All the lights above us, p.13
All the Lights Above Us, page 13
It was humiliating, thinking about a man that way. It went against everything she felt about romance and marriage. Listening to the other girls talk about men, Theda knew there weren’t many like William. They didn’t want girls who were too smart or bookish. Yet, in charming Dr. Davies, Theda saw a different kind of man. One she had an awful lot in common with.
Books most of all. When he once caught her snooping through some old medical volumes, she thought he’d read her the riot act about how women shouldn’t waste time with books. Instead, his eyes glowed and he said he’d read the same volume. They discussed books a lot after that, and he made sure to engineer time for them to do so. He sometimes joined her for tea. When his busy schedule allowed for it, he took her for strolls through the hospital grounds. They exchanged titles to read, along with shy smiles and awkward glances.
It put Theda into a tailspin.
She gave her head an angry shake to rid herself of such thoughts. She couldn’t daydream like that today. She had to keep her focus and prepare for what lay ahead. The boys, and the Royal Army nurses she admired so much, all counted on her.
Dr. Davies gathered all the whispering nurses around him, while Eliza turned to her VAD charges and gave them a “shush” that meant business.
“Alright then,” the doctor began. “I’m not entirely sure when the wounded will arrive, but we should get everything ready. Minor wounds will be treated at the beaches. Only critical patients will come here. Most by ship, but especially urgent cases by cargo plane. We could get civilians too.”
“Who goes where, Doctor?” Eliza asked.
“Intensive care will go right to the surgical team. The rest will be triaged and put in spare beds wherever there is room. Treat them in any way you’re able.”
“And the dead, sir?”
A rare grimness appeared in his handsome eyes. “Yes … we’ve made a temporary morgue on site. We’ll do our best to keep up.”
At the mention of the dead, Theda felt a nervous quake in her limbs, and she clutched that coin in a panic. She saw William stacked in a ship freezer, with ice forming over his playful eyebrows and his fine nose. His eyes gaped in horror while scarlet, blood-stained frost slicked his uniform.
She forced her focus to Dr. Davies. Which was hard, because of that annoying flutter he created in her chest.
Dr. Davies continued with his instructions. “Regular staff, you’ll be with me in intensive care. VADs, the London ladies will split you into teams and send you where needed. You’re in good hands. They have extensive battlefield experience and will steer you wonderfully, as they have for many theaters in this war.”
The Royal Army nurses, who were normally all business, couldn’t hide their pride. A few smiled. One of them blushed. It suggested this type of praise was a bit rare for them.
“Theda.”
The sound of her name snapped Theda to attention. She willed herself to look Dr. Davies in the eyes. “Yes, Doctor?”
When their eyes connected, a spark charged between them, but Theda tried to ignore it.
“Celia here would like you to assist her today with on-site treatment and minor operations.”
Celia, one of the Royal Army nurses, gave her a polite nod.
Theda couldn’t hide her grin. Volunteers with no medical training were not usually trusted with intense work like that. Now, on the most important day this hospital would face, these very skilled Royal Army nurses wanted her to help them restore life to broken soldiers who couldn’t get into an OR. It was one hell of an opportunity, and she knew she’d better make the most of it.
Entrusted with their orders, the nurses and VADs began shuffling to their various responsibilities. Soon, Theda was the only one left. She and Dr. Davies stared at one another.
The green in his eyes shimmered. “Did you have a question, Theda?”
She looked away before he saw her blush. Yes, she had a question. One she knew to keep to herself. How could she reconcile her desire for independence with her growing desire for this man?
“No, Doctor. No questions.”
The faintest stab of disappointment appeared in his British-mannered face. “Very good then. Off you go.”
With a flip of her long hair, Theda disappeared into the maze of busy nurses.
Flora
CAEN CITY CENTER
Flora leaned against one of the few standing buildings. Her hand shook as she inhaled from a fresh cigarette, and her tired eyes flickered upward.
