A Perfect Madness (26 page)

Still, by itself, this summons to a
new understanding of what a German physician should be about was
not enough to change how he felt, though it might be for other
young doctors. Yet he knew, when the physician’s primary duty to
alleviate suffering of the sick was combined with the idea of
counter-selection, two goods could be achieved without one negating
the other. But to euthanize the incurable to ease suffering was an
irreversible step on the slippery slope to hell, which he was
unprepared to take, at least for the moment. Even though an
acceptable solution to the problem he faced was before him by
simply following the orders of the Health Ministry, what was
missing was the sacred commitment that makes all medicine
worthwhile. Without it, everything would be a lie. He would be
swallowed up by the hungers of self-deception. Erich pushed aside
the journal on the table, sitting for a moment before leaving for
the East Ward. It was late and much remained to be decided, but
waiting to do so was no longer an option for him. Even time had
become a vaunted foe of sanity, so it seemed.

Dr. Heinze was waiting on Erich when
he and Maria returned to the nurse’s station. Looking at Dr. Heinze
as he approached the counter, Erich decided there wasn’t any one
thing pleasant about the man. His appearance defied description,
bordering on the comical obscene, if there was such a thing. In
many ways, the man looked less human then the children he had just
seen. Meanness and ambition have always been great ingredients to
cook up a good dose of ugliness, and he had plenty of both. That
Erich disliked him was quite apparent to Heinze, and he secretly
hoped Erich would falter in carrying out the final therapy for the
“misfits”. He could then report him to Bouhler at the Health
Ministry. Not only would he rid the likes of Erich from the
program, he would likely weaken the prestige his father held with
Brandt and the other leaders in the Chancellery, which he envied
greatly.

“
You have seen the
children again to begin the final therapy?” Heinze asked in his
high shrill voice as Erich approached him.

“
No. Should that be a
problem?”

“
Only if their beds aren’t
empty and ready for the other children who will soon be
here.”

“
Will these children die
soon enough? That is what you mean, isn’t it?” Erich said with
sarcastic anger. “When their time comes, you will know, but for now
we should leave them alone.”

Fuming and red in the face from being
challenged by Erich in front of Maria and two other nurses who had
joined them at the station, Heinze said nothing more and walked
away. Inside, though, his turbulent anger and dislike of Erich
churned in his stomach, coated with the bitterness of the digestive
acids held there. He would find some way to force young Schmidt’s
hand and bring him down. Perhaps seeking the senior Schmidt and
Karl Brandt’s return to Görden would force him into a corner from
which there was no escape. Once he had crossed the line,
euthanizing just one child, any further resistance based on his own
sense of integrity would crumble into fine sawdust like
termite-infested timber. He would make the call to Dr. Brandt and
Dr. Schmidt, but give Erich no reason for their sudden return to
Görden from Berlin.

Erich knew that Dr. Heinze would not
let the ugly confrontation pass so easily and go unanswered. His
own standing with Brandt and Bouhler would be in dire jeopardy,
too, if he allowed any dissent from the doctors to continue
drifting and unsettled. To do so would bring into question the
feasibility of the whole program to cleanse the German race of all
the misfits. More importantly, the moral element, surreptitiously
attached to the program by placing it in the hands of the doctors,
would be gone, too.

Erich waited until Dr. Heinze
disappeared from sight down the hall, then moved slowly to Maria’s
desk, keeping the children’s files with him. No words had passed
between him and Maria this day. It was not that he had chosen to
ignore her, but rather, whether she should be involved at any point
in the terrible things about to happen. Perhaps she shuddered in
the same fear he did but had pushed aside her feelings on right and
wrong, reasoning that in these times, like everything else, they
simply didn’t matter anymore. With her husband facing death each
new day on the Eastern Front, how she felt about her duties as a
nurse and whether they were right or wrong was of little
consequence. Yet if Maria did believe as he did, should he expect
her to jump into the same quicksand he was already sinking in? When
the time came, though, he decided, Maria would swallow her own
moral longings and become a part of whatever duty asked of
her.

