Time melted away. Was it morphine? Someone wheeled me into a room with a round light hanging from the ceiling and draped a towel over my face. I felt an intravenous injection and a woman told me to count backward. I counted in Polish, and she counted in German, and I drifted off.
Sometime that night I woke. Was I hallucinating? I was lying back in the ward, in my bed, only a dim glow coming from the window. A slice of light flashed into the room as the door opened and closed. I caught my mother’s scent and thought she stood by my bed for a few seconds, and then I felt her tuck me in, lifting the mattress and pulling the sheet extra tight underneath as she always did. Matka! I felt her lips meet my forehead and linger there.
I tried to reach out but could not. Please stay.
Soon there was another slice of light, and she was gone.
—
THE NEXT MORNING I woke as if rising from the depths of the ocean floor.
“Matka?” It was Luiza, calling from her bed next to mine. “I am so thirsty, Matka.”
“I’m here, Lou,” I said.
I raised myself up on my elbows and saw every bed was full. All the girls except Zuzanna wore a cast or paper bandages on one leg. Some were moaning and calling out for their mothers or husbands or children. We were all so thirsty. They’d put me in the bed closest to the window, Zuzanna down the row from me, closer to the hallway door.
“Zuzanna?” I called to her, but she did not answer. She had thrown up on herself and her bedclothes.
“Matka!” I called as loud as I could. Had she really visited me the night before? Had it been a dream?
My own nausea and pain were terrible. When I first woke, I wasn’t sure I still had a leg, but then saw it was wrapped in a heavy plaster from the top of my toes to the top of my thigh. I could feel some fuzzy material inside as if it was lined with cotton. Some of us had symbols written on our plasters and bandages down near the ankle: AI, CII, and similar writing. Some had been operated on on their left leg, some on their right, some on both. On my plaster, I found a Roman numeral one was written in black marker. What did it mean?
How we prayed for water! None was given, except when Dr. Oberheuser gave us a glass with vinegar in it. Undrinkable.
I was in and out of consciousness. We were all groggy, but Alfreda and Luiza were in especially bad shape. There was a big letter T marked on their plasters. At first Alfreda just cried out in pain, but soon her neck went rigid, and her head arched back. As the morning wore on, her arms and legs grew stiff.
“Please help me,” Alfreda said. “Water. Please.”
Janina somehow got up that first day and hopped from bed to bed doing the best she could to comfort us all, straightening our blankets and delivering our one bedpan.
“Water is coming,” Janina said, suffering from terrible dry heaves herself.
“Matka, it’s Kasia!” I called out, hoping she would hear me from her desk in the Revier. But we didn’t see a soul, except Dr. Oberheuser and Nurse Gerda, who came to our beds.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Luiza woke me. How long had we been there? Two days? Two weeks? Hard to tell, for one hour blended into the next.
“Kasia. Are you awake?” Luiza asked.
Arcs of light from the tower searchlights crisscrossed the room at regular intervals, lighting up Luiza’s pale face, tight with pain. She shuddered all over from terrible chills.
“I’m here, Lou,” I said.
She reached out her arm across the space between our cots, and I held her cold hand.
“Please tell my mother I was brave.”
“You’ll tell her yourself.”
“No, Kasia. I’m so afraid. I may go mad with it.”
“Tell me a story. Keep your mind busy.”
“About what?”
“Anything. The one about Pietrik’s scar.”
“The baby bottle? I’ve told you one hundred times.”
I waited for the arc of light to visit my face and gave her my sternest look. “Tell me again.”
“I can’t, Kasia.”
“Don’t give up, Lou. Tell me the story.”
She took a deep breath. “When Pietrik was a baby, my grandmother, God rest her soul, gave him a glass baby bottle of water to drink in his crib.”
“Was he a good baby, Lou?”
“You know he was. But somehow he broke the bottle on the rails of the crib and cut himself across the bridge of his nose. Our Matka came running when she heard his cries.”
“Don’t forget the blood.”
“So much blood his face was awash with it. My grandmother fainted dead away on the nursery floor. She was a fainter…”
Luiza drifted off.
“And then?” I asked.
“The doctors stitched him up. The glass didn’t hurt his beautiful blue eyes, but now he has that terrible scar across the bridge of his nose.”
“I don’t think it’s terrible at all,” I said.
The light caught Luiza’s smile, but it only made her seem sicker somehow. “He could have two heads, and you would still be crazy about him. Am I right?”
“I suppose. But he loves Nadia. And she him. A girl doesn’t buy all ten of a boy’s dance tickets if she’s not in love.”
“You can be wrong, you know. Nadia told me she left something for you. In your secret spot.”
Luiza knew of our secret spot? Nothing was sacred. “You need to get some sleep now.”
“I will, but only if you tell me first: Is it a sin to break a promise?”
“Depends on the promise,” I said.
Luiza turned her face toward me. Even that small movement seemed to cause her great pain.
“But I crossed my heart. Will God disapprove?”
“God owes us one for putting us here.”
“That’s blasphemy.”
“You can tell, Lou. Whose promise?”
“Well, Pietrik’s.”
Everything quickened. About me?
“Swear you will never tell him I told. I’ll probably never see him again, but I couldn’t bear him remembering his sister as a loose tongue.”
“You can’t think that way, Luiza. You’ll see him. You know I can keep a secret.”
“He said he knew something when you danced at the casino.”
“What?”
“Something important.”
“Luiza. I’m not going to drag it out of—”
“Well, he told me he loves you. There it is.”
“No.”
“Yes. He said he would tell you himself.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be doing much more dancing after this,” I said.
“Don’t pretend you don’t care. You love him too. I can tell.”
“If you must know, yes. But he is crazy for Nadia.”
“No, he loves you. He would never lie to me. You’re lucky to have my brother, Kasia. You will grow old together and have babies.” She was quiet for a moment. “I will miss him. And my parents. Do tell them I was brave even if I am not in the end?”
I held Luiza’s hand until she fell asleep. I then drifted off myself, thinking of how good it felt to be loved and of Pietrik as a baby and of how I would never forgive myself if I did not bring Luiza home for him.
—
SOON WE WERE ALL running high fevers, and more girls grew sicker. The pain in my leg was terrible, as if a nest of bees were attacking my calf.
We didn’t see Dr. Oberheuser until the following evening, and by then Alfreda and Luiza were both unable to move, their whole bodies stiff, backs arched. I tried to hold Luiza’s hand, but her fingers were clenched like claws. She could no longer talk, but I saw it in her eyes—she was terrified.
Zuzanna had spells of wakefulness, but most of the time I was unable to rouse her. The short periods she was awake, she lay curled up and clutched her belly, moaning. What had they done to her?
Dr. Oberheuser came into the room with Nurse Gerda.
“Es stinkt hier,” was all Dr. Oberheuser said when she entered.
Could we help it if the room stank? Rotting flesh will do that.
“Please, Madame Doctor, may we have some water?” I asked, but she ignored me and went from bed to bed writing on her charts. “Gleiche, Gleiche, Gleiche,” was all she said as she went bed to bed, comparing our operated legs to the healthy ones. “Same, same, same.”
“Zuzanna!” I called. How could she not answer? She lay sleeping on her side, knees to her chest.
Dr. Oberheuser stepped over to Luiza, checked her pulse, then gestured to the nurse.
“You can remove that one,” said the doctor, pointing to Luiza.
My blood went cold. “Oh no, please, Madame Doctor. Luiza is only fifteen.”