Page 53

FIFTY-TWO

LUKA

February 1945

Unknown Location

My eyes are heavy and burn against the bright light above me.

I try to blink, but the ache makes it hard to fight through.

I rest for another minute before trying again.

This time, my eyes open enough to make out a blurry image of a wall.

With hesitation, I peer down at my legs, finding a sheet over them.

The hazy view of my hands resting on my stomach is clearer than the wall and my legs, but unfamiliar all the same.

Blurs of motion move between my feet and the walls, and I can’t turn my head to see who or what is passing by.

“Good morning,” a woman says, lifting my arm as if it belongs to her instead of me.

“Can you tell me your name?” Her accent is thick and hard to understand.

I’ve never seen her before.

She has short black hair and a round face.

“Your name?” she repeats.

I open my mouth to speak, but a film of phlegm prevents sound from forming.

Even if I could speak, I wouldn’t know what to say.

“It’ll come back to you in a few minutes. It always does.”

The confusion of where I am and who this woman is sucks the wind out of me.

“Where am I?” I force out, my words only floating on air.

“Who are you?”

“Let’s help you remember who you are first,” the woman says.

“You’ll remember, don’t worry.”

My stiff neck makes it hard to twist my head in either direction, but I spot a row of beds, which doesn’t help me piece together anything more now.

“I don’t?—”

The woman’s unwavering expression relaxes as she pulls a wooden chair away from the wall and up to my side.

She touches her hand to my arm, and I don’t like the sensation, which makes me flinch.

She moves her hand and nods her head.

“You are safe now. That is what’s most important.”

Safe?

What does that mean?

I continue to look at her as my eyes focus more clearly.

I notice lines on the sides of her eyes, curving downward like a frown, but she maintains a tight-lipped smile.

My chest muscles tense despite the friendly nature of this woman, but she isn’t making any sense.

“Who am I safe from?”

Again, my throat produces very little sound other than a rasp, despite my effort to speak up.

A burn radiates down my neck, forcing me to clutch the fabric covering my body.

The woman reaches to her side and brings back a metal cup, edging it closer to my face.

I don’t move away from the cup, but peer inside as she pushes it close enough to touch with my lips.

The cool sensation against my mouth is followed by a gentle swig of water rushing over my tongue, instantly soothing the raw dryness in my mouth and throat.

I swallow, but not without effort, which doesn’t feel right—as if I’ve forgotten how.

“Take your time,” the woman says.

“Disorientation is common. You’ve been through a lot.”

My mind spins in circles but won’t stop to grasp onto any solid thought or memory.

“What have I been through?” These questions come out on their own even though I don’t want to ask her anything.

Her brows knit together as if she’s the one who doesn’t understand what’s happening right now.

“We’ll talk about that soon. Let’s focus on getting stronger first.”

Her refusal to give me answers sends frustration shooting through me.

I blink a few times, trying to see through the foggy darkness inside of my head, searching for the answers on my own.

Flashes of images come and go, but so fast and unsteady that it’s hard to put anything together aside from the shape of faces, or a field of snow, cold air, a tannic smell that gnaws at my stomach.

“Why can’t I remember anything?” I ask, my voice breaking, sound piercing through my panic.

The woman takes in a deep breath then drops her shoulders.

“When a person goes through an immense amount of trauma, the mind will find ways to protect itself to allow time for healing.”

Trauma.

She keeps saying different words that only scare me more, rather than clarifying anything.

The way she says the word “trauma” makes my head heavy, like it’s full of water swishing back and forth.

I clench my fists and slide them up higher on my chest, finding red lines across my knuckles and white scars over the top of my hands.

These aren’t my hands.

They can’t be. I haven’t done anything to injure myself.

Or is that why I’m here?

I focus on her face harder now, trying to hold my eyes steady to look at hers.

“Tell me the truth. Tell me exactly where I am right now.”

A sigh expels from her throat, and she glances to her side for a moment.

“This doesn’t get any easier,” she mutters.

“I don’t understand,” I follow.

She looks back at me once more, still with a sympathetic expression.

“You were brought here from Przczyna, about a day’s walk from Auschwitz.”

The name hits me like a hammer against my head, filling the space around me with a shrill noise I can’t block out.

Auschwitz…thick fog floating over barbed-wire fences, snow everywhere, boots crunching around me before the shouting begins and then a smell so potent it forces a wave of nausea through me.

“No, that’s not right,” I utter through a whisper.

“I—I wasn’t—what is Auschwitz? You must be mistaken.”

Her chin trembles and I don’t understand why.

She doesn’t know me.

I don’t know her. Why would she feel anything at all?

Maybe I’m missing a face.

Is that what this is?

She’s letting me down easily.

How would I have lost a face?

I can’t recall anyone’s face, even my own.

“You were in Auschwitz. You’ve been through—you’re alive, and that’s all that matters.”

“Alive? How? I’m here and I haven’t the foggiest idea where here is. Is this it? Is this how I’ll always be now? Lost in this body that may or may not belong to me?”

“I understand this is hard, but I’m trying to help you. Do you recall your name now?” She’s asking again as if something has changed during our uncomfortable conversation.

I drop my hands to my side, fabric brushing against the inside of my palms. I refocus my stare at the wall ahead, noticing it’s no longer blurry.

It’s yellow, a pale yellow.

Again, I glance down at my legs, still covered with a sheet, and then realize I’m on a bed, but nothing around me is familiar.

Nothing belongs to me.

“No,” I finally say, my eyes burning from a hard stare at this stranger.

“It’s all right. Some days are better than others. You remembered your name and many other details yesterday. It’s still early in the day,” she says, another forced smile returning to her lips.

As she continues coming up with reasons for me not to worry, my attention draws to the ticking of a clock and the swoosh of a broom, and a murmur of static from a radio.

Other voices grow louder, some with accents I don’t recognize, some with a slur in their words, some speaking clearly with a sense of logic, and some like this woman, just calm and gentle.

I turn to face the rest of the room once more, looking beyond my immediate sides this time, finding more than just beds in a row.

People are on the beds—injured people with bandages, some who look like skeletons lying in a cloud of fluff, others stiff and staring at the ceiling as if they’re dead.

Other women dressed like the one who has been speaking to me weave in between the beds helping the other people, each of them with a forced smile and careful movements.

I take another look at the injured people to my side and stop at a person a few beds away from me.

He’s one of the people who looks like a skeleton and is also staring up through the ceiling.

An unexpected pull to him makes me wonder if I’ve met him before.

“Who is that?” I ask, nodding in his direction.

The woman sitting beside me follows my gaze.

“That’s Etan,” she says.

“He arrived here around the same time as you, but he hasn’t spoken much yet.”

His name is familiar.

It is. I want it to be.

Etan. I say it to myself again and again, waiting to retrieve more information about him.

“I know him. I think I know him.” Maybe I don’t.

But if I do, it might mean my memories will return like they did yesterday.

“I’m not sure. You were both found in the same clearing of the woods, unconscious, but breathing. The Soviet soldiers who rescued you said it appeared you both took a significant fall off a cliff, which explains your head injuries and the memory loss as well as the other physical trauma you’ve sustained. But we’re here to help and we’re taking good care of you now.”