Page 44 of The Lies We Leave Behind

44

“Lena?”

The women had been marched out a week and a half ago, the rest of us trying to survive on the rations left in the kitchen and my medical expertise. Two women had died the first night, their bodies unable to hold off the infections overtaking them anymore. Four more died the next day.

It had taken seven of us to move the bodies, placing them in carts and burying them in shallow graves where we’d once dug trenches.

I’d dragged a bed inside what had once been used as an office, but I rarely rested, someone always needing me. Always calling out. They were in pain, hungry, and scared.

As was I.

“Lena?”

“Over here,” I managed, my voice strained as my belly tightened.

I’d gone to the kitchen to begin the process of getting food for everyone, a task that took nearly two hours as I loaded a cart, pushed it to the two sick bay buildings, went back and forth handing out what I’d brought, then went back for more. Usually, Jelena helped me, but today she’d stayed behind to tend to a woman delirious from pain.

This morning I’d woken to an aching back. Worse than usual, the pain spread around my hips and settled low in my belly. It wasn’t until I began pulling items from the shelves that a feeling like nothing I’d known before took me to my knees.

I looked up through the strands of my hair at Jelena, who stared down, her eyes moving over me.

“The baby is coming?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said and then bit my lip as another wave of pain ripped through me.

“Come,” she said, kneeling beside me and putting my arm around her neck. “Back to sick bay. We need to put you on a bed.”

I didn’t know how she could take the weight of me with her leg still healing. But somehow she managed, limping us both all the way, pausing only when the pains of my contractions rendered me immobile, my entire body shaking afterward.

“The baby?” someone said as we entered the building and Jelena led me to my office bedroom.

“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll get supplies.”

I was panting now, a moaning sound coming from me, low and mournful, my body working, pushing, tightening, stretching, all of its own accord as I kicked out and gripped the sides of the mattress.

How stupid I was to come to Germany. I was going to die here, and my baby with me. Even if we survived the birth, the lack of food, the high possibility of infection...

“Here we are,” Jelena said almost cheerfully, her arms filled with clean sheets. She disappeared again and returned with gloves, a bucket of water, and scissors. Another trip and she had the familiar bottle of alcohol and a stack of gauze.

“Have you done this before?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

“In a manner of speaking,” she said, looking away.

My heart ached as I understood. I wondered where her child was now. If he or she was still alive. If they’d one day reunite.

“Just let your body guide you,” she said. “It knows what to do.”

A tear ran down the side of my face as I nodded. I couldn’t lose this baby. I needed this little being who had resided inside me, keeping me company, bringing me comfort, reminding me of William and hope and having a future beyond this hell I found myself in.

One of the other women knocked before poking her head in. Ema, another of the experiment patients whose wound had been left to fester, but by some miracle I’d gotten it under control, bringing down the fever she’d had, and the bright red swelling as well.

“Tereza and I are going to do the food run,” she said, giving me a brave smile. “We’ll make sure to bring some for you for after. You’ll need your strength for the baby.”

I smiled and nodded, then dropped my head back as another contraction came.

Two hours went by with no baby, my body drenched in sweat, exhausted, weakened by my efforts and lack of sustenance for the past month and a half. A couple of women came in and out, bringing Jelena more water, antiseptic, sheets, and gauze.

“I can’t,” I whispered for what had to be the hundredth time as I stared at the barren white walls.

“You can,” Jelena said, her voice calm as she said the same thing she’d said each time I proclaimed I was giving up. “Try and relax. Let the body do its job.”

“But I’m tired,” I cried, my clothes soaked with sweat. “I just can’t anymore. It’s not coming. Please.”

She wet a cloth and wiped my brow.

“Be strong, Lena. Be strong for your baby.”

I whimpered, and this time when the contraction came, I gave myself over to it. I didn’t try to resist, riding the wave of pain, crying out as my body pushed in a way it hadn’t before, the pressure moving, heavy, more .

“That’s it, Lena!” Jelena said. “Again!”

But I shook my head. That wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. It had just happened. And before I could catch my breath, it happened again, my body straining, pushing, a guttural, animal-like sound roaring from my throat until I was spent, my limbs going weak.

And then a cry rang out.

Somehow in my exhausted state I raised my head and then struggled to lift myself up on my elbows, staring at Jelena, who was smiling as she wrapped a clean sheet around something pink and moving, and then lifted the bundle toward me.

“It’s a girl,” she said.

And as I looked down at the baby on my chest, it was as though William were looking up at me, his pale blue eyes inside a tiny pink face.

I inhaled, and then I started to laugh and cry all at once.

“Oh,” I whispered. “Hello there.”

I was in awe as I stared at her, barely aware of Jelena still tending to me, my attention taken solely by the baby in my arms. She had no place being in this horrid camp and this terrible situation, and yet here she was, blinking, staring, confused.

Mine.

“What will you call her?” Jelena said, moving so that she was sitting beside us, staring with me at the tiny human with rosebud lips and a crinkled nose.

I shook my head. I had no idea. In all the turmoil since realizing I was pregnant, I’d never once given thought to a name, the idea that I’d actually give birth seeming like an impossibility. The thought of getting excited when so much could go wrong paralyzed me from giving the baby much thought at all. But now here she was. Perfect and beautiful and her father’s daughter through and through.

