by Andie Newton
Roxy poured the ether, while I held the soldier’s jaw and gauze over his mouth, making sure he didn’t swallow it, gag, or drown.
“Kit,” she said. “Don’t let go.”
And I held that boy’s jaw till my elbows ached. Then my arms. And my fingers felt stiff as nails, unbendable. My legs started to collapse from the pain in my arms, only when we were done, there wasn’t a moment to rest. Another boy to fix, followed by another—tally after tally after tally I made on the wall. Intestines spilled into Red’s hands, and she stuffed them back in. Ears had been blasted off, and soft tissue opened up to yellowy fat that bubbled like chicken skin in Crisco from a tank battle.
“Sweet boy,” Roxy said to the ones who could still hear. “I’ve got you…”
The potato sack covering the window slipped from the nail. I couldn’t move my arms. The doctor froze, Red and Roxy too, and in horror we stared at a sliver of glass left unprotected.
“Hurry,” I said in a shouted whisper to anyone who could help. “The window!”
And another nurse climbed up on a chair and fastened the sack back to the nail. She fell to the floor in disbelief that she was still alive, knowing she could have been shot by the nearest sniper.
Some twelve hours later, with my back slumped over, I was given a break.
I walked away in the gray morning hours of the shut-up building, stepping over reaching hands, and bodies with bayonet slashes exposing their insides in the most ungodly, unsurvivable way. “Nurse,” I heard someone say from the floor, larynx gargling with blood, “Help…” Fingers grasped at my ankles and slid off my shoes. A mix of antiseptic, urine, iron, and rotting corpses hung heavy in my clothes, on my skin, and in every particle of air I breathed like dust. I collapsed against a wall, wanting a space to escape, if only for a second—a breath of fresh air—when I slipped out a side door that opened up into another room, this one much darker, and still.
I took one step in and my ankle twisted on a floor made of soft bodies, and I fell face-first onto men who had died waiting for surgery. Ones we forgot about. Ones we’d left behind.
*
Red barked at me two steps up the stairwell. “You coming?” she said, and my eyes popped open. The door shut behind me, and the last sight I had of Jack was of him lying on his bed. I exhaled, feeling jittery and unsure. It was more than leaving a soldier behind. I liked him—which made leaving him feel even worse.
Red looked at me. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I reached behind me and felt the closed door between us.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Red said, and Gail and Roxy nodded.
Every time someone said we had to hurry, the situation always turned into a chaotic circus full of blood and screams. Roxy and Gail followed Red up, and an eerie shiver prickled up my spine as if the daylight we were marching into was just trading one escapist’s hell for another.
And we were following each other into it, blindly.
15
KIT
We walked onto the sidewalk, each of us with our backs together forming a circle in the most obvious way that shouted outsiders. Red batted our hands to fall in line, and we did. Thank God, nobody was on the street behind the pharmacy to see us.
“It’s brighter than yesterday,” Roxy whispered, squinting into the sun.
“Shh,” Red hissed, and Roxy clamped a hand over her mouth, nodding.
We followed the road through the square only to see it was market day. Umbrellas popped open and Germans set out their wares. Red looked at each of us, motioning with her hands for us to stay calm as we walked cautiously between women who were picking out vegetables and children who looked like clones from yesterday, chasing each other through the stalls, laughing, when the drone of bombers whirled through the clouds.
Every eye went to the sky.
“Amerikaner!” someone yelled, and three B-17s dropped out of a cloud in formation.
Women scattered like roaches, reaching for their children and yanking them inside where boards went into windows and doors bolted shut. We stood still among the empty market stalls holding each other, a swift breeze unfurling Nazi flags from street poles, knowing if those bombs hit the village there was no amount of running that would save us.
“We’re gonna die by one of our own,” Red said.
My heart pounded and blood glugged in my throat, waiting to hear the dreaded whistling from dropped bombs. Red hugged me, and Gail reached for Roxy, and we cried. “No other nurse I’d rather die beside,” I said.