Another round of planes thundered by, flying high and in tight formation. Their engines kicked up dust from the roof of the building, which rained down on Flora.
It also fell into the hair and faces of the injured. The mostly intact building, out of place among the gaping, charred frames around it, served as a temporary hospital. Men and women in dust-covered clothes were laid out on makeshift stretchers around the crowded doors. Splotches of crusted blood and soot mingled with their layers of dirt. Some people writhed in pain, or gripped rosaries and prayed. Some lay still … a little too still for an afternoon nap.
Flora had just arrived at the hospital but couldn’t summon the courage to enter. Her journey there was arduous enough. She picked through debris-covered streets, puddles of rusty-colored sludge, and messes of downed and spark-spraying power lines. She stepped over countless broken and mangled corpses. She inhaled the toxic odors of sulfur, smoke, and rotting flesh.
She pulled in as much tobacco as her lungs would allow, then exhaled it in a clove-scented cloud. She closed her eyes to shut out the cries of the wounded and the droning of the airplanes.
But when gunshots ripped through the air, her eyes snapped right back open.
She glanced across the street, to another building in the city center. The prison. Within its twisted halls and musty rooms, the Gestapo and SS had locked up spies and resisters. Agitators. People who distributed leaflets, who listened to the BBC, who looked at them funny while buying bread. Anyone who even thought about defying the regime. Sometimes, Flora heard the screams when she flew past on her bike. It was a hideous glimpse of what lay in store should she make a mistake.
When she saw where the shots came from, her eyes narrowed in a mix of fear and fire-breathing anger.
Right away she recognized that son of a bitch Heyns since everyone in the local Resistance knew that crooked face. Flora often saw him strutting about town, or riding in the rear of an open-top convertible. His swastika-stamped cap couldn’t hide the sheer evil radiating from his pale, ghostly cheeks. He often had a blonde minx of a perfect Aryan specimen with him. She was too pretty for him, but Flora supposed he got whatever the hell he wanted out of anybody.
He was in fine form today, despite the city burning to hell all around him. Three Nazi stooges flanked him. His black coat hung heavy off his shoulders, and his medals glinted whenever he moved. He barked something at his lackeys, who manned a clunky machine gun.
Against the wall in front of them stood a group of pale, skeletal figures. Most were men, but there were women too. Their clothes were ratty and torn, and they pressed their faces against the bricks. They locked their hands behind their heads. Heaps of blood-soaked dead were piled at their feet, blood still spurting from their heads. It collected in a brown pool that flowed around the shoes of the prisoners against the wall.
Flora froze while her cigarette burned down to the nub. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.
Under Heyns’s watchful eye, the Nazi at the machine gun opened fire.
The yell came a split second before the shots drowned it out.
“Vive la France!”
In a cloud of sulfurous smoke, a handful of the prisoners crumpled to the ground and joined the piles of dead. More shots cracked, and then the rest went down too. Their hearts beat not for France or anything anymore. But the echo of their cry resounded in Flora’s head, somehow giving them an extra couple of seconds of life.
Heyns signaled a man at the prison door, who marched another batch of prisoners out.
Flora’s mind suddenly unstuck, and she turned her back on the horrid display. Tossing her cigarette on the ground, she disappeared inside the hospital. It was probably bad in there, but it couldn’t be worse than what she had just witnessed.
When her eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the building, Flora took in heaps and piles of wounded. People, medical and otherwise, wound their way through the melee, administering what aid they could.
They couldn’t help much because there just weren’t enough supplies. There would never be enough bandages for all these open wounds. No amount of splints would fix the masses of broken bones. Nothing could quiet the screams and shouts pounding against Flora’s brain. The noxious fumes of blood and sweat practically choked her.
She took a minute to gather her nerves, then her Resistance brain took over. Geraud had given her a job to do. As angry as she was with him, she would comply. Not because he deserved it, but because she cared. Since her parents were gone, the Resistance was her family, no matter how often she complained. She wanted to know if any of them were hurt or killed.