I grinned and looked down at the precious life in my arms.

“I think,” I said, running my fingertip over her downy-soft cheek, “I’ll call her Willa.”

Jelena fashioned a sling out of a sheet and that was where Willa lay, snug against my body every day while I hobbled about, checking on the injured while Jelena took over taking care of the sick, many of whom were better now and able to help with those who still needed care.

But with our food supplies running low, and a baby who got her nourishment from me, I could feel my energy waning with each passing hour. That combined with a lack of sleep, by Willa’s third day in the world, I was beginning to forget things.

“You need to rest,” Jelena said, her hand on my arm, steadying me as I restitched a wound that had needed to be reopened and washed out, then left open to heal before being sewn shut again. With barely any anesthetic left, I’d had to use it sparingly, making my shaking hands harder to mask.

“There’s no time,” I muttered, shifting to get a better angle and waking Willa, who shrieked her displeasure.

“Let me take her.”

But I didn’t want to hand the baby over. Jelena spent all day with the sick. If Willa got something, she most likely wouldn’t survive it.

I whispered to my daughter as I continued to sew, breathing a sigh of relief when the wound was closed and the thread knotted.

Rising slowly, I gasped as my back muscles seized and eased myself back into the chair until the spasm passed.

“Lena,” Jelena said, following me to the back where I washed my hands. “You need to leave her in her bed. You’re not strong enough to carry her while you work.”

But I didn’t want to hear it. I was afraid to leave her. Afraid if she cried I wouldn’t hear. Or that I’d fall asleep when I hadn’t planned to, as I had earlier this morning when I’d sat for just a moment, and then woke with a start when one of the women shouted for help.

Every night now, I went to sleep with my stomach complaining about the lack of food. Every morning I rolled from my bed, trying to ignore the hunger, distracting myself with Willa, who had started to complain now too about the smaller portions of milk my body was producing.

We’d scavenged the entirety of the camp, looking through the officers’ and guards’ old quarters, hoping to find something left behind that could be consumed. But there was nothing. The rations in the kitchen were nearly gone, the bags of porridge dwindling fast.

Jelena and I talked often of leaving. Of gathering those who were able and having them help the others. But there were still so many of us. We wouldn’t make it far, and we had no idea in what direction to head.

“Maybe just a handful of us could go,” she’d said one night as we sat in my room like we did most nights now, after everyone else had gone to sleep.

“And if you’re caught and sent back? Or...I don’t know. What if someone gets hurt and you get stuck with no shelter and no food?”

The problem was, we had no idea what was waiting for us beyond the fences surrounding the camp. And we couldn’t be sure the risk would be worth it.

Willa was three weeks old when Jelena found me listless in my bed, my daughter screaming in my arms. I had tried to feed her, but while she suckled furiously at my breast, her angry little cry made it clear little was coming out.

“Here,” Jelena said, holding out a bowl.

I stared at the steam coming off it and frowned.

“Sit up,” she said.

I struggled to do as she said and didn’t even complain when she took Willa in her arms so I could move easier. When I was upright, I reached for the bowl she’d left on the side table. It was heavier than usual and I stared at the portion size.

“It’s too much,” I said, but she shook her head, her eyes on my daughter as she rocked her.

“We lost three more last night,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you with it. They’re buried with the others.” She looked at me finally. “I gave you their portions.”

“Jelena—”

“Don’t,” she said. “You need it. For her.” She looked back down at Willa. “So eat up. And today you stay in bed. Doctor’s orders.”

“But—”

“We’ll make it through one day without you. I’ve already gotten a few of the others up and moving so that they can help out.”

I sighed. I hated adding to the burden, but I was exhausted in a way I’d never been before.

“Okay,” I said. “But just today.”

The extra food helped, and a couple hours later I was able to feed Willa, who snuffled delicately at my breast, making me smile. A rare occurrence these days.

But the one day of rest was only that, and the next day I was back making rounds, checking wounds, cleaning injuries and rewrapping them, and trying to make everyone as comfortable as they could be.

I held hands, wiped brows, and tried to put on a brave face.

“Do you think anyone will come and save us?” was a question I got at least three times a day in the beginning. Now no one asked. No one believed we’d be saved.

Not even me.

So when a man suddenly appeared in the doorway the following week, all I could do was stare in fear and confusion while several of the other women screamed and scurried as far from him as they could get, gathering together at the far corner of the large room, their faces filled with terror.

The man looked at us incredulously, disappeared for a few tense minutes, and then returned with two more men, all three of them looking around the room as if trying to figure out what they’d walked into.

My entire body shaking, I stepped forward. I had tended to these women for weeks. I’d cared for them and tried quietly to protect them, and I wasn’t about to let them down now. But as I opened my mouth to speak, I saw the insignia on the men’s sleeves. My knees buckled and I reached for the arm of the woman next to me.

“I’m sorry we scared you,” he said, his accent decidedly British, his step hesitant as he moved farther into the room, his arms up as if he himself were surrendering. “We are not here to harm you. We are here to get you to safety.”