They flew right over us, a second chance at life, and I fell to my knees not able to breathe, clawing at my chest and neck. Red lifted me by the scruff of my neck, and we bolted down the street into the trees where I took a moment to try and catch my breath.
Nobody had followed us. And if they’d seen us from their loft windows, we couldn’t tell. We watched the bombers fly off over the treetops, heading east.
“Let’s go,” Red said, and she tried to make us leave right away.
“Wait a minute, will ya?” Roxy said, bracing her knees, breathing heavily from the run.
“We don’t have a minute,” Red said, and we walked while still trying to catch our breath—a mile at least—until the forest gave way to a field of brown grass infested with giant grasshoppers.
Gail’s hands flew to her face. “They’re everywhere!”
They clung to our arms and legs, hopped under our skirts, and tangled with our hair. The steps we took to outrun them only seemed to aggravate the situation, making every step worse.
“Relax,” Red said, but she was addressing Gail mostly, who yelped and hopped with each grasshopper that landed on her. “There’s nothing we can do but walk our way out. And stay close. If you pay more attention to the grasshoppers you’ll stray off.” Red’s gaze rolled over the field. “There could be mines out here.”
I reached for Gail’s hand. “Come on,” I said, leading her, and we walked together through the field. The grasses turned marshy in places from the recent rain, looking a little moldy, and smelling foul. One step was firm and solid, then the other squishy and slippery with just enough grass to keep the mud from caking to our shoes. Out of the blue, Roxy turned to me, flicking a grasshopper from her nose.
“What’s with that Jack?” Roxy said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
She flashed me a snide little smile. “Oh, Jack, I’m from Washington like you, oh, we live so close, oh this, and that…” She laughed. “I heard you talking in the middle of the night.”
“We all did,” Red mumbled.
“That’s enough, girls,” I said.
“Nah, really, Kit,” Roxy said. “I think he likes you.”
I scoffed. “I saved his arm from an infection that might have taken it off. Of course he likes me.”
“Yeah, sure,” Roxy said, and the conversation about Jack was dropped in favor of food. She sniffed the air. “Smells like fries out here. Don’t you think?”
I made a face. “God, no,” I said. “Smells like mold.”
“Steak, on the grill?” Roxy said, and I swatted her arm.
“Stop it,” I said. “The heat must be getting to you.”
And the heat was indeed getting to us. Gail’s face had turned red and splotchy against her brassy hair, and my armpits were sweating.
“I’m tired,” Gail said, and we all moaned, even Red, who was at the front three paces ahead. Rule one of nursing: you never said out loud how tired you were. Everyone was tired. Everyone. “And this heat… It rains for days and then the sun comes out to scorch us to death?”
Roxy laughed. “Welcome to Europe, Gail,” she said, hands out. “Today’s weather is warm and balmy, followed by a brisk wind and buckets of rain that’ll drown ya like a rat. Slight chance of bugs.”
I smiled. “That’s about right. I wonder if it’s always like this?”
“I don’t think so,” Roxy said. “But what do I know? It’s not like they gave us trav
el guides with our orders.” She looked at Gail. “But you got one. Don’t tell me the Nurse Corps handed them out to all the General nurses, did they?”
“Another nurse gave it to me after she got orders for Hawaii,” Gail said.
“Hawaii, huh?” Roxy had laughed at first, but it quickly trailed into a sigh. “I would have liked Hawaii.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But then you would have missed all this.” I whirled my finger around as we walked.
“Mmm…” Roxy said.
Gail stopped abruptly. “Did you hear that?” She swatted a grasshopper from her arm while searching the air.
“Hear what?” I said.
She darted several paces away and cupped her ear before motioning for us to follow her, but we stood still trying to hear what she’d heard, Roxy searching the sky for planes and Red scanning the field.
“I hear a child crying.” She pointed indiscriminately, walking even further away, taking giant leaping steps through the grass, not caring a bit about the grasshoppers. “Don’t you hear it? I think it’s a little boy…”
“I don’t hear anything,” I said.
“Me either,” Roxy said, while Red demanded she come back, warning of mines.
“But… but…” Gail said, frantically turning around trying to find the crying child when she shouted. “There he is!” She pointed with certainty this time, and we all gasped.
