bra with a clumsy, one-handed fumble, his other arm stiff at his side. The air was cool on her skin. His gaze was hot, devouring.
“Come here,” he ordered, his voice gruff.
She carefully straddled his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, avoiding the bulky bandage on his left side. He was already hard beneath the thin fabric of his sleep pants. The feel of him, insistently pressing against her, sent a sharp jolt of desire through her core. She rocked against him, a slow, grinding friction, and he hissed, his head falling back against the headboard.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Just like that.”
He fumbled between them, pushing his own waistband down, freeing himself. His cock stood thick and eager against his stomach. He looked at her, a challenge and a plea in his eyes. She reached between her own legs, sliding her underwear aside, positioning herself. She took him in her hand, guiding him to her entrance.
She sank down onto him slowly, a devastating, full ache. He was big, and she was still learning the shape of him. A low groan was torn from his chest as she sheathed him completely, taking him to the hilt. She paused, trembling, feeling him pulse inside her, feeling the pull of his stitches with her inner muscles.
“God, you’re so fucking tight,” he rasped, his hands gripping her hips, his fingers digging in. “Move. Please. Move.”
She began to rock, a careful, rolling rhythm of her hips. Each rise and fall drew a ragged breath from him. His good hand slid from her hip around to her ass, clutching her, urging her to take him deeper. The bandage was a stark white reminder between them, but he ignored it, his focus entirely on the place where they were joined.
“Harder,” he grunted, his face a mask of straining pleasure. “Don’t treat me like I’m broken. Fuck me, Vanja. Let me feel it.”
She obeyed, driving down onto him with more force, setting a faster, more demanding pace. The bedframe creaked in protest. The sound of their skin meeting, wet and rhythmic, filled the sunlit room. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders, and his mouth found her breast, sucking deeply, teeth grazing her nipple. The dual sensation—the deep, filling thrust and the sharp pull of his mouth—made her cry out.
“That’s it,” he growled against her skin. “So good. You take me so fucking good.” His hand left her ass, slipped between their bodies, his thumb finding her clit. The contact was electric, rough and perfect. “Come for me. Come on my cock. I need to feel you come.”
His words, filthy and direct, combined with the relentless pressure of his thumb and the deep, pounding fullness, shattered her. Her climax ripped through her without warning, a silent, blinding convulsion that clamped her around him in tight, pulsing waves. She buried her scream in the crook of his neck.
The feel of her milking him was too much. With a broken, guttural shout, he came, his hips bucking up off the bed, driving into her one last, deep time as he emptied himself inside her with a hot, shuddering rush. She felt each pulse, intimate and profound.
They slumped together, a tangled, sweating mess. She was careful to keep her weight off his bandage. Their breathing gradually slowed. He nuzzled her hair, his lips against her temple.
“Proof,” he whispered, his voice satiated and raw.
“Proof,” she echoed.
Later, she brought him coffee. He was propped up in bed, looking more like himself than he had in days. She sat beside him, her own cup cradled in her hands. The domestic normality felt surreal, a fragile bubble.
“They’ll come here soon,” he said quietly, staring into his cup. “The police. Or someone else. A shot man doesn’t just disappear. They’ll ask questions.”
“What will we say?”
“We?” He looked at her, a complex emotion in his eyes. “You should go back to Basel.”
“No.”
“Vanja—”
“I changed the wire at the bridge. I gave you Fadil’s path. You’re not in the field. Don’t tell me I should go.” Her voice was calm, final.
He studied her for a long moment, then nodded once, a reluctant acceptance. “Then we need a story. A hunting accident. A misfire while cleaning a rifle. Something stupid and civilian.”
“Will they believe it?”
“They’ll want to,” he said, but his tone was bleak. “For now. It keeps things quiet.” He finished his coffee, set the cup down. “Help me up. I want to sit by the window.”
She helped him stand, his arm around her shoulders for support. He walked stiffly to the chair by the window, lowering himself into it with a soft groan. He looked out at the brown field, the bare trees.
“It’s coming anyway,” he said, not looking at her. “All of it. The field, the checkpoints, all the things you see. Slowing it down isn’t stopping it.”
She came to stand behind him, her hands resting on his good shoulder. “I know.”
He reached up, covered her hand with his. They stayed like that as the afternoon light faded, watching the shadows lengthen across the land he was willing to die for, in the quiet before the storm that she alone could hear advancing, minute by granular minute.
They stayed like that as the afternoon light faded, watching the shadows lengthen across the land he was willing to die for, in the quiet before the storm that she alone could hear advancing, minute by granular minute.
His hand on hers tightened.
“They’re here,” he said.
The rumble of an old diesel engine ground to a halt outside the gate. Doors slammed, two, then three. Boots crunched on the frozen gravel of the drive. No one knocked. The front door opened with a shudder of force against the lock.
Voices, male and official, tangled with Zana’s in the hallway below, a sharp ascent of Albanian questions and her taut, higher-pitched replies. Vanja understood every word.
“—where is Bahri Nika?”
“Recovering. He is ill.”
“We heard a shot was treated. A gunshot wound requires a report.”
“A foolish accident with an old rifle. It’s been dealt with. He’s sleeping.”
“We’ll see for ourselves.”
Boots on the stairs. Bahri’s gaze met Vanja’s. His face emptied of everything, becoming a smooth, cold mask. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. She stepped back from the window, positioning herself near the bed, a concerned visitor.
The door opened.
Two uniformed Kosovar police officers entered, with a plainclothes man behind them whose eyes immediately began inventorying the room. The lead officer, a man with a thick mustache, looked at Bahri in the chair, at the bandages visible beneath his open shirt, at the pallor of his skin.
“Bahri Nika. You had an accident.”
