“That’s his choice, I suppose,” Greg said. “I’m sorry to hear it, though.”
“I’m sorry too,” I said. “I’m not ready to lose him.”
“All the treatments are just a stall anyway,” Greg pointed out. “He’s in his nineties. It’s only a matter of time.”
“You can say that about an infant and it’s still true, Greg. It’s just a matter of a bit more time.”
“You know what I mean, Beth. Don’t make things difficult for your dad.”
Of course, I knew what he meant: You can’t do anything about the situation, so there’s no need to talk about it.
“I’m afraid ‘difficult’ is one of my defining characteristics,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose and letting out a ragged breath. “I thought you knew that by now.”
Greg cleared his throat, not offering a real response. “I am sorry. You’ve been through a lot in the last year. If you let me take you to Mancino’s, I’ll let you cry on my shoulder.”
“That’s a bad idea and you know it.”
“After all the years we were together, we can’t share a meal as friends?”
I knew that friendship was the last thing he wanted from me, but I swallowed my response.
“So, how is the tenure application coming along?” Greg finally asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ve heard nothing but good things from your chair,” he said. As the co-chair of the economics department, he was looped in on a lot of the university politics I tried so desperately to avoid, often to my own professional detriment. My excuse was that I preferred the theory of politics over the application in academia. “I’ve got high hopes for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, happy he didn’t quiz me on the finer points of my application. He knew his stuff, no mistake, but he often assumed that no one else was as competent.
We ended our call with his now customary reminder to use the dead bolt. Not too long after, the challah was ready to braid. I took my dough cutter and split the dough into three even pieces, not bothering with Mom’s preferred six-strand method as it wouldn’t be presented at table. It was neat enough, and even Mom wouldn’t have found fault with it. I covered it and let it sit again for a couple of hours before baking.
As the smell of the challah filled the apartment, the musty smell of the dozens of prior residents faded away. I took in a deep breath, and my mother was there in the wholesome sweetness of the baking bread.
I’d come to terms with Mom being gone. We’d gotten along well, but her death wasn’t the same loss that Dad’s would be. I felt guilt at the thought. As much as parents should love all their children the same, children ought to return the favor to their parents. Still, I felt her absence more keenly now than I had at her funeral. I was sure that Dad’s decision to let nature take its course was the impetus. When he was gone, I wouldn’t have another family member left alive, and that realization chilled me like a winter breeze off the ocean. I had to do better for Dad in his final days than I’d done for Mom. Be more present. My friends would all tell me I’d done my best, but I’d know the truth and be forced to live with it.
CHAPTER SIX
INSIDE THE DEATH FACTORY
MAX
September 20, 1944
Hürtgen Forest, Germany
The roar of the German guns was so constant, the rare silence was deafening. I spotted my next patient: a fallen soldier who had slid to the bottom of a hill. He was covered from enemy fire for the moment, and I stood a decent chance of getting him out.
I ran to his side and fell to my knees by his head, tossing my kit beside me for ease of access. A pulse. If there was none, I had to move on. I pressed my fingers to his neck and felt the faint thump-thump, thump-thump, more significant than the screams and shellfire that swirled around my ears. In our kits, they gave us cotton to keep in our ears to muffle the sound, but I saved it for the short stretches of sleep I was able to steal in the barracks. I needed all my senses to treat the wounded—sometimes a nuance in the voice of a fallen soldier spoke volumes about the extent of his injury. And I wouldn’t dishonor the families of these men by missing their sons’ last words. Hearing them was a task that had fallen to me more times than I cared to count in the year and a half since I’d been deployed to France.
The soldier—a boy of maybe twenty—was breathing, but it was shallow. He was a private by the last name of Davis, according to the dog tags that had come untucked from his uniform when he fell. He’d taken a bullet to his right shoulder and was bleeding so much he was already the color of ash. The bullet had gone clear through, though, so he might make it. Shrapnel from bullets was hard to remove, if a man was lucky enough to get operated on in time in the first place, and it opened him up to infections from within and without. I sprinkled the wound with crystalline sulfanilamide, an antibiotic powder, and applied pressure to both sides with a bandage. I pressed as hard as I dared and prayed that there weren’t stray bone fragments to cause him problems later.
“E-everything looks h-hazy,” the soldier stuttered. “And I’m cold.”
“Come now, it’s autumn in Germany, soldier. You’re lying in a mud pit. It is cold. And the artillery fire has made everything hazy from here to Paris. Nothing to fret about,” I reasoned, keeping the timbre of my voice upbeat. I knew the cold he felt and the haze he saw weren’t just due to our conditions, but if I could get him to think so, he might avoid shock.
I described the injury and my treatment on a medical tag, affixed it to his clothes, and scanned the field for litter bearers. I was able to get the attention of a pair who were free of a charge and saw the young private loaded up and carried off back to the casualty collection point. For a moment I watched them retreat, unable to breathe. The rear litter bearer stumbled, and I saw a red splotch grow across his back from the bullet of a German sniper. On occasion, the white fields with red crosses on the medics’ helmets served as a target rather than a moral deterrent.
I ran out into the open to assess the three of them. The rear litter bearer was dead—the hole in the back of his chest was the size of a dime, but the crater in the front was that of a softball. He’d died before he knew what happened, and he was all the luckier for it. The other litter bearer was lying over Davis, doing what he could to protect him from fire.
“Let’s move!” I yelled to the surviving medic, removing the rear litter handles from his partner’s hands, not wasting time to attach the litter straps that would make the task of transporting him easier. I could see the rise and fall in Davis’s chest, but it was becoming shallower with each breath. The fall had done him no good, and if my instincts were right, he needed sutures as soon as we could get clear of enemy fire.
It was a solid half mile or more to the collection point. Any closer, and they’d be within range of the German guns. Those closest to the Germans had more than a mile to run with a wounded man to get to safety.
The air was bitter, and I had mud up to my knees. Sweat poured from me, and I fought to get air in my lungs. If I survive this damned war, I’m going to run three miles a day until my legs give out from under me.