Sure as day there was a little boy—a blond German boy watching us from a fence post, pouting and whining about a scraped knee.
“And he is crying…” she said, and while Gail rushed toward him for comfort, we stood frozen, trying to make sense of the strange scene.
He pouted some more, pointing to his knee, but then giggled, and not in a cute way. A sinister way. He spat on the ground, and a chill pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. His icy blue eyes, cold, unfeeling, no soul to be seen, and his short, short hair. He smiled, showing teeth, and his lips spread from ear to ear, thinly, mischievously.
“Are you hurt?” Gail asked him in German, arms out, and he goaded her to follow him into an overgrown cornfield, stopping long enough for her to get close before running off again as if it was a game.
“Call her back,” Red said frantically to me. “Call her back!”
“Come back!” I yelled in German. “Gail!” But her brassy head of curls disappeared over a berm and we’d lost them both.
Pop!
A single gunshot echoed over the quiet field, and we instinctively cowered in place. Birds flew out of the brush to perch on barbed wire. None of us moved, looking at each other in stunned silence, when Gail cried out for us. “Guys…”
We ran up and over the berm only to find her rolling around on the ground with a bullet in her arm and grasshoppers hopping up from the grass and landing in her hair. The boy had vanished.
“Quick… over here!” Red said, and we carried Gail a short distance away into the very cornfield the boy had tried to lure her and found cover.
Red took a look at the bullet hole, examining it real close as if she were a jeweler looking through an eyeglass, while Gail cried, head thrashing from one side to the other, giving us her arm to look at as if it didn’t belong to her anymore. “How bad is it?” Gail said. “Please tell me. I can take it. You must tell me…” She tried her best to give a stiff upper lip, but her lips were too loose, and wet and she was slobbering.
“It’s strange.” Red’s eyes shifted to mine, and I took a look. Muscle poured out of the wound like hamburger.
Gail’s heels scraped the ground. “It stings! It stings…”
“Give me morphine,” I said to Red, and I stuck Gail before she had a chance to know I was going to stick her in the neck.
“Ouch!” She slapped at it. “Ouch, ouch!” She knocked the syrette from my hand with a final swipe, but I thought I managed to give her enough to dull the pain.
Red had reached under her skirt for her scalpel because we didn’t pack the forceps. She held Gail’s arm still, looking into her eyes with a pause, before gently prying the bullet out. Me and Roxy watched, and Red was a master surgeon, but this bullet was stubborn, hiding from the sharp end of her scalpel.
“It’s lodged pretty good…” Red said, picking at it carefully as Gail whimpered into her shoulder asking her to hurry. “Almost got it… got it…” She picked it out of Gail’s arm.
Plunk. And when it hit the dirt, we stared at it in shock and wonder, watching it roll.
“Oh shit,” Roxy said, and that got Gail to pull her head up.
“What,” she said, and there was a quiet pause before she scooted her bottom up to take a look, but we wouldn’t let her, and blocked her with our arms. “Is it big?”
A bullet’s a bullet. Except this bullet had been soaked in poison, which stained the tip pink. A wooden bullet that failed to split as it had been designed, but had wormed its way into her arm nonetheless, infecting her.
“Yeah,” Roxy said. “That’s it… just big is all.”
“Don’t lose it,” Gail said. “I want to keep it. A souvenir.” She exhaled, and I could tell the morphine had kicked in, and while she rested, none of us had let go of her arm. I looked at Red, and she looked at Roxy.
“We have to tell her,” I finally said.
Red shook her head, but then smiled big when Gail looked at her.
“What’s going on?” Gail said, but we didn’t answer. “Guys?” Her voice had changed, she was worried and confused, and only God knew what kind of explanations were running through her head. “Roxy?” Gail reached for her. “Tell me.”
Roxy gulped, and I could tell Gail knew it was something serious when she saw Roxy’s face, which had turned flat as a pan and white as cake. Gail looked at her forearm for the first time where the bullet had chewed up her skin and immediately looked terrified and disgusted.