Erich rose from behind the desk and
walked past Maria towards the West Ward, leaving her wondering at
the coldness of his behavior. As he neared the nurse’s station, two
nurses began busily shuffling and reshuffling papers and files they
had read ten times over.

“
Is Dr. Schneider on duty
today?” he asked the older of the two nurses, whom he surmised was
in charge.

Before responding to him, the older
woman glanced quickly at the other nurse, questioning with her look
whether she should say anything.

“
Dr. Schneider has been
reassigned to another hospital, that is all we know,” she said,
looking around as if she were expecting someone.

“
Reassigned? To what
hospital?”

“
I don’t know. We haven’t
been told anything since two men came by the station late
yesterday, and he left with them.”

As Erich heard these words, his heart
began to race, and the palms of his hands grew hot and sweaty. He
had known Dr. Schneider only a short while, but sensed, maybe
wrongly, that his beliefs about the final therapy were like his
own. He had spoken out strongly against killing the Knauer child
back in Leipzig, yet still participated as a witness to the
dreadful act. The signals to Erich, and to everyone else involved,
were as clear as the deep pools of spring water flowing in Triberg,
where the bottom seemed on top. Indecision was rejection, should
one tarry about carrying through to the end the new therapy program
set by the Health Ministry.

“
Two men—who were they?
What did they look like?” Erich asked hurriedly, trying to hold on
to the reins of his emotions. He was clearly frightened by what he
was hearing.

“
I don’t remember. They
said very little, and were here only a few minutes. They seemed
quite serious that he go with them, though, and he did.”

“
Without saying a word?
Perhaps when he might return?”

“
What I have told you is
all we know. It all happened so quickly. Dr. Heinze did say a new
doctor will be here soon.”

“
Dr. Heinze?”

“
Yes sir. He came here
shortly after the two men left with Dr. Schneider.”

Erich started to leave, when the nurse
who had said nothing spoke up.

“
The new doctor’s name is
Franz Kremer, should that mean anything to you.”

“
No, nothing,” Erich said
and left to return to the East Ward.

But the name Franz Kremer did mean
something to him. He was the tall, blond Sudeten student who had
railed against Julia and all the other Jews in the world at the
medical school in Prague. Swept up in the mind-numbing slogans of
the National Socialist Party, he despised the weak and timid German
warrior, as he thought Erich to be. Coming to Görden as a treatment
doctor to erase the “misfits” polluting the German race was more
than a medical undertaking to him. He believed himself more than a
mere doctor, but as one of the chosen few called to defend the
health and well-being of the Third Reich. His own devotion to the
cause of cleansing the race was of such a nature that he believed
everyone should follow it. And those that chose not to should be
eliminated. Erich always felt that Franz would rise high in the
eyes of the party, faster than anyone around him, and he was doing
so by his presence here at Görden. Through his eyes, as it
traditionally was with so many German psychiatrists, and with those
that would follow, the tender face of a malformed child was no
different from that of an animal. Yet it was not that they saw them
as completely animal; it was that they never saw them as human
beings.

Erich knew now there was more than the
decided fate awaiting the children. His own existence as well could
possibly be determined by Franz’s sudden appearance at the
hospital. Mephistopheles had finally tired of wearing the mask of
fear, and was now waiting impatiently for him to make the decision
to sell his soul should he want to continue living. It was quite
simple. Franz knew Julia as a student, but more so, as a Jew. He
also knew of Erich’s great love for her and their isolated spirited
intimacy, and hated him for it. To Franz, Erich had purposely spit
on the spirit of the Nürnberg laws prohibiting such relationships,
and in doing so, turned his back forever on the National Socialist
Party. Uncompromising revenge against the enemies of the state was
an easy road to power, which Franz would gladly surrender to the
likes of Dr. Heinze when the time came to do so.

