Risking Exposure

by Jeanne Moran

  The boys followed their Pied Piper to an adjacent field and Klaus grabbed my elbow to hurry me after them. My heavy legs slowed us, but eventually we caught up.

  A number of boys were bent over a small stream, rinsing their hands and faces, playfully splashing one another and laughing. Some collected wood and tended the beginnings of a campfire. Others pulled bandages, wraps, and ointments from rucksacks. Their voices were soft, their manner civilized as if the vandalism, looting, and gunfire never happened. The stunning change made my head pound.

  We found Werner beside the campfire. “It’s getting late, and I didn’t bring a flash,” I told him. “So I’ll go home.” I wanted to go to bed and forget the whole horrible evening.

  But he’d have none of it. “You’ll stay until Klaus is done. We can’t have young girls on the streets alone. Too many ruffians.”

  From somewhere behind me, Erich appeared. “I can walk Sophie home.” He looked at his shoes and then up at the Youth leader, but not at me.

  “Nein. Your place is here with your fellow Youth. Adler can wait for her brother.” He shooed Erich with a wave of his hand. “Back to work.” Erich looked at me, tipped his head sideways in silent apology and did as he was told. “Besides, Adler,” Werner said, “photographers from all over Europe will be here tonight. You could learn from them.”

  I plopped near the campfire and jammed a stick at it. On its own, a muscle in my calf twitched and jumped. I squeezed it a few times to make it stop. That headache was working its way up and over my skull. I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else.

  Members of the press corps, six or seven in all, trickled in and introduced themselves to Werner and the boys. A thin Italian with a fantastically large camera around his neck, a high-strung Frenchman who jumped every time the fire crackled, others whose nationalities and faces blended in the fading daylight. A rather short man limped over, knocking his bowler hat askew with each lurching step. “Peter Massey,” he said, shaking hands all the way around. “Sorry I’m late. Don’t walk as quickly as you.”

  Werner shifted into his formal announcement tone. “Let’s begin. A nation’s youth is its future. Germany builds its future by building a Youth that’s strong and ready to serve at a moment’s notice. Therefore, all HJ and BDM members are taught first aid.” He gestured to various stations where boys simulated injuries. “Our older members will demonstrate some basics of emergency care.”

  The press moved from one cluster of boys to the next, photographing, grumbling about the fading daylight, and leaning toward the fire as they scratched notes onto a pad. One asked what was so special about kids’ first aid practice and another shrugged his response.

  Peter Massey stopped when he noticed me. “You’re the only young lady here.” I could tell by his accent that he was British.

  “Waiting for my stepbrother.”

  He gestured toward the oversized camera bag at my feet. “Yours?”

  I nodded. “I don’t have a flash.”

  “You’re welcome to use mine.”

  “That’s very kind.” I rose and stretched out my hand. “Sophie Adler.”

  His smile was friendly, genuine. “Are you related to Hans Adler, the owner of the bakery on Reichenbach Strasse?”

  I smiled. “That’s my father.”

  Herr Massey smiled. “We use the same photo studio in Schwabing. I’ve met your father there a few times.” I warmed at the mention of my father and the studio. “And of course,” he patted the roundness of his stomach, “I’ve sampled his crullers.”

  With his guidance, I adjusted my settings and used the flash for the last two photos, one of the boys placing an arm in a sling and another of them dressing a fictitious leg wound. “Danke, Herr Massey.”

  He tipped his hat. “Always glad to help a fellow photographer. Guten Abend, Sophie Adler.” He limped out of the ring of firelight until all I saw was his lurching shadow.

  My mother sat in her wing chair, peering at me over her spectacles. She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “Ach, you have that flu again. I told you to rest and you didn’t. That’s what you get.”

  The twitch in my calf had gotten worse. Without bothering to wash up or comb out my braids I stumbled to my room, pulled on a gown, then crawled under my quilt. In fifteen minutes, the muscle twitch grew into a toe-curling charley horse, so I repositioned my legs. My shoulder cramped so I fluffed my pillow. The pain from my throbbing head spread down the back of my skull, grabbed my neck, and held it stiff.

