by Andie Newton
Red pulled them from my hands. “Give me those.” She took a quick look. “It’s a bridge.”
Gail put her hand on Roxy’s back and they both sighed with relief. Red elbowed the doctor. “Kit was right.”
I took back the binoculars to get a better look, adjusting the lenses. It was a nice long bridge, looked like an original one too, not something that had been blown up and then rebuilt in a hurry. I handed the binoculars to the doctor so he could take a close-up look for himself, and he did, barely, shaking his head disbelievingly.
“What’s wrong? It’s a bridge.” I pointed. “You can see it yourself.”
He put his hand up, watching the rain hit his palm, which had turned into a sprinkle in the short time we’d been crouched down. “But for how long?” he said, and we looked up.
“What’s that mean?” Gail said. “You’re scaring me.”
“The rain keeps the German bombers away,” Roxy told her, and Gail looked into the sky with the rest of us, ducking fearfully as if the sky was going to fall on her at any moment.
I tucked my binoculars back into my pocket and got up. “What are you waiting for? If there’s an egg in the sky with that bridge’s name on it, we’d better be across it.”
Red grabbed Roxy by the elbow and we rushed down the riverbank. The rain disappeared to all but a drop here and there, but the jingle from our medical equipment clanking against each other sounded like rattling pans. The bridge was definitely getting closer, and the air drier, more stagnant from shifting weather.
A drumming buzz came from the sky. The doctor stopped suddenly and we froze as a plane dropped from a splinter of blue sky, plunking two bombs.
Boom! Boom! We hit the ground with our hands over our heads, feeling the earth move underneath, rumbling and shaking from the blasts. The bridge split into two halves, cracking and buckling, before collapsing into the river. “Damn as anyone,” I said, as the plane flew over us. “It’s one of ours!” And we watched it fly away into a puff of clouds.
Roxy knocked on Gail’s helmet, and she looked up from the ground, bits of grass sticking to her cheeks from being face down with eyes still black from running makeup. Her whole face shook, and mumbling came from her lips in high-pitched squeaks.
“Flip her over!” I shouted, and we flipped Gail over on her back. Red reached for her medic bag, but Roxy had taken Gail’s hand, talking to her the way she always talks to patients and getting her attention.
“Gail,” Roxy said, “Listen to me…”
“I don’t belong… here… in the war,” Gail said, slobbering and sniveling. “I’m not like you…” She looked at Roxy in a way I never knew she could look at Roxy, from the bottom up at her weakest moment.
“Well, you’re not in the war. Just part of it, all right?” Roxy said. “Some of the bravest parts. Coming out here with us broads, on a mission to save some of our boys.”
Gail shook her head, face scrunched up, and lips pressed tight. “I’m not supposed to be—” she gulped air “—here. I’m not…” Her skin looked pale and pasty and her limbs grew weak with her fingers barely able to curl around Roxy’s hand.
The doctor moved in close, hunkering on the ground. “Gail Barry, I’ve worked with a lot of nurses, in hospitals and in the field. You’re one of the greats. Don’t think anything less. And I’d be honored if you assisted me one day.”
I looked at Red who only slightly rolled her eyes. Gail had her own way of nursing, as we’d found out, and we all knew Red was the best nurse in France. But with Gail lying on the ground, there wasn’t much else that could be said. Red wiped Gail’s hair from her eyes. “Hear that, Gail? Believe the doctor.”
“Only broads tough as nails could’ve ridden in that trunk,” Roxy said. She pointed at Gail and then herself. “Me and you. Got that?”
We talked her through some breathing patterns, and after a few minutes of lying in the grass Gail looked a little pinker, and we helped her up. She put her helmet back on, and stood weakly while trying to find her balance.
“You all right?” Roxy said, making Gail look at her, and she nodded, which I thought was a good sign given the fact that she’d been paralyzed in the grass a few moments ago.
“Sorry,” Gail said, clearly embarrassed. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“I do,” Red said, pointing at the bridge, and we all paused for a moment and looked at the roughened water where the bridge once passed over.
“How are we gonna get across now?” Roxy said.
The doctor took a deep breath. “We’ll have to go back to the original plan and swim across.” He grabbed his own hands, clasping them together with a fine tight grip. “Arm in arm, hand in hand.”
Roxy immediately put her head in her hands.
“We’re already wet, what’re you worried about?” I said.
Roxy looked up from her hands. “What am I worried about? Dying, Kit. I’m worried about dying.”
Red scoffed. “A little late for that kind of thinking, Roxy.”
“No,” she said, and I noticed her eyes, which had never looked so sad and drawn before. “You don’t understand.” She gulped. “I can’t swim.”
We were the ones in shock now. Doctor Burk walked a few feet away, hand over his face, but us girls kept our eyes on Roxy, who looked like she was going to get sick all over the grass.
“You can’t swim… at all?” I finally asked, and she shook her head.
“Dammit, Rox,” Red said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know there was a river! The plan never included drowning.” She pointed at the river, which was rushing fast and gray.