Erich could think no more, his mind
clouded with a gray nothingness. But depression was a better word.
In a way he was glad, though, because great moments can rise to the
top from the deep oceans of depression, as they had before with
him, and perhaps would again. Returning to the East Ward, he walked
to the end of the long, dark hall and sat down on a narrow wooden
bench beneath a large window. God was turning the barrel organ too
fast for him to dance now. So much was happening. His father and
the Knauer child and Dr. Heinze, and now Franz Kremer, were all
crowding and pushing him at the same time. He could no longer risk,
or even imagine, any genuine resistance to the killing program if
he wanted to stay alive. There simply were no more places for him
to run and hide.

Erich stood for a second, looking down
from the window at a small rose garden below full of nothing but
beautiful life, and studied it for a moment. With no mind of its
own, a rose will always be a rose, living out its given time in the
sun and rain until it withers and dies. Yet while it lives, its
simple beauty fills the passions of the eye, making lovers and
poets of us all. Looking back down the long, dark hall, he saw no
passion for the eye, only pity. Five young precious souls were
there, all longing to be set free from their crippled minds and
bodies, loved by no one, except perhaps their mother and maybe God.
Even then, Erich wondered why God would allow such life to exist.
Unlike the rose and its given beauty, they served no purpose.
Releasing them from their prison would be God’s way of correcting
nature’s mistake.

Erich stepped back away from the
window and folded his arms across his chest in a sudden moment of
great elation. Would not God and the world see the greater good for
everyone with the compassionate death of these miserable souls
serving medical research? At the same time, would he not be
honoring his duty to Germany by serving medicine and science? He
could forge a connection with a neuropathologist to obtain brains
for research from genetic misfits in Germany, and the world would
be better for it. All that was necessary, he knew, was to have his
father request the assignment of such a specialist to Görden where
he could work with him. Almost giddy, Erich walked with lighter
steps back to the nurse’s station where Maria was waiting for
him.

“
Please give me the
children’s files, Nurse Drossen,” he asked, politely
smiling.

Maria did so, puzzled by the dramatic
change in Erich’s whole presence. It was unlike anything she had
experienced with him. Even his eyes looked strangely odd, looking
past her to some distant setting.

“
Now please prepare four
small cups of broth with luminal tablets dissolved in them, and a
single hypodermic syringe with 50 mgs of morphine.”

Hearing Erich’s sobering words, Maria
froze, unable to move, her face became flushed and her throat dry,
halting questions she wanted to ask him but couldn’t. She had
talked boldly of this day with the other nurses on the grounds, but
now that it was here she found herself as frightened as a lost
child, unable to speak.

Maria’s emotional collapse surprised
Erich. He had thought her cold and impervious to suffering, the
ideal companion to assist him in the difficult tasks that awaited
them.

“
Maria, we must act now,
together. If we don’t, I am afraid the time will never be here for
us again. Do you understand what I am saying?” Erich said, his
words quick, his voice strong.

Maria nodded slightly, still not
moving to carry out his request. He held out his hand to
her.

“
Give me the keys to the
cooler where the drugs are stored and follow me.”

Nothing happened. Erich moved quickly,
taking hold of Maria’s arm, running his hand down in the large
front pocket of her uniform, searching for the keys. The sudden
intimate touching caused her to break free from him and stand
braced against the back wall of the station.

“
What is it you want, Dr.
Schmidt?” she asked, trembling.

“
Your support Maria,
that’s all,” he said softly, trying to calm her.

Maria hesitated for a second, then
walked past him to the small storage room where the pharmaceutical
cooler and other hospital supplies were kept. Erich counted the
minutes, waiting for her to return, his own resolve weakening with
each passing second. At the same time, he kept a watchful eye for
Dr. Heinze’s presence in the halls. “The man is all evil and will
corrupt the good I am trying to bring about,” he repeated to
himself several times for courage. “To have him standing next to me
would be unbearable.”