  The bedroom door opened and Mutti bustled in carrying a speckled enamel washbasin. “In case you vomit,” she announced, setting it down with a clatter.

  I must have dozed off because I awoke cold and shivering. I tried reaching for my quilt but couldn’t grab hold of it. When I pushed up to see what was wrong, strange sensations overwhelmed me – pain, melting. I tumbled from the bed like a rock from a cliff and struck my face on the floor. My hands hadn’t broken my fall.

  Warm wetness leaked from my nose. I tried to move but my arms cramped and wouldn’t push. I couldn’t even lift my head. My neck was stuck in place, stiff, too painful to move. Chills made me shiver, and that worsened the muscle cramps. As if pulled by an invisible string, my right knee bent so my heel nearly touched my backside.

  I was powerless against whatever force had taken over my body. Terror washed over me and overwhelmed my thoughts. I tried to call for help, but I could barely pull in enough breath. “Mutti!” I croaked. Again. Again.

  My mother rushed in, wrapping a robe around her floral nightgown. I must have looked a fright, flat on the floor with a bloody face and one leg jackknifed. She froze in the doorway and stared. At her heels, Klaus gasped. “Sophie,” my mother whispered, advancing slowly toward me. “What’s happened?” She knelt beside my bent leg and slowly ran her hands along its contour. “Can you stand?”

  “No. Hurts.” I could barely catch my breath. “So weak. And cold.”

  She pressed an icy hand to my forehead, and her eyes widened in alarm. “Get Herr Doktor Vogel,” she told Klaus. “Tell him your sister is feverish. And weak. And there’s something wrong with her leg.”

  “But it’s nearly midnight,” Klaus protested.

  She glared at him. “He’s an old friend of her father’s. He’ll come.”

  She placed a pillow beneath my head and clamped off my bloody nose. Then she draped a quilt over me and sat beside me on the floor. Once or twice, she even patted my hand. I should have been amazed at her attempts at tenderness, but I was too miserable to care.

  Doktor Vogel did the usual. He listened to my chest, took my temperature, and asked about my symptoms. Then he did some unusual things. “Touch your chin to your chest.” I tried but pain in my back and neck made me cry out. “Does this hurt?” He squeezed the fleshy parts of my legs and I yelped my answer. He took his spectacles off and turned to my mother. “It’s probably infantile paralysis. Polio. She has all the symptoms.” He gazed at me, his eyes filled with pity.

  Polio. I knew what polio was. Everyone knew. First, a little cold or flu hung on too long. A high fever followed, and that’s when the real problems started. Breathing problems. Possible death.

  People who survived were left with weak muscles. Even after months of grueling therapy, weakness was still there. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. Some people were left completely paralyzed.

  If I lived through this, I was going to be crippled. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

  Doktor Vogel stuffed his stethoscope in his bag. “It’s been a bad season for polio. Sophie’s the second this week.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll see you at the hospital.”

  The hospital? My grandfather died in a hospital.

  Chapter Four

  Blurred

  I was flat on my back, a passenger on a bed. I couldn’t turn or sit or even draw enough breath to ask the orderlies where I was going. Glaring lights appeared and disappeared overhead at regular intervals. I counte
d them, seventeen, just to do something, anything, to get my mind off the unending muscle cramps. I shivered uncontrollably.

  Doors banged open and I was pushed into a darkened place. My movement stopped. The orderlies walked to a well lit area in the far corner of the huge room. They spoke in hushed tones with two women in white uniforms, gesturing toward me. All wore face masks.

  My nose twitched at the room’s strong odors. Rubbing alcohol and urine. Something else demanded my attention, a noise, a rhythmic whoosh, loud and mechanical. Whoosh-shhhh. Whoosh-shhhh. The sound filled the room.

  I strained to see its source. A bed-height metal tube, wide and long, dotted with knobs and dials. Sticking out of the end of the tube was – I gasped – a child’s head.

  I had to get away. I tried to move, to sit up, scream, run, anything. Pain and weakness and lack of breath tethered me to the bed.