“I did,” Bahri said, his voice flat. He did not look at Vanja.
“What kind of accident?”
“My father’s hunting rifle. A Zastava. It was dirty. I was clumsy.” Bahri lifted his good shoulder in a faint shrug. “It went off. The bullet grazed me here.” He gestured vaguely at his bandaged shoulder. “A stupid thing. Embarrassing.”
The plainclothes man moved deeper into the room. His eyes scanned the nightstand, the floor, the wastebasket. He stopped, looking at the rumpled bed, at Vanja standing beside it.
“And you are?” he asked her in Serbian.
She made her eyes wide, slightly frightened. She answered in broken, heavily accented Albanian, the way a Swiss Serbian girl who didn’t understand would. “I am a friend. Vanja. I am visiting.”
He switched to Albanian, testing. “Visiting? During his convalescence?”
She pretended to struggle for the word, then nodded. “Yes. I bring coffee.” She gestured to the cups.
He lost interest in her, turning back to Bahri. “A graze requires so many bandages? So much… care?”
“It bled like a stuck pig,” Bahri said, a flicker of irritation in his tone. “My mother panicked. You know how mothers are.”
The officer with the mustache walked to the window, looking down at the yard. “You were not hunting. The season is closed.”
“I was cleaning it.”
“In January.”
“It was dirty from autumn. I told you, it was stupid.”
The plainclothes man crouched by the small stove, poking at the cold ashes with a pencil from his pocket. He lifted something from the grate—a twisted, blackened scrap of fabric. He held it up. It was a fragment of cloth, dark blue, synthetic. The remains of Bahri’s blood-soaked shirt.
“You burn your clothes after a hunting accident?”
The room temperature dropped. Bahri’s mask held. “It was ruined. Soaked. It stank. Why keep it?”
“Convenient.”
Zana appeared in the doorway, her face flushed. “Is this an interrogation? The doctor has seen him. It was an accident. Must you harass a sick man?”
The plainclothes man stood, dropping the charred scrap back into the ashes. He looked from Bahri to Vanja, his gaze lingering on her. He saw the intimacy in the space between them, the shared air. He smiled, a thin, knowing slice.
“A lucky accident,” he said finally. “Next time, be more careful. The times are nervous. Shots draw attention.”
They filed out. The door closed. The engine rumbled to life and faded down the road.
Bahri’s mask cracked. He let out a long, shaky breath. “They know.”
“They suspect,” Vanja corrected, her own heart hammering. She walked to the stove, stared at the blackened fabric. “They have nothing.”
“They have a Serbian girl in my bedroom. That is a story they like very much.” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “The nationalist hero corrupted by a Serb woman from Switzerland. It makes a better myth than a gun-cleaning accident.”
He pushed himself up from the chair, wincing. He came to stand behind her. His breath stirred her hair. The fear in the room was transmuting, heating into something else, a need to erase the violation of those cold, probing eyes.
“They soiled this room,” he muttered, his mouth against her ear. His good hand slid around her waist, pulling her back against him. She felt the hard line of his body, the insistence even through his weakness. “I can smell their cigarettes.”
His fingers worked the button of her jeans, dragged the zipper down. The sound was obscenely loud. He pushed the denim and her underwear down over her hips in one rough motion, letting them pool at her feet. The cold air hit her skin. He turned her to face the wall beside the stove, the plaster cold against her palms.
“Don’t move,” he commanded, his voice thick.
She heard the rustle of his own clothes, the sharp intake of breath as his movements pulled at his wound. Then he was pressed against her, his cock probing the cleft of her ass before sliding down, finding her entrance. He was still slick from their earlier sex, and he pushed into her with a single, deep, unforgiving stroke that forced a cry from her throat. He filled her utterly, a reclaiming.
“This is mine,” he growled in her ear, one hand bracing against the wall, the other clutching her hip. “This is what they don’t get to see. This truth.”
He fucked her with a slow, deliberate brutality, each thrust a punctuation mark against the fear. There was no tenderness, only a raw assertion of existence. The wall shuddered with their impact. Her breasts were crushed against the cold plaster. She could feel the sweat breaking out on his chest, the strain in his body, but he didn’t stop.
“Tell me you feel it,” he demanded, his breaths coming in harsh grunts. “Tell me you feel me owning this.”
“I feel it,” she gasped, the words vibrating against the wall. The friction was building a sharp, desperate coil inside her. “God, Bahri…”
“No gods here. Just this. Just me in your cunt.” He shifted his angle, driving deeper, and the coiled thing snapped. Her orgasm was a silent, shocking rupture, a series of internal clenches that milked his length. He swore, a filthy, beautiful Albanian obscenity, and followed her, his hips stuttering, spilling into her with a hot, liquid rush that seemed to drain the last of his strength.
He slumped against her, his forehead between her shoulder blades, his weight heavy. They stayed like that, joined, panting in the dim room, the scent of sex and cold ash and their own sweat thick around them.
Later, in the dark, they lay in his narrow bed. The house was silent. Her head was on his good shoulder.
“The story will be that you seduced me,” he said into the darkness. “That you are a spy, or a whore, or both. That’s the story that works for them.”
“I know.”
“It will be ugly.”
“I’ve seen ugly.” She paused. “I need to go to the church. Tomorrow. Before the story gets out and they block the roads.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I’ll take you.”
“You can’t drive.”
“Burim will drive. I will be with you.” His arm tightened around her. “You protect bones. I protect you. That is the new story.”
She closed her eyes, listening to the rhythm of his heart under her ear, a frantic, living drum against the vast, silent weight of the future. It was a bargain struck in the dark, sealed with blood and salt and spend. It felt as fragile as a breath on glass, and as necessary as air.