Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  “What’s wrong with him?” she says, walking over but holding on to Elena’s hand, to bring her with her, to spend as much time with her as possible.

  “Chest pains,” Fyodor replies.

  Cilka crouches down, Elena with her, and introduces herself to the patient and asks some general questions. His answers indicate there is nothing she can do but get him to the hospital as quickly as possible for the doctors to assess.

  “Load him up,” she tells the men. She lingers over a last hug from Elena, then follows the stretcher outside, jumping into the back of the ambulance. She glances one more time at her friend before giving the patient her full attention. She again asks the questions she knows the doctors will want her to answer on arrival.

  On her way back to her living quarters that afternoon she stops and picks as many flowers as she can carry. Placed in pots, jugs and someone’s mug, they greet the other nurses as they return.

  * * *

  The white nights are back. Cilka and the nurses take their evening walks outside. Occasionally, Cilka thinks about risking a visit to the general compound to see her friends, to wander between the huts, share in the laughter that only comes at this time of year. And could she, finally, find the words? Something within her still closes over at the thought. She knows that she would be recognized by some of the men and boys, that she is still not safe, and so she stays away. She does not see Alexandr on those evenings—perhaps their shifts are out of sync—but she often glances to the administration building anyway, just in case.

  She is almost grateful when the winds return, the sun goes down and her temptations are no longer a threat. But then winter arrives with a vengeance. With the new concessions gained at the expense of dozens of lives in the fateful uprising a year ago, work grinds to a halt on many days as prisoners are no longer expected to work in the bitter cold, with temperatures well below freezing, and constant darkness. Many days, the prisoners cannot leave their huts—the snow piled so high throughout the camp that even walking to the mess for meals is not possible. The road between the camp and the mine is blocked, making it difficult for either trucks or the train to collect the coal needed throughout the Soviet Union.

  Futile attempts are made by prisoners to shovel snow away from their huts and create a path to the mess. Some succeed, but many give up as more snow arrives faster than they can clear it.

  Paths are created between the medical and nursing staff quarters and the hospital.

  The injuries presenting for Cilka and the others to treat now often arise from brutal beatings as bored men and women forced to stay indoors for days on end release whatever energy they have in physical violence. Cilka hears of, and sees, some beatings that are so severe the loser doesn’t survive. Like caged animals with nothing to live for, the prisoners turn on each other. Cilka’s gently flowering optimism starts to shrink back down inside her. This is always, she thinks, the way people will treat each other.

  Poor sanitation, as the prisoners become reluctant to venture outside for the most basic of human bodily functions, leads to illness and this also fills the ward. The doctors often lament that they are wasting their time treating patients who will return all too soon with the same symptoms, the same ailments. And then the weather lifts and the temperature rises the few degrees needed for the prisoners to be sent back outside, to work.

  * * *

  “Ambulance going out,” Fyodor shouts.

  “Coming,” Cilka replies, grabbing her coat and the new, softer scarf Raisa gave her recently.

  “Where are we going?” Cilka asks as the ambulance turns away from the front gates.

  “Not far, just to the other side of the administration building,” Kirill tells her.

  “Another heart attack. One of the commandants doing it with someone he shouldn’t have?” Cilka jokes.

  Fyodor and Kirill stare at her, taken aback.

  Several men stand around, blocking their view of the patient. As Cilka walks toward them she notices a piece of timber lying nearby, covered in blood.

  “Get out of the way,” Kirill calls.

  They step aside and Cilka sees a man lying on the ground, not moving, the blood draining from him turning the white snow all around him an ugly shade of red. As Fyodor and Kirill advance toward the man, Cilka freezes, fixated on the blood-stained snow.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944

  The loud pounding on the door of Block 25 wakes Cilka. Disoriented, she looks around the room. She has been dreaming, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. Crawling out of her bed, she takes the coat that doubles as an extra blanket and pulls it on, then slips her feet into the boots waiting for her next to her bunk and pulls on her thick gloves.

  Opening the door from her single room out into the large room where dozens of women have just spent their last night on earth, she screams at the pounding door, “Coming, we’re coming.”

  She walks between the two rows of bunks, screaming at the women: “Get up, get up and get out of here!”

  She shakes each of the bodies awake, giving them a gentler, last message with her eyes. In between her screams, loud enough for the SS to hear, she softly mumbles and whispers—prayers, an apology, a frustrated sort of rumble. Not enough to bring herself to tears. And not looking them in the eye. She can no longer do that. The women in Block 25 know what fate awaits them. No one speaks or resists; an eerie calm surrounds them as they file into the middle of the room.

  As Cilka opens the door, the blinding sunlight reflects off the powdery snow surrounding the building. She hears the engine idling on the truck waiting just outside the fence.

  The women wait behind her, the keeper of the death block. “Get out!” she screams. “Come on, you lazy bunch, get moving, quicker.”