  The orderlies reappeared. They pushed me past several beds and their lumpy inhabitants toward the whooshing tube. I tried to scrabble away, twisting this way and that against my spasms. I would not let them to push me into that metal monster.

  My bed stopped beside the tube, and the orderlies abandoned me there. I wanted to be anywhere except in this aching, twitching body, alone with that horrid machine.

  But as I lay there beside that tube, something odd happened. The rhythm of the whoosh lost its threat. It was predictable, dependable, and I soon found my labored breath matching its pace. In. Out. In. Out. I relaxed a bit. That’s when I dared a closer look at the tube and the child inside.

  It was Trudi, the little girl from my Jüngmadel troop.

  My scrabbling started anew. I clawed and thrashed against my pain, against my horror and panic.

  A man in street clothes approached. Doktor Vogel’s clear blue eyes were recognizable above his white mask and I searched them for help, for hope. He pulled out his stethoscope and pressed its cold bell against my chest.

  I managed to croak, moving my eyes toward the tube. “Trudi.”

  He nodded and spoke in the measured doctor voice he used for official business. “She’s in an iron lung. When someone is too weak to breathe, the machine breathes for them.”

  I concentrated on each breath. In. Out. In. Out.

  Doktor Vogel draped the stethoscope around his neck. His eyes and his voice were soft. “You’re in the isolation ward, Sophie. Polio’s contagious, and everyone must be protected. Even the nurses and staff wear masks so they don’t catch it.”

  “All these patients have polio,” he continued. I glanced around the darkened ward, its dozen or so patients silent and unmoving. “No visitors allowed. Once you’ve moved into the rehabilitation ward, your family and friends can visit.”

  A nurse rolled me, washed me, and tucked my sheets beneath the mattress. I was bread dough, kneaded, folded over, and stuffed into a pan.

  I might die. I’d definitely be crippled. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  A pat on my hand aroused me. Above the hovering face mask, a woman’s deep green eyes showed concern. “How are you feeling, Sophie? Better?”

  It took a few moments to remember – I was in the hospital. Every muscle in my body ached; I was one big charley horse.

  “You gave us quite a scare.” Her voice was familiar.

  Doktor Vogel leaned over the other side of my bed and listened to my chest, then propped his elbows on the bedrail. “Your fever spiked yesterday and you didn’t respond for seventeen hours. Breathing troubles.” He regarded me intently. “I thought you might need the iron lung, but thankfully you didn’t.” That empty metal tube sat near my bed, silent.

  I tried to speak, to ask about Trudi, but my breath caught. I had to concentrate to keep it going. In. Out. In. Out.

  He continued. “Thank God you didn’t need to go in the iron lung. Don’t misunderstand – it’s a wonderful device, and it saves lives. But once used, it’s hard to remember how to breathe on your own.”

  I pulled in a painful breath and on the exhale, I made some noise that sounded enough like “Trudi” that they understood I was asking about her. The woman’s eyes dropped, but Doktor Vogel’s gaze was steady. “She died last night, Sophie.”

  2 May, Monday

  When I awoke, that woman with eyes the color of pine needles greeted me. She was rather tall and her bun sat like a cinnamon roll at the back of her head. “Hello, Sophie.”

  I blinked a few times. “Anna?” My old Jungmädel leader?

  Small crinkles formed around her eyes. “Ja, it’s me. I’ve started my nurses’ training. This is my first rotation. You’re my assignment for the next six months.”

  Six months?

  She must have seen the surprise in my face. “Well, I’ll be here for six months,” she corrected, sounding positively excited. “You’re one of the patients I’ll follow. From hospital to rehabilitation unit and right through discharge.”

  Those eyes of hers searched my face, and her tone shifted from friendly to prying. “Strange how you and Trudi both ended up with polio, but no one else from the troop has it. Why is that?”

  That’s when it hit me. I’d gotten sick from sharing my canteen with Trudi. She was contagious and didn’t know it.

  I hoped I hadn’t given it to anyone else.

  I didn’t answer Anna though. She’d only scold me, tell me I should have known better. And that wouldn’t change anything. Trudi would still be dead. I would still be sick.

