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His murmured reassurances gradually fade away as the sun clears the horizon. Out here on the open ocean, it feels painfully bright even to her. His head comes down heavy on her shoulder and his arms around her slacken. She grips them tighter.
“No! Mr. Shen, don’t go.”
He is too heavy for her to hold upright and he slumps over, ending up on his side on the raft, facing the sun. She watches horrified for a moment as his skin starts to sizzle and burn in the light.
“Shen Zhi Heng!” She crawls on all fours to block the sun from hitting his face. She shakes him, “Shen Zhi Heng.”
Fresh tears flow down her face and her body shakes from her sobs. This cannot be it. She puts her head against his chest and is relieved that his heart is still beating.
This cannot be it. She shakes herself into action. She’s not letting him die so easily. She undoes the clasp on his cloak and struggles mightily to turn him over so he lays with his back to the sun at least. His cloak is pinned under him and she almost goes over board when her desperate tugging finally pulls it free.
“Calm down, Mi Lan.” She says aloud to herself. She takes a few shaky breaths.
She spreads the cloak over his body, covering every part of him that she can from the sun. She sits with her own back to the sun and cradles his head in her lap, shielding his face from the light with her body. His face, usually so flawless, is patchy with vivid burns. She shakes him again and calls his name, trying to wake him, but he does not stir.
She scans the horizon but there is nothing but water to see on all sides of them. She lets out a desperate cry, hunching over him, her grief a physical pain.
She runs out of tears. She hasn’t eaten or had anything to drink in a long time. The sun is hot on her back. She is dizzy and sick. She keeps drifting off into a kind of stupor and then frantically feeling for his pulse when she comes to again. He is still alive, but his pulse is slow and thin.
The sun is not even to its full height yet. There is a lot of daylight left. She fights her dread and hopelessness, keeps calling his name for as long as she can, but eventually she slips into unconsciousness as well.
She wakes from a terrible nightmare in which she was on their makeshift raft but Shen Zhi Heng was in the water, slowly sinking under the surface. No matter how she struggled he continued to disappear down under the surface until only his hand grasping hers was visible.
She gasps for breath as if she had been the one drowning. Disoriented, she tries to take in her surroundings. She is on a bed in a dim room. Shen Zhi Heng is laid out in bed beside her, tucked under the covers. She puts a hand on his chest and the other under his nose. His heart beat is steady and his breath even.
Thank god. Oh, thank god.
She takes a few deep breaths, blinking away tears, and continues to look around. The room is mostly roughhewn wood, with only a desk and a single chair aside from the bed. There a small round window at the other end of the room. A porthole. They must be on a ship, she realizes. Sure enough, as soon as she pays attention, she feels the telltale rocking that indicates they are at sea.
She scoots off the bed and peers out the small window. It appears to be dawn again and she shudders. She can barely make out the water around them.
There a pitcher of water and a glass on the desk and she pours herself some and drinks. She checks the door to the room but it is locked from the outside. She returns to the bedside and checks on Shen Zhi Heng. She traces her fingers across the undamaged parts of his face and tries to think what she can do for him. She untucks her shirt and tears a piece off the bottom, then dips it in the water and pats his sunburnt face gently. He does not stir.
All she can do is wait. Luckily, she spent most of her childhood alone in the dark for hours with no company, so her current circumstances are not that challenging. She sits on the floor with her back against the bed, occasionally reaching her arm over to find his hand and hold it.
Eventually, there is movement at the door and someone unlocks it and pushes it open. She scrambles to stand up. Her legs are numb from sitting for so long.
A foreign man enters the room, carrying a tray with a bowl on it. He nods to her and sets the tray on the table then turns to face her and crosses his arms. They stare at each other for a moment.
“Who are you?” She asks, though she knows it is likely he won’t understand. If only Mr. Shen were awake. He speaks a dazzling array of languages.
To her shock he answers her in Mandarin, “Considering that I plucked you from the middle of the open ocean, I believe I should be the one questioning you.”
She bows to him, “Thank you.”
“What happened to you?”
“Our ship exploded.” Something she knows about lying is that the more truth there is to it, the more convincing it is.
“So that’s what that was. We saw it as we left Haidong. Why did it explode?”
“It was rigged to.”
The man raises one of his strange, pale eyebrows, “Why?”
“Presumably to kill us,” she replies.