  She holds the door open as one by one the women exit the block and walk between the SS officers guiding them to the back of the truck. The last woman is struggling to walk; a gap has opened up between her and the woman in front. Cilka sees the nearest SS officer pull his swagger stick from its holder on his belt and advance on the woman. Cilka gets to her first, screaming at her as she slips her arm around the woman, half dragging her toward the truck. The SS officer puts his stick away. Cilka doesn’t let up on her screaming until she has helped the woman onto the truck. The doors are slammed shut, and the truck drives off. The SS officers wander away.

  Cilka stands watching the truck leave. She is completely hollowed out, though she feels bile in her throat. She doesn’t see the prisoner until she is a few feet away.

  “Murderer,” the prisoner hisses at her.

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me, you murdering bitch. You have as much blood on your hands as they do,” she says in a shaking voice, pointing to the departing truck.

  The woman walks away, turning back, glaring at her.

  Cilka looks from her to the truck, as it rounds a building out of sight, to her hands.

  She tears at her gloves. Using her teeth, she frees her fingers, throws the gloves to the ground and drops beside them. Burying her hands in the snow, she grabs handfuls of it, rubbing each hand furiously, desperately, tears streaming down her face.

  “Cilka, Cilka,” a panicked voice calls out.

  Her friends Gita and Dana run to her. Reaching down, they try to lift her up, but she fights them off.

  “What’s wrong with you, Cilka?” Dana pleads.

  “Help me wash it off, make it go away.”

  “Cilka, come on…”

  Cilka holds up her hands, now red from the cold and the vicious rubbing.

  “I can’t get them clean,” she wails.

  Dana takes one of Cilka’s hands and rubs it with her coat to dry and warm it up before pulling one of the discarded gloves on.

  “Cilka, we’ve got you. It’s all right.”

  Gita helps her to her feet.

  “Come on, let’s get you back in your room,” she says.

  “The blood, can’t you see the blood?”<
br />
  “Come on back inside before you freeze,” Gita says.

  * * *

  “Cilka, are you all right, we could do with a hand here,” a worried Kirill says.

  “All this blood,” she says, staring at the ground.

  “Cilka.” Fyodor touches her arm gently. She flinches. Then sound and light and air come back to her. She swallows, takes a breath.

  She focuses on the unconscious man lying at her feet. Though his face is covered in blood, she thinks she knows who it is.

  No, not him. Please.

  “Get the stretcher, Kirill. I can’t see his injuries,” she manages to say. “We’ll load him up and I’ll get a better look in the ambulance.”

  Once the man is on the stretcher, Cilka walks beside him as he is carried to the ambulance. A prisoner joins them.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know yet. Do you know his name?”

  “Petrik—Alexandr Petrik,” the man says as he peels off, walking away.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Check Bed 13 and record time of death,” Yury Petrovich says to Cilka the next morning as he starts his rounds on the ward.

  What he doesn’t realize is that Cilka has been checking Bed 13 all night.

  “Surprised he’s still with us. I expected him to die overnight,” Yury says.

  “Okay, will do,” Cilka says, trying not to reveal any emotion in her voice. After all, she does not really know Alexandr, has barely spoken with him.

  Cilka reads Alexandr’s notes again as she walks back over to Bed 13. She looks down at his unconscious figure. His face is badly swollen, she can see his nose and left cheekbone are broken. She pulls back his right eyelid, gently, noting his pupils are pinpointed and swim in liquid. It is strange to be touching him after all this time, and in these circumstances.

  “Oh, Alexandr, what did you do to deserve such a beating?”

  She pulls back the blanket covering him and examines his chest. Dark purple bruises cover his entire abdomen. She softly runs her hands over his ribs. None feel broken. She examines his legs. Multiple bruises and a badly swollen, twisted left knee. No obvious broken bones.

  “Why isn’t Bed 13 being actively treated?” she asks Lyuba. “I’m seeing lots of bruises and swelling and his face is smashed up, but no major broken bones.”

  “I’m not sure,” Lyuba answers. “But…” she lowers her voice, “I heard he was caught smuggling written material out of the camp, and they think he had been doing it for some time.”

  “Who said that?”

  “An officer was here earlier this morning, asking about him. He left when he was told he wasn’t going to make it.”

  Cilka remembers the scribbles on the edges of the paper at his desk in the administration building. Did the doctor assign her this man because he knew she wouldn’t just let him expire, while the official notes would make the authorities think they didn’t have to do anything further?

  “I’m going to clean his face up a bit and see if I can find a head wound.”

  “He’s your patient,” Lyuba says. “Just be careful.”

  Cilka tends to her other patients before returning to Alexandr. She is trying not to be too obvious about her attentions. As she cleans away dried blood and removes splinters of timber from his scalp, she talks to him softly. She continues washing his chest and looking closely at the injuries there. She straightens his twisted left leg and thinks she feels a tremor of resistance, a reflex to the pain that a conscious person would make.

  She goes outside with a bowl and returns with packed snow from a spring flurry. Placing a towel under his knee, she packs the area with snow, holding it in place with another towel. She records all his vital signs, none of which tell her he is currently losing his battle to live.

  Throughout the day she monitors Alexandr, replacing the icy snow when it melts into a pan. She notes the swelling around his knee has subsided a little.