  The best way to deal with Anna was the way I’d always dealt with her - stay hidden in the background, out of her focus. And I’d thought my days of dealing with her were over.

  Luckily, our conversation was interrupted. A woman with cropped hair and an athletic build lugged a tall mirror across the room and stood it near my bed. “I’m Gisela.” Her mask muffled her cheerful voice. “I’m a physiotherapist. I hear your muscle pain has lessened.”

  I nodded. Thankfully, I was able to breathe and move my arms a little without too much pain.

  “Let’s try a few exercises to see if you’re ready to be transferred.” While Anna stood by with her arms crossed, Gisela slid one hand under my shoulders, the other under my knees, and in a single smooth lift, sat me on the edge of my bed. She sat beside me, her arm around my shoulder for support.

  I looked in the mirror. Next to Gisela sat a pale girl whose blonde hair was matted and clumped against her skull. The girl was thin, sickly thin, with rag doll arms and limp dangling legs. I knew I was the girl, but I didn’t look like me.

  “First we practice sitting.” Gradually Gisela lessened her support at my shoulders, which left me to sway and bob until she steadied me. “Watch yourself in the mirror. It’ll help you balance.” Gisela released the support; I wobbled this way and that. Over and over.

  Gisela smiled at my efforts, nodding. “Need a rest?” Without waiting for an answer, she scooped up my legs and lowered me to the bed. I grunted as clenched muscles in my neck and back uncurled, slowly releasing their hold on my spine. “Now roll onto your stomach please.”

  I moved my arms a little to start the roll and tried to do as she asked. My left leg helped some, but my right leg was completely limp. It didn’t work, as if nothing connected my thoughts to my leg.

  Anna continued to watch as the physio helped roll me, arranging and untangling my floppy limbs. “Now pretend you’re swimming. Lift your arms and your legs, one, two, one, two.”

  My arms moved a little and my left leg moved some. My right leg lay on the bed as if made of lead. “I don’t think I’m much of a swimmer. More like a dead fish.” I buried my face in the mattress.

  “Nonsense. You did well for your first try. I’ll recommend you go to rehabilitation tomorrow to start some intensive physiotherapy. We’ll work together twice a day.”

  “At what?”

  “Getting you as strong as you can be.”

  “What about my right leg?”

  “I don’t know, Sophie.” Gisela’s voice softened. “Most everyone with polio gets
strength back, sometimes a lot of it.”

  “How long will I have to do this therapy?”

  She shrugged. “Can’t say exactly. Most of our patients stay a few months and then go home. But be prepared. Exercising with polio hurts, and it’ll be the hardest work you’ve ever done.”

  No one could predict how paralyzed I’d be. I’d be working hard with no end in sight. There was no way to make a plan. But I was better off than poor Trudi. I was alive.

  3 May, Tuesday

  I smoothed a blanket over my spindly legs as Anna pushed my wheelchair out of the hospital wing and down a long corridor. As we passed through some swinging doors, she faced me. “This can go now.” She removed her mask and tossed it in a nearby bin.

  I stared at her upturned nose, the soft point of her chin, and the small creases like parentheses around her mouth. I hadn’t seen those familiar features since before my illness. As I entered this new stage of recovery, I liked the idea that someone I knew would be by my side. But I was still a bit nervous that the someone was Anna.

  We entered the rehabilitation wing and she pushed me straight to the cafeteria. After a week of lying in bed surrounded by white walls, whispered voices, and the whoosh of the iron lung, the cafeteria was a colorful, active, and most welcome change.

  The air was filled with happy chatter and scented with cinnamon and coffee. Two or three uniformed staff members fed little ones in high chairs. A dozen or so patients in street clothes, children, teens, and adults, sprinkled the large room. Some ate at tables, others walked with wooden crutches, and a few pushed themselves in wheelchairs. Many wore metal braces with brown leather strap supports, a couple had bracing on their torsos, and one boy’s spindly arm lay strapped to a board.

  Anna pushed me into an open spot at a table where four patients were already eating. A man with dark hair, probably in his twenties, spoke first. “Grüβ Gott. I’m Herr Franken.”