Nightingale (17 page)

Mrs. Hahn took a breath. “None of us is pretending, dear. Return home, where you're needed. We have a wedding to plan.” She released her.

“I have a job. And I've applied to the nursing management program—”

“No.”

She turned to the crowd. “Linus is back, and he needs his wife to
take care of him. You'll quit—”

“I'm not quitting—”

“It doesn't matter. I will ask Dr. O'Grady to let you go.” She looked over at her. “Or perhaps I should tell the judge about your friend at the POW camp. See what he says about women who betray their country.”

She swallowed down the blade lodged in her throat. “I haven't betrayed my country.”

“He's an enemy. And you've been writing to him.”

“He's a man. A German, yes, but he loves America. He grew up here.”

Bertha raised her head, looked at them.

“He's on the wrong side of the barbed wire for that.”

Esther tightened her jaw. “This isn't about… It doesn't matter. Linus doesn't have the right to change his mind.”

Mrs. Hahn took a breath, her chest moving up and down. Then she turned, and with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, “He's a Hahn. So, yes, my dear Esther, he does.”

She patted her on the arm then moved back to the group as Linus turned his wheelchair around. His eyes—she barely remembered them, and certainly never that dark—landed on her, and something in them rushed a chill down her spine.

Then it vanished, and the smallest smile tipped his lips. He held out his hand and what could she do? She found her nightingale smile and walked over to him.

“Are you tired? I can take you back to your room.”

He nodded, and something about it churned real pity in her chest. Yes, maybe he did have a right, after everything he'd sacrificed, to want someone waiting for him at home.

Just not her.

She moved behind his wheelchair and pushed it away from his fans. “Visiting hours are over. See you troublemakers tomorrow.” She winked at Private Johansson, glad she didn't know he and Linus had been playmates the last time she gave him a sponge bath.

She moved past Mrs. Hahn without looking at her.

The judge had secured his son a semi-private room, although the other bed remained empty. She wheeled him to the side of his bed. Leaned over to help him in.

“I can do it.” His voice contained an edge, but she recognized the frustration of so many wounded men who came home with half—or less—of themselves. She held the wheelchair steady as he worked his way, not without the kind of grunts that she felt to her bones, into his bed. He used the trapeze bar for leverage and tucked his empty pajama leg under the covers as she pulled them up.

Then he leaned back, just breathing.

In. Out. The second hand of the clock over the door ticked behind them. Already, the sun dropped gray across the hospital grounds.

“I have to start my shift soon.”

He continued to stare at the ceiling. She'd forgotten so much of him—the dark, ebony hair that fell over his face, the eyes that before could turn her to liquid. Or perhaps that had been a different girl on which they'd had that effect. So different. She recognized the dimple in his chin, but for the first time she realized how young he seemed. A boy, really, one who'd tried to grow up too fast.

Scars carved the history of his wounds into his neck, his arm also knotted, with serpentine scars running the length of it. How he'd lived attested, probably, to Peter's expertise.

His name nearly broached her lips.

She swallowed it back down.

Still—did Linus remember the letter, remember the man to whom he'd given it for delivery? Remember what he'd written inside it?

“I'm sorry, Linus, but—”

“Don't go.”

Linus looked at her, his mouth tight, his eyes glistening.

“Are you in pain? Would you like some med—”

He grabbed her arm, right above the wrist. “Please, Esther. Don't go.”

She covered his hand. “No, of course not. I can sit with you awhile after I clock in and do rounds.”

“No, I mean—” He swallowed and met her eyes. She couldn't read them—or perhaps didn't want to. But she couldn't ignore the tug on her wrist, the urgency as he pulled her toward him.

He slid his good hand up her other arm, his hand cold and soft. “I remember your skin.”

“Linus—I—”

His hand wove behind her neck. He tugged.

Oh no. “Linus, I don't think—”

He leaned up to meet his hold on her and before she could stop him, he pressed his mouth against hers, hard, gulping her in.

She stilled, not sure what to do. Trapped in his grip—his hand on her wrist, around her neck, Linus bruising her lips—No! Please—“No! Linus!”

She pushed him away, and the force of it made him grunt. But he loosened his grip, enough for her to step away, to hold up her hands. “Not. Yet.” But her voice shook and she turned away, closing her eyes against their burn.

He said nothing, and she only heard his long thick breaths. Then,
finally, “I guess I don't blame you.”

What? She turned, her hand on her cheek. “What?”

“I'm a freak.” He wouldn't look at her. “I even disgust myself.” He wound his arm over his eyes.

And then to her horror, his body began to shake. Deep wrenching sobs tunneled out of him, wracking his body.

Oh, Linus.

She moved toward him, her hands out, not sure how to comfort him—not sure she should.

No, of course she should.

She put her hands on his arm, drew it away. Ran her hand down his wet cheek even as he turned away from her. “Please, Linus… I'm sorry. Don't… Cry. Don't cry.”

He opened his eyes then, and the way his expression reached for her, she didn't know how to defend herself. So she let him swallow her in.

“You're going to stay with me, right? Don't leave, Esther. Please don't leave me. You're all I have left.”

She sank down on the leather seat of the wheelchair. Pushed that dark hair from his face, pressed her palm against his cheek. He needed a shave.

“No, Linus. I'm not going anywhere.”

Papa, you're just going to get us all killed.

The memory visited Peter in the darkest hours of the night, when exhaustion pressed him into his cot, when only his heartbeat reminded him he still survived.