He nods thoughtfully. “Why would someone want to kill you? What are you involved in?”
“I’m not sure,” she hedges, “nothing illegal, if that’s what you mean. They kidnapped me to get to him.”
The foreigner looks past her at Shen Zhi Heng, “And who is he?”
“My husband,” she says in a rush. “He runs a newspaper in Haidong. He got on the wrong side of some bad people with what he reported.”
The foreigner says nothing.
“Can you take us back to Haidong? We are wealthy, we can reward you.”
He laughs, “You are very straightforward. I like it. Let me be as well, we won’t take you back to Haidong. I have no interest in getting mixed up in your business. And more importantly, I have a schedule to keep. We are heading to Shanghai to drop off goods. We’ll be there tomorrow and you can get off there.”
She nods, “Okay, thank you.”
He goes back to the door and opens it to leave, pausing before he goes to say, “We’ll take the reward though.”
She eats the food he brought, a watery and tasteless porridge, all the while worrying over what to do about Shen Zhi Heng. After their escape from the mine, he had slept for 5 days and she thinks he must be weaker now than he was then. The crew of this ship might haul him off for her, but then what is she supposed to do? She’s not going to get far trying to carry his unconscious form through the streets of Shanghai.
She suspects what he really needs to aid recovery is blood. She isn’t certain if her blood will work for him anymore, but she has no other option regardless. She searches the room for something sharp. She is considering smashing the now empty bowl, but then she remembers his cloak. She sits beside him on the bed and uses his cloak pin to prick one of her fingers. Gently, she holds his mouth open, letting her blood slowly drip inside. He swallows it. Good. She hopes this will be enough.
Hours pass. Shen Zhi Heng sleeps on. The sun goes above the porthole and she is relieved that its position in the room means light never shines directly on the bed. As a result, it remains very dim in the room, but she could swear his face is starting to heal. Or is that wishful thinking?
She entertains herself by listening to the sounds of the ship and the ocean beyond, or by trying to remember as much of the boring poetry he kept trying to get her to study. Turns out she has not retained much of it. She is in the middle of counting the notches some previous resident of this room carved into the door frame when Shen Zhi Heng takes a sharp inhale and suddenly sits up.
He blinks rapidly at her and she stares at him from across the room for a long moment.
“Mi Lan,” his voice is hoarse and uncertain.
She sprints across the room and throws her arms around him. “Mr. Shen, thank goodness. You woke up. You woke up.”
She pulls back to look at him, hands on his face to reassure herself, a habit from before she regained her sight that she can’t seem to break.
“I woke up…” he says in disbelief.
“How do you feel?”
He pauses for a moment, taking stock. “I feel… good? I’m not sure how that’s possible.”
She nods in satisfaction, “I gave you blood. I didn’t know if it would work but I think it did.”
Worry darkens his features and he takes her by the shoulders and pushes her back to look her over, “What, no, Mi Lan, that’s not right. Don’t hurt yourself for my sake.”
She holds up her hand to show him the already mostly healed cut, feeling defiant that he would try to reprimand her for this. “It’s fine, look. I’m fine. Do you really think I could just watch you suffer?”
The question comes out a shaky whisper and suddenly she is crying. She tries to turn away from him, echoes of the grief she felt yesterday when he urged her to accept his death hitting her again like a punch. He still has her by the shoulders and he won’t let her turn away. He pulls her forward against his chest and embraces her tightly.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m still here. It’s okay.”
She sobs into his shirt, relief and fear and resentment all mixing together. He holds on to her, rubbing her back and murmuring reassurances against the top of her head. When she quiets down, he holds her head in his hands.
“Don’t cry,” he wipes the tears from her face with his fingers. “Will you tell me what happened?”
She relays the outline of their rescue, strategically leaving out the hours she baked in the sun in agony after he passed out, but telling him in detail about their foreign savior.
“Shanghai.” He gives a nod of approval. “It’s not where I wanted to take you originally, but it has its advantages.”
He naps for much of the afternoon. After a time, she gets sleepy herself. She crawls on top of the covers and takes advantage of the fact that he’s asleep to cuddle up next to him and lay her head on his chest. When she wakes from a dreamless sleep of indeterminant length, he has wrapped an arm around her and his hand stroking a repeating pattern from her head down her back. She tilts her head up, putting her chin on his chest and finds him already looking down at her.