She moved her legs forward into the chaos. Wound after wound, and body after body burned into her brain. She scanned a hundred faces for any familiar features. She looked for hair color that rang memory bells. Hand gestures that jarred something loose in her mind. It was difficult, because the men and women were plastered with dirt, blood, and filth. They stared out in a daze. They didn’t seem to notice her, even when she leaned in close to them.
But then she heard a pitiful voice at her side.
“Flora?”
She whirled around.
A battered man on a pile of bloody sheets lay at her feet. Blood covered his hair and chest, and purple bruising puffed out his face. He could barely open his eyes. Breathing seemed anything but pleasant.
It took her some time to register who he was under all that gore. “Oh God … Bastien?”
Flora felt a horrible stab in her heart, a hard jolt to her already shattered nerves. Part of her didn’t want to know, but she took quick stock of his injuries. She noted the blood, the contorted limbs, and the rattle in his chest. He was in very bad shape.
She knelt at his side and took one of his mangled hands in her own. “Bastien. My God, look at you. Are you in pain?”
Bastien somehow smiled through his misery. “I … I can’t feel much.”
“Morphine?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But if you see any lying around, I hear it makes the transition easier.”
“Transition?”
He smiled again, so wide his lip cracked in the middle. A bead of blood escaped. “I’m broken up pretty good. They brought me here to die, nothing else.”
She squeezed his hand and forced a smile. “You always think you’re going to die. Remember when we were kids and you told me you had consumption?” She winked. “Always the theatrics, Bastien.”
He put his free hand on her lap. It smeared her trousers with blood. “No theatrics this time, my mademoiselle.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked, suddenly serious. “Name it. I’ll do it.”
His eyes twinkled with an ornery streak. “There’s that caring again. You were always so gentle underneath your hard mask, weren’t you?”
She glared. “You sure you aren’t on morphine?”
“Don’t hide from who you really are. So sensitive and beautiful. It was only when your parents—”
She clamped her hand over his mouth. “Stop talking like you’re dying, Bastien. They can fix you.”
A pink tear leaked from his eye as he gently took her hand. “I got caught in the bombardment this morning, not long after we separated. The wall of my building landed right on top of me.” He coughed. A few drops of red came out. “Bleeding internally, the nurse said. Nothing they can do.”
Flora’s stomach dropped, and her hand went cold inside of his. He wasn’t playing around this time. “Bastien … I’m—”
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I gave them hell in the Resistance. I give my life gladly if it frees others from Hitler. And that goddamn Heyns.”
“He’s outside now,” Flora said. “They’re shooting all the prisoners.”
“Yes, they don’t want the Allies getting them first. The only way Nazis know to solve a problem is kill it.”
Bastien pulled a painful gulp of oxygen into his crushed lungs. He looked up at Flora with sad eyes, and put both his hands over her frail one. “And now for a deathbed confession, little Flora.”
She rolled her eyes. “If it has anything to do with undying love, I’ll slap you silly.”
He rasped a laugh. “I’ve always been fond of you, Flora. Maybe not undying love, but undying friendship. And this is a real confession. Something I’ve kept from you too long.”
“What on earth is it?”
He swallowed a wad of blood and fluid. He was going fast. “Flora … your parents.”
Her eyes locked on his. She suddenly found herself paralyzed.
“Flora … they’re still alive.”
Emilia
CAEN SS/SD AND GESTAPO
Emilia’s fingers whisked over her typewriter. The clack and grind of the keys drowned out all the chaos around her. So did the darkness, since the power was still out, and a blasted-out window served as her only light source.
Glass shards glimmered at the window’s base, and the view outside showed a world that had begun to unravel. People in the streets moved like herds of panicked animals. Many were on bicycles, and others hobbled or ran as they were able. Smoke plumes clawed at the red-hued sky like demonic fingers. The only thing to break them up was the swarms of planes still flying over.