“Well, you see here…” Roxy said.
I’d turned away at first, not wanting to see Gail’s reaction when she realized she’d been poisoned, but had a change of heart, feeling a great sense of shame for not holding her other hand. And when I squeezed her palm in mine, she’d started to cry.
“You’re scaring me,” Gail said.
“Listen, Gail,” Roxy said. “There’s no easy way to tell ya, but this bullet looks poisoned.” Roxy hung her head down momentarily before looking back up. “What I mean is, it is poisoned. That bastard kid poisoned you.”
Gail scooted up. “But… but… how do you know?” she said.
Tears spilled from Roxy’s eyes into the dirt; she couldn’t answer. Gail looked to me. “You’ve seen these bullets before?” Gail said, and I nodded. “Did the person die?” I’d never stopped nodding, and Gail’s face had gone blank. “But I don’t want to die.” She looked at Red. “I don’t want to. Red…” She sat up completely straight.
“We’re going to stitch you up and you’ll get a nice dose of penicillin when we get back,” Red said as she ripped open a sulfa packet with her teeth. “Nobody’s dying on my watch. Got it? Nobody.” She looked up at me. “Nobody left behind.”
Tears pooled in Gail’s eyes when Red said ‘nobody left behind’ as if we’d have to leave her in the corn.
“They said I shouldn’t come,” Gail said. “My brothers. My father. They said I was too delicate, called me a frightened kitten.” She patted her cheeks when the tears fell, sniffling, trying to talk through her sobs. “They said I wasn’t smart either, and I’d proved them wrong when I got my degree.” She shook her head. “But I guess they were right about this one…”
Roxy took Gail by the shoulders. “Listen here, toots. You’re tough. One of the toughest gals out here. I didn’t believe it before, I have to tell ya, but you’re the real deal, Gail Barry. Not even battle trained and look at ya. You’re in the thick of it.” Roxy’s eyes rolled over the cornstalks. “Really, you are.”
Gail laughed through her tears with that joke, and Roxy wrapped her arms around Gail’s neck.
“Don’t let an
yone tell you differently, you got me?” Roxy said. “You got shot!”
Roxy held Gail’s hand while Red stitched her up with the only needle and thread we had. “Don’t worry, Gail,” she said. “This is temporary. A doctor will fix you up better when we get back.” Red wrapped it up with the bandage she had around her thigh. “Can you move your fingers?” she asked, and Gail moved them, barely.
“They’re a little stiff,” Gail said.
“Keep wiggling them, okay?” Red said. “Keep the blood flowing. The bullet didn’t split like it was supposed to, but we need to keep an eye on it. Understand?”
Gail looked like she knew what Red was trying to say. We didn’t know what the poison would do, but one thing was sure: Gail was on borrowed time. Every moment we spent in Germany and away from our medical team was a moment too long for Gail. We were lucky we brought some supplies with us, but now we were nearly out.
“Dolls?” Roxy said, kneeling and leaning into us. Cornstalks swished and swayed, but there wasn’t a breeze. “Someone’s coming.”
None of us talked. None of us breathed. There was a moment where I thought she’d been mistaken. Then we heard it. Footsteps in the grass and the crackle of hands pulling back the stalks. I searched the air for a direction, but it was near impossible to know where the sound was coming from, when Red patted my shoulder. “The gun, Kit,” she whispered. “The gun!”
“But he’s a boy…” I said.
She tapped me urgently, eyes set into the unknown of the thick cornfield. “The gun…” Red said.
I reached for the gun around my thigh, fumbling with the strap with sweaty fingers. “Hurry, Kit,” Gail said, “shoot him…” But Roxy begged me not to shoot, tapping my other shoulder and whispering in my ear about how he was a little boy.
I pointed the gun into the corn, trigger pulled back, jerking left and right with each crack of cornstalk and each bristle in the grass. I felt him watching us, and my breath grew rapid, heart pounding, searching and searching, thinking of the only other time I’d ever used a gun.
*
“Don’t let the deer hear you,” my brother said. “You have to be patient. Wait for your target to come to you.”