  That evening she hands his care over to the night nurse who, on looking at Alexandr’s file, asks Cilka what she’s been doing. The patient is not for active care. Cilka tells her she has been doing basic nursing care only, has administered no medication or done anything contrary to what she has been taught.

  “Well don’t expect me to do the same,” the nurse responds.

  “I don’t,” Cilka says, knowing she has to be careful.

  She finds it hard to leave the hospital. She will come back as early as she can in the morning.

  Alexandr remains unconscious for the next four days. During the day Cilka washes him, talks to him, packs snow around his injured left knee, checks for reflexes. There aren’t any. At night he is ignored.

  “How much longer are you going to continue caring for Bed 13?” Yelena asks on the fifth day.

  “Until he wakes up or dies,” Cilka answers.

  “We weren’t sure he’d live this long; what’s your secret with him?”

  “Nothing, I just clean him and talk to him. The swelling around his face and head is going down. There’s this gentle face under there,” Cilka says. Knowing she can be open with Yelena, she says, “I’ve met him before, you know. There’s just something about him.”

  “Cilka, how many times have we told you not to get attached to your patients?” Yelena scolds.

  “I just want to give him the best chance to live. Isn’t that what we’re here to do?”

  “Only when there is hope of survival. You know that. I bet you can’t count the number of patients you have cared for who have died.”

  “Whatever the number is, I don’t want there to be another,” Cilka says with more anger than she intends.

  “All right. Let me know if you want me to look at him, or if anything changes with him.”

  Cilka goes back over to Bed 13.

  “Well, Alexandr, you’re getting me into trouble. Now I need you to do one of two things. Wake up or … No. Just the one thing: wake up. I want to hear your voice again.”

  “Ambulance going out.”

  Cilka returns with two patients from an accident—a truck has skidded in the mud and overturned. She is kept busy for the rest of the day. She leaves the ward exhausted. Nothing has changed with Alexandr.

  The next morning Alexandr is where she left him. As she begins her morning ritual of washing his face, he says quietly to her, “I thought you’d given up on me.”

  Cilka jumps up, gasping.

  “Yelena Georgiyevna!”

  Yelena is at the bedside in an instant. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s awake; he spoke to me.”

  Yelena leans over Alexandr. Lighting a match, she flicks it back and forth in front of his eyes. He blinks several times. The only other person Cilka has ever known to have eyes of such a dark brown they appear almost black was her friend Gita. Gita’s face flashes before her.

  Cilka leans over Alexandr, peering into his eyes.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she says.

  “Cilka. I believe we have met before.”

  Yelena looks at Cilka with a half-grin. “Cilka, will you continue caring for this patient? I think you know what is needed.”

  “Thank you, Yelena Georgiyevna. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “You have a beautiful voice, Cilka. I’ve enjoyed our conversations.”

  “What conversations?” Cilka says playfully. “I’ve been doing all the talking.”

  “I’ve been answering. Could you not read my thoughts?”

  Cilka blushes. “I don’t even remember what I said to you.”

  “Would you like me to tell you?”

  “No, I would not. Now lie still and let me look at your injuries.”

  Over the next six days, Alexandr’s injuries fade and heal. It is only when an attempt is made for him to stand and walk that the extent of the injury to his knee becomes obvious. The joint will not flex or bend without pain.

  When Cilka has a spare moment, she assists Alexandr onto his feet, and with his arm ar
ound her waist, supports him as he adjusts to weight-bearing and slowly, painfully walking a few steps.

  Two weeks pass and Alexandr is still on the ward.

  Having spent the best part of the day at an accident scene at the mine, and assisting in surgery, it is the end of her shift before Cilka gets back to Alexandr.

  “Can you stay and talk awhile?” he asks when she tells him she has come to say goodnight.

  “I guess I could stay for a little while.”

  Cilka grabs a chair, places it at the head of the bed and, after propping Alexandr up on more pillows than he is entitled to, she sits with him. They talk. They laugh quietly.

  “Cilka,” a nurse says.

  “Yes?”

  “The patient needs his rest and so do you. Time to go.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m leaving now.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Cilka. Sweet dreams.”

  The next morning Cilka asks Yelena if she can have a private word.

  “Come into the dispensary,” Yelena says.

  Yelena shuts the door behind them, leans against it.

  “It’s about going out on the ambulance…” Cilka says shyly.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s, just, well, I was wondering if I could take a break from it and work in the ward for a while.”

  “He has to leave here sooner or later, Cilka.”

  “Of course he does. He’s getting better every day, I know that.”

  “Do you want to stop the ambulance run until he is discharged?”

  “It’s not about Alexandr being on the ward.”

  “I see. It’s about you no longer wanting to risk your life. I think I understand.”

  “I wonder if I’ve done it for long enough.”

  “You’ve taken more risks, not all of them calculated, I fear, than anyone else I know. Consider yourself no longer on the ambulance run.”

  “Perhaps just one more so I can say goodbye to Fyodor and Kirill. I’ve become quite fond of them.”

  “In a brotherly way.”

  “Of course.”

  “And Alexandr? You care for him, don’t you?”