“You must not stay in this house, not for long at a time,” she pleaded. “I cannot explain to you why not, but perhaps when I am strong again I can tell you enough to have you guess the rest. Now you must go.”
Sonya took Nona’s cool hands in her hot ones and held them close for a moment.
The next moment the American girl had gone.
At the hospital inside the fortress she explained the situation, at least so far as it could be explained. A Russian woman, who had once been her friend, lay seriously ill at one of the nearby huts. Would one of the hospital physicians come and see her? Also would it be possible for her to be spared from caring for the soldiers to look after her woman friend?
Certainly a Russian doctor would attend the case; moreover, after certain formalities Nona was allowed a leave of absence from the hospital demands.
Then began an experience for the young American girl that nothing in her past two or more years of nursing had equaled.
She was living and working in a new world, amid surroundings which she could not understand and of which she was afraid.
The little hut was crude and lonely. The two old peasants could speak no English, but went about their tasks day after day mute and dolorous. Sonya was too ill to recognize her nurse, and Nona could not allow Barbara or Mildred to come near her, since her patient’s illness was of the most contagious nature.
Naturally Barbara and Mildred wholly disapproved of the risk Nona was running and she had not time nor strength to make them see her side of the situation. She had written them that Sonya Valesky had proved herself to have been an old friend of her mother’s. For that reason and for several others she felt it her duty to care for her.
But strangest of all Nona’s experiences were the fragments of conversation which she heard from the lips of her ill friend.