They stare at each other for several long moments.
“You’re awake.”
“So are you,” he smiles at her.
There is a knock at the door, followed by the clatter of keys as the door is unlocked. Shen Zhi Heng sits up quickly, putting his body between her and the door.
The foreigner enters with another tray of food. “I see the patient is finally awake! Thank goodness, I don’t think your wife could carry you off this ship.”
Mr. Shen looks back at her sharply. She hadn’t mentioned to him that she told the man they were married. She shrugs. He clears his throat.
“Uh, yes, I can’t thank you enough for rescuing us. Mr...?”
“Captain Woodland,” the man says in his native language and then adds in Mandarin, “Your people call me Wu Lan.”
“Your Chinese is very good,” Shen Zhi Heng flatters the man.
“My Chinese is passable,” Wu Lan chuckles. “I’ll leave dinner for you here. There won’t be anything to eat tomorrow. We’ll arrive in Shanghai by midmorning. I’ll ask you to get off promptly, before the dockmaster comes for inspection.”
“Of course,” Shen Zhi Heng agrees. “We won’t get in the way. Is there a place we could call on you in Shanghai? I’d like to compensate you for the assistance.”
Wu Lan nods in satisfaction and gives them the details on how to contact him before seeing himself out again.
The port in Shanghai is chaotic. They go ashore, keeping out of the way of the sailors and blending into the crowds along the docks as best they can. It takes some time to make their way to a street where they can hail a cab. Shen Zhi Heng puts on a brave face but she knows he is in pain.
They stop at a bank first. She waits in the ornate lobby while he goes through the necessary process to access his accounts. The next stop is a department store for fresh clothes. She is relieved for him to once again have sun protection. Watching him wince and grit his teeth all morning has made her worried. He is weak right now, and she isn’t really sure how long he will take to recover or if he can recover at all. He has to recover.
Shanghai is grand on a scale she could not have previously imagined. The money flowing in and out of the port has been well spent throughout the city. She is fascinated by the mix of architecture and people she glimpses out the car window. She turns to Shen Zhi Heng and finds he is already looking at her. He tilts his head and suppresses a smile. “Do you like it here?”
She smiles back at him enthusiastically, “Yes, it is so beautiful.”
He nods, “Very beautiful.” But he’s not looking out the window at all, just watching her.
It is afternoon when they arrive at the hotel he has selected. She is momentarily anxious when the front desk clerk asks him how many rooms. She does not want to be separated from him. She grips his arm. To her relief, he gets them a suite with multiple bedrooms.
While she completes her exploration of their accommodation, Shen Zhi Heng sits on the couch with his head resting on the back and his eyes closed. He is pale and drawn after even that brief time in daylight. She kneels on the couch next to him and feels his forehead. He is clammy, a sure sign his energy is depleted. She sits back on her heels and crosses her arms, exhaling a worried sigh.
“What’s your diagnosis, doctor?”
“You need more blood. I didn’t give you enough on the ship.”
At this he opens his eyes and looks at her with a warning glance. “Mi Lan, no.”
“Why not?” She protests. “You said yourself that you are weaker than normal because of the blood stone. I think my blood is especially good for you then. It still carries the energy from the blood stone.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll be fine in a few days.”
“You won’t hurt me. I trust you.”
“Have you already forgotten the six principles? No bloodletting.” He chides.
“Actually, I haven’t forgotten. It is ‘No bloodletting without reason.’ We have a very good reason. And besides, I am giving you permission, it’s different.” She uncrosses her arms and starts to roll up her one of her sleeves.
He sits up, grabbing her arm to halt her progress. “I can’t do that to you.”
“You’ve done it before,” she reminds him, tilting her head to expose her neck, “would you rather do it that way?”
He leans forward and buries his face in both hands, groaning her name, “Mi Lan…”
She finishes rolling up her sleeve and then pats his back in gentle reassurance. “Shen Zhi Heng, don’t be so stubborn. We have to look out for each other. If the situation were reversed, would you even hesitate to do this for me? Wouldn’t you insist?”
He peeks out at her from between his fingers. “When did you get so clever?”
“I’ve always been clever.” She holds her bare forearm out in front of him. “I’m insisting.”
He shakes his head in defeat, cradling her outstretched hand in his own, stroking the delicate skin on her wrist with his thumb. “If I hurt you, you have to stop me.”