“Keep your voice down.” His father turned to him, as vivid in his thoughts as he had been—what, already five years ago? His wizened face thickened with age, charcoal hair slicked back against his head, blue eyes growing sharper, it seemed, each day since the passing of the Nuremburg Laws. Peter still remembered the way his father glanced over his shoulder at the two black-capped SS men seated in the café behind them, eating Sauerbraten and drinking coffee.

Behind them, along the
Brühlsche Terrasse,
the summer wind coaxed the fragrances of the cedars that sentried the Balcony of Europe. In the Elbe River beyond the green boulevard, boats listed against their moorings, others slipping under the
Carolabrücke
, the Carola Bridge. Men and women out for a Sunday stroll through the
Schlossplatz
seemed unaffected by the presence of the new police force, the
Schutzstaffel
, or perhaps simply chose to ignore the thumb of the
Waffen
-SS pressing their way through the city. Yes, they'd all shuddered at the brutality of the führer's decrees. But the baroque Zwinger Palace keep of the kingdom of Saxony, the burnt red roofs of the renaissance buildings that wound throughout the city, and the
grandeur of the Semper Opera House beguiled them to believe that this city in the valley of the Elbe would survive the
Führerprinzip
, the rule of the führer.

Most simply wanted to expunge the horror of
Reichskristallnacht,
when the SS smashed the Jewish shopkeepers' windows and dragged to the street hundreds of able-bodied men, beating them to their deaths, or worse, sending them to the concentration camps.

The cobblestone still ran red, although the city had done its best to wash away the stains. Except his father, it seemed.

No, Dr. Hess had practically hung a sign over his physician's office, declaring it a safe house for refugee Jews in need of medical attention and/or safe passage to Israel. Peter couldn't count how many times he'd come home from class at the university to find his father's study door closed, only to hear the closet slide shut, the cellar door creaking open as someone escaped onto the shadow-hooded street.

Peter lowered her voice, leaning over his coffee. “Father, it's not that I disapprove, but I could clearly see Isaac Fischer leave out the back alley last night. And I suspect Herr Kempler is a member of the KPD. His window overlooks the alley. And his isn't the only one. What if any of the neighbors—”

His father held up his hand, met his gaze with eyes that silenced him. “In the face of evil, would you have me do nothing?”

Peter sat back, ran his finger along the lip of his coffee cup. Around him, school children kicked a football in the shadows of the
Frauenkirche,
the Lutheran Church of Our Lady. Pigeons strutted across the gray stones of the plaza, sparrows chirruped from the linden trees. No wonder Dresden had been the playground of Bach, Mendelssohn, and even Goethe.

“Perhaps I would be more discreet.”

“Discreet. What does that mean anymore, when Jacob Reissler's son is hung from a government building, his body rotting from a lamppost? There is nothing discreet about what the SS is doing.”

“Now you keep your voice down, Father,” Peter hissed as the two SS men glanced his direction.

Still, his father had a point. He well remembered the day in November, only two years ago, when his classmates—two Jewish men studying medicine in the
Technische Universität
of Dresden—failed to show, a hushed breath falling over the city as the
Juden
population began to vanish.

He took a sip of coffee, forced it down, not able to stifle the choking cough.

Perhaps his father had a point. His version of discreet had been returning home that day to stare out his window, his chest on fire. Except, “
Germans
are being taken, Father. Disappearing. People like Herr Janssen, the organist. They say the SS took him, sent him to the camps with the Jews.”

His father ran his fingers along the brim of his fedora, settled upon the table. “If we stare at our fears, we become paralyzed. Pursue faithfulness, son. One day at a time. This is all God asks.”

Yes, well, sometimes God asks too much of a man. Sometimes a man has to wrangle his own deliverance.

Or, at least he hoped.

Peter rolled over to one side, swiping the images from his mind, but they came at him. Perhaps if he'd received a letter from Esther, or a visit, but her absence left him undefended from the voices.

“Herr Hess!”

Boots pummeled the narrow stairway as he threw on his pants, grabbed up his white oxford. The SS, like roaches, slammed open his
bedroom door, his hand still at his waistband. They lunged at him, and he grabbed the stair rail before he tumbled down into his parents' parlor.

The SS officer behind him pushed him to his knees, jammed his Mauser into his skull. “Where is he?”

Peter glanced at his mother, glued to her antique Queen Anne chair, the one she'd stored in her parents' attic during their years in America, her face slicked with fear. But her eyes—they bored into him, resonating a strength he hadn't known she had. She tightened her jaw, and yes, he discerned the slightest shake of her head.

“I don't know,” he ground out.

He wished then he had spent more time in the fields or fishing than in his textbooks, because he might have been able to stop them—given his father a moment to escape.

Instead, at the bottom of the stairs, the front door eased open. No!—his father stood in the outline of the hallway light. An expression flashed on his face—not exactly fear. More…expectation.

Or, determination.

Peter had cried out, and—

Peter!

Father!

“Peter!”

Heat splashed across his shoulder—someone slapped him. He jerked, opened his eyes. Arne crouched beside him. “You were yelling in your sleep.”

Oh. He pushed himself up, scrubbed a hand down his face. Arne settled back on his cot, his hands on his knees, his eyes wide on him.

“You do that sometimes.”

“I know. Sorry I woke you.”

Arne shook his head, lay back down on his cot. “I can't sleep. I should be used to the quiet by now, but all I hear is my memories of home. I miss… Did you know that I have seven brothers and sisters? My sister Eva was three when I left. She's already in school by now.”

If they even had a school to return to. Peter had his fears that with the Allies defeating Germany, they may have also decimated it.