Emilia reached for a cigarette and lit up. A long drag gave her a familiar and pleasant burn, but it didn’t dull the sharp and frightened voice in her brain. The one reminding her that as time ran out for Germany, it ran out for her too. Fears she had buried for years bubbled hard to the surface, like air pockets in a pot of boiling water.
Of course, the Germans of Hitler’s almighty Reich would fight. They would have to; even if they didn’t believe in cause and country anymore, desertion meant their families would pay. They would be imprisoned, tortured, and maybe killed. And there were plenty of Germans left who did believe in cause and country. The room she sat in was filled with them. They would die for Hitler—they were that foolish or brainwashed. Sometimes they were just that evil.
She should know. She was once just like them.
Thanks to them, the Reich’s end wouldn’t be immediate, but it wasn’t far away. Screeching, diehard Nazis or not, there was only so much they could do against this kind of might, this Allied army with its endless supplies, manpower, and machinery. They would chip away at the Reich until only granules remained. Once the dust settled, the victors wouldn’t play nice.
The end of the cigarette shriveled as Emilia took another drag. She couldn’t deny her part in the complicated Nazi wheel. The SD had employed her for multiple years. The BDMs had brainwashed her for years before that. Then there were her parents, who indulged in the scarlet carpets and shiny chandeliers of high-level membership in “the Party.”
She also partook in the killing. Her hands didn’t inflict the bruises or deaths, but her fingerprints were all over the crime scene. How many of those prisoners looked at her with pleading eyes while they bled on that damn carpet? How many begged her with silent stares to stand up and put an end to the cruelty? Even if she didn’t allow herself to pity, she still knew right from wrong, and she just stood by. She even recorded the whole thing on that cursed typewriter. Not just the torture, but also her own complicity. It was all there in black and white for any Allied eyes to see.
The tables would turn now. Some other woman in some other uniform would take the notes. It would be Emilia’s turn to look out with imploring eyes and hope for mercy.
Unless, of course, she could escape. She had wanted to flee more than once. On some of the hard nights in her boarding house, she thought of packing a bag and disappearing into the countryside, but she always talked herself out of it. Heyns’s resources were vast and deep. He had informers all over the city. Then there were the violent Maquisards. All of it kept her coming back to that office day after day.
Perhaps the invasion would change things. Emilia could use the confusion to her own advantage, just like she did her vivacious charm and beauty. Everyone was so distracted. They had plenty to do without worrying where a lousy typist had gone.
Besides, the Reich couldn’t shield her anymore. If the Germans didn’t kill her, and if the Allies didn’t kill her, the war itself would. There were too many stray bombs, too many men with rifles, and too many resisters with trigger-happy fingers. And that didn’t include the mine fields, artillery shells, strafing, and fires.
Death was on the prowl, and Emilia was still determined to thwart it, at least until she could escape the trap she had walked right into. Starting with a Lebensborn pamphlet, her admiration of the Reich and its people had crumbled. She refused to die under a Nazi flag. The girl who shook the hand of Hitler would cast the swastika from her arm. Her first official act of defiance.
But first she had to escape, and she knew just where to start. Heyns kept things in his office to aid and abet his own escape. He was so much like her in the end, holding survival far above empathy. Perhaps that’s why they got along so well. He had long since prepared for his own flight from the Nazi ranks, and he trusted her so damn implicitly he gave her the key to it all.
She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket. She felt the key’s teeth dig into her delicate fingertip. It would open his file cabinet that precious few others had access to, where he kept his little goodies. Maybe it was high time she rifled through them.
She smashed her cigarette into her neighbor’s ashtray. She had to play this as smooth as the dairy cream civilians no longer had access to. She glued her hands to the typewriter to look busy. Her eyes swimming with false confidence, she took a silent sweep of the office.
