In the middle of the night, the lorry carrying Iris arrived at Avalon Bluff. Medical staff swept her into the infirmary and tended to her minor wounds while she reassured them she was fine. Attie Attwood found Iris and, upon Iris’s urgent questions, confirmed Roman Kitt had just come out of surgery upstairs. Attie led Iris to a dim recovery ward where Roman slept, pale and thin, his injured leg bandaged and elevated, fluids running into his hand.

Iris stood by Roman’s bedside, reflecting that he had taken wounds meant for her. She touched his hand and hair, hoping he might wake. A nurse quietly reported they had removed twelve pieces of shrapnel from Roman’s leg and that his arteries were unharmed. When the nurse suggested Roman was there because of Iris, Iris replied that she herself was there because of him, then left the room overwhelmed.

In the corridor, Marisol Torres rushed to Iris in tears and embraced her. Marisol took Iris and Attie home, promising food and rest. After a scalding shower meant to wash away the grime and shock, Iris joined Attie and Marisol in the kitchen for cocoa and a hot, simple meal. Too drained to talk, Iris accepted their quiet company and then, exhausted, went to sleep.

Late the next morning, Iris woke sore and immediately thought of Roman. Seeing both her own bag and Roman’s bag on the floor, she remembered Carver’s silence in recent days and pulled out his last unread letter from her jumpsuit pocket. She finished reading it, where Carver confessed, “I love you, Iris,” and begged her to see him.

Haunted by a past exchange about the word “sublime,” Iris suspected a connection between Roman and Carver. She recalled Roman’s urgent plea on the battlefield for his bag and opened it. Roman’s belongings tumbled out, followed by a flurry of typed pages like snowfall.

Kneeling on the floor, Iris realized the pages were her own letters—first written to Forest, then to Carver—kept, worn, and reread. The discovery confirmed that Roman Kitt was Carver all along. Relief crashed over her that the man she had fallen for in letters was the same man who had saved her life. But questions and doubts followed: whether he had misled her and why he had not told her earlier. She gathered the letters one by one, shaken but newly certain of the truth.