“I will. You won’t.” She puts her other hand on top of his clenched fist where it rests on his thigh and he shifts his grip so he is holding on to her fingers.
He is breathing heavy and his eyes have the glassy look that she knows means he’s hungry. He slowly brings her arm up to his mouth, keeping their eyes locked. His lips rest against her pulse point, soft and warm on her skin. She squeezes his hand and nods at him, urging him to get on with it.
He sinks his sharp teeth, the fangs he usually keeps retracted and hidden from view, into her skin in an instant and it stings but that sensation is almost immediately drowned out by the warm, buzzy feeling she gets from having him put his mouth on her. He starts sucking and she has to hold in the moan that draws from her because she knows he’ll think it is pain. It is not.
His eyes never leave her face as he drinks from her and she fights to keep hers open against the rush of pleasure this sends through her. Her cheeks flush. She feels short of breath. She hangs onto his hand for dear life, an anchor against the inner turbulence she now feels.
Too soon for her liking, he releases her from the bite. The pale skin of her arm is already bruising between the small punctures he made. He kisses her there so quickly and unexpectedly that she almost misses it, and then clamps his hand over the wound to staunch the bleeding.
He finally breaks eye contact, closing his eyes and slumping back against the couch. He takes several long inhales through his nose, exhaling from his mouth. She stays where she is, wrist held in his iron grip, stunned. She had not expected it to feel like that.
He shakes his head and then opens his eyes again, his composure regained. “Are you okay?”
She nods, still working on her own composure.
He clears his throat and brings her other hand up to her arm. “Keep pressure on this. Let me look for a bandage.”
He won’t meet her eyes as he wraps up her arm and he has a furrow in his brow that she recognizes as worry. “Shen Zhi Heng, what is wrong? You didn’t hurt me.”
He turns his head and looks in the direction of the windows, though the curtains are drawn against the light. He clenches his jaw, “It’s not right, Mi Lan. I can’t keep taking your blood to recover.”
She sighs, her frustration growing at his rigid adherence to principle even in a crisis. “It’s the best solution we have right now. You need your strength back.”
“I don’t want my strength back if it means depleting yours.”
“But I am fine so far, I have plenty of strength to share with you. You gave me the energy of the blood stone and now I am giving it back to you.”
“The energy blood stone can’t support two people indefinitely,” he reminds her.
“We won’t go on like this indefinitely!” She counters. “Just until we figure out how to save you.”
“I’m not sure I can be saved.” He whispers.
She is properly angry now. She stands up and moves in front of him, intercepting his gaze. “So, what, just because we don’t know the answer now, just because it might not work, you should just lay down and die?”
He shakes his head sadly, “If I am going to die, I don’t want to take you with me.”
Tears fill her eyes and she wills them not to spill over, her voice is shaking as she speaks. “I can’t understand why you are so willing to leave me, but I am not willing to let you go that easily. You think I would be fine to go on without you but you are wrong. You keep saying you don’t want to hurt me. Don’t you realize, the worst pain you could cause me, the most you could hurt me, is by abandoning me.”
She spins away from him and runs to her room, unable to even look at him anymore. He calls after her but she slams the door and then collapses back against it and slides down to the floor, sobbing.
A moment later there is a light knock on the door and he tries to open it, but it is almost immediately blocked by her crouched form. She pushes it shut again in his face. “Go away!”
“Mi Lan…” he calls quietly, “I’m sorry.”
She goes on crying.
“Mi Lan,” he pleads, “please don’t cry. I am sorry. I don’t know what I am doing. As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve never been in this situation before.”
She takes a tremulous breath and leans her head back against the door. She hears a thump on the floor and weight pressing against the door. He must be sitting against the other side. She wipes her face. “What situation?”
“Will you open the door?”
“No,” she sniffles, “what situation have you never been in before?”
“Wanting to live but not knowing if I can, having something that I care about living for, but at the same time would gladly die to protect.”
“Something?”
“Someone,” he clarifies. “This is new to me and I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry for making you think I want to leave you, that I would be willing to leave you. It’s not what I want. I want to stay with you.”
“So will you let me help you?”
“Yes, I’ll let you help me.”
“And we can figure it out together?”
“Together,” he agrees.
She stands up and turns the door knob. He’s scrambling to stand up as she opens the door to face him.
“Promise?”
He pulls her into his embrace, “Promise.”