Chapter Twelve
The days were long, the weeks endless. Time moved slowly through the next fortnight, as though it were a frozen river struggling toward the sea. Without Henrik her life lacked purpose, interest, anything to hold her attention. She treated the sick and wounded, attended the dying, helped Marla with a difficult birth. None of it seemed to have the importance it had held before. Where once this work had been the way she found value and reason in life, now it felt empty. Not that the intrinsic worth of her efforts had changed, but she had learned how much more there was to life. Having discovered the possibility of a soul-deep connection with another human being, its withdrawal left her nursing an aching hollowness inside.
And through it all ran the need to make a decision tha
