The Family Behind the Walls

39. Dalia

THIRTY-NINE

DALIA

FEbrUARY 4TH, 1945 – O?WI?CIM, POLAND

I’m not as sick as some of the others still here. I keep saying these words out loud and it’s as if no one can hear me. I want to leave. I want to walk out of those gates and never return. I must find Leo and the children. There’s no time to waste, if there’s time at all.

“I’m truly fine,” I tell the soldier carrying me into one of the barrack blocks. The stench has changed from body fluids to ammonia or some kind of chemical. It didn’t take the Soviets long to set up field hospitals, making use of the rows of buildings within our confinement. I’m sure they didn’t have an easy time decontaminating the space. The number of bodies left to rot in these buildings is uncountable. So many died just in the last week. We’re all so close to finding a way out and yet the exit feels as if it’s still on the other side of the world and impossible to reach.

The soldier continues walking forward, focused on finding an open cot rather than listening to me try and convince him I shouldn’t be here. I don’t need to take up space. I don’t look as sick as the other people here. At least, I don’t think I do. I don’t really know how I look, and I don’t think I want to know.

The Soviets took Brygid elsewhere and I’m not certain we’ll be able to find each other with the intense chaos ensuing. She promised to find me. I want to believe her.

“Your foot is infected,” the soldier says, his Russian broken into Yiddish. I can’t tell if he’s asking or confirming my diagnosis. “It needs treatment.”

I know my foot is infected. The infection has been growing for far too long. I’ve done whatever possible to keep it clean, but it hasn’t been enough. “A nurse will be with you soon.”

Is this supposed to be a life lesson of me watching myself from the other side of a window? I tried to give everyone my full attention. I listened even if there was nothing to hear. Maybe it wasn’t enough. I see that now.

“I’m a nurse. I can treat the infection myself if you have any disinfectant and spare dressing.” I must sound as if I’m pleading at this point. The nurses are running around rampant in dizzying circles around the cots.

Not much has changed in the past twenty-seven years since the first war. We made do with what we had, the few of us nurses in comparison to the wounded soldiers lying before us on cots.

For many, it was a matter of making them comfortable or holding their hand as they took their final breath. For others it was words of hope. We bandaged up the wounded and moved on to the next. I could hardly remember a single face or name. They all began to look the same, day after day of treating the same injuries. Then there was the part of me scanning faces for Leo, praying he didn’t end up in my field hospital, or worse, in another somewhere I couldn’t help him. I remember losing faith that it was at all possible that a single soldier would return unscathed. And all I could think was: What is this all for?

While treating the prisoner patients in the infirmary until a few weeks ago, I was thinking the same thought. What is this all for?

The Fuhrer wasn’t standing in my shoes, watching innocent people die for no good reason. He didn’t have to watch what I had to. He wants power, selfish power. I was the one who had to watch the others fade away, knowing most people who were in the beds, with the exception of one or two wards, would never leave their bed. And if they did, it was still the end of the road for them. I don’t want to be on this side, waiting and watching.

“Miss,” the soldier says, interrupting my thought, “I’m afraid we have limited supplies. We’ve sent for more but we’re going to do everything we can to offer you treatment and nourishment.”

Limited supplies. I know what that means too.

The Soviets have likely used up whatever supplies they were carrying with them. It’s been no secret that they didn’t expect to find a compound full of dying prisoners.

There are thousands of us: skeletal, wounded, and disease ridden. There aren’t enough people to help us all. I’ve known this for too long.

The words limited supplies means they will only be able to give me hope after I’ve come this far, so close to walking away. Without further care for my wound, it will worsen, grow, and spread through my body until I go into septic shock.

I wish I didn’t know this.

The nurses are working through the night but haven’t made it to me yet. If they have nothing to treat me with, there’s no sense in taking the time to remind me of what I already know.

I’m angry at the brief moments of hope I had today. I’m angry for being in denial about my foot for the sake of trying to give myself false hope.

I’m angry that, for a moment, I truly thought I would be set free.

If we had stayed in our apartment the night of the firestorm, would we have been safe there? We never found out if our building was still standing or if it burnt to the ground. Did we run into the gauntlet just as planned? I should have known better, made Leo think about our plan for an extra moment longer. If I hadn’t been helping people in the bunker when the Gestapo found us, they would have left me with the children. I could have known where they ended up. I could have—I should have protected them. Every decision was wrong, but my family shouldn’t have to pay that consequence.

Or, this is happening to me so I won’t have to live on without them. I don’t know whether I’m being punished or spared. There might be worse waiting for me out there than what I’ve experienced already, when I’ve been so sure up to now that nothing could ever be more horrific. I don’t know if I’m fighting to open the doors to more brutality and pain. If Leo was right, and whatever comes after our death is what everyone is unknowingly working toward, I should let go and see if he’s right. See what’s next. Because here, there may never be anything next. There’s no such thing as freedom when I’m a prisoner of my mind. Again, I wonder why I am here? Why fight? Who is it all for?

It could be worse. I could be fooled into thinking I’m being treated to a shower, only to suffocate in a toxic gas and fall to my death in a heap of other bodies. Then my ashes would snow down over Poland, bringing me back to where my life began. It’s a loop. The coming and going. And I’m tired of trying to understand the meaningless process of enduring suffrage.

A cold wind blows through the barrack and captures me within its tundra, holding me hostage in an untamed shiver. I turn my head toward the door, wondering why someone might be holding it open so long. We’ll all freeze in here. Then I see the door isn’t open. No one else around me is shivering. The wind has only come for me.

“Help!” I shout, my voice full of phlegm. “Help!”

A nurse flees to my side, and I should be ashamed that I’ve stolen her attention from another person who might need her more. But…

“I think I’m dying. How do we know if we’re dying? Do I just let it happen?”

I’ve been asked these same questions before—questions that have kept me up at night, wishing I had a worthwhile answer. I’ve wondered if people know…if they just know when their time is up, but how soon before? It’s one question I’ve never heard anyone ask. I can’t be the first to think of it.

The nurse presses her palm to my head, pulling her hand away quickly as if my face is on fire. She will feel heat when I feel ice forming in my veins. That doesn’t make sense. How did I never realize that it doesn’t make sense?

Her hand is on my ankle, but I can’t feel much else below that spot. She must be inspecting the wound but staying away from the growing bacteria eating my flesh.

The woman shouts something in Russian that I don’t understand.

“Dreck!” she shouts.

A nurse shouting through a cuss can only mean one thing.

It’s too late.

I try to relax my head, drowning out the panic bleeding out of this nurse’s mouth. Haven’t we seen it all? An infection shouldn’t be something out of the ordinary for her. Unless she isn’t a nurse. Many of us had no medical qualifications and yet still treated the imprisoned patients.

“I need an antibacterial medicine. You need to remove the tissue surrounding. Then, I need sutures and clean dressing. I can’t feel my foot. Please, help. I’m begging you. Can you keep me alive? I need to see if my children and husband survived. I can’t give up on them even though I’m ready to give up on me. I have to tell them I love them and that Max…” My pleas are an echo of the same words from the first patient I tried to help here, pleading for me to keep him alive. I couldn’t.

“Mama, try to breathe,” Max says. “It’s all right, I’m here with you. Just as you always were for me. But you must listen, Mama. Breathe…for me.”