“Are you awake?” she whispered, keeping to one side of the carbine. She didn’t want him to startle awake and shoot before he recognized her.

“Yeah,” he said, the word coming on a wheezy breath.

“Did you sleep?”

“On and off.”

She knew he was embarrassed by the old metal basin he used for a bathroom, and so she simply took it to the creek, emptied and washed it, and returned. She handed him a clean linen towel dampened with fresh water. The sun slanted in through the opening of the hut, and she saw that his face appeared swollen and red.

“You’re still feverish,” she said, trying not to seem alarmed.

He had been trying to repair his communications equipment. She could see the small parts spread on the ground beside him. She had a fleeting thought of Jean-Luc, so clever with radios, but she hadn’t seen him in weeks.

She took out some bread and boiled eggs. At the bottom of the basket were more wound dressings and disinfectant powder. In a small wooden box was a glass tube in a syringe. “This is penicillin,” she said. “It will cure the infection.”

“Where the devil did you get that?” he asked, blinking at it. “Christ on a crutch, did you tell somebody?”

“Of course not. I have a friend who was a . . . vétérinaire. You understand?”

“Veterinarian.”

Lisette hadn’t said anything to Dr. Toselli about the soldier, but had simply, in the course of conversation, asked him “hypothetical” questions about how he might treat a certain type of wound. And Toselli—bless him—did not wonder why she was asking. He had told her that, given the gravity of the wounds she described and the persistence of the fever, a shot of penicillin was in order. He had even shown her how to administer the shot subcutaneously, having her practice on an unripe pear from his garden.

“This is made en maison, you know? From a fermentation and a medium of . . .” She searched her brain for the word. “Corn flour.” After she had read him Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Dying Detective,” Toselli had explained how infections and antidotes worked.

“And that makes penicillin?” asked Hank.

“It is the best way to treat the infection,” she said.

“I reckon it can’t leave me any worse off than I already am.”

“Don’t move.” She carefully cleaned his thigh where she’d cut away the fabric, plunged the needle into the muscle, and injected the solution.

He made a hissing sound, but held perfectly still. “I’ve never been hurt so much by a girl before,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s dangerous for you to help me.”

“I’m not afraid of danger,” she said. Then she checked his ankle. She couldn’t tell if it was broken. She propped it on a bed of soft linens and placed a compress over it.

“You should eat,” she stated. “You need your strength.”

“Thank you,” he said, unwrapping the bread and taking a bite, washing it down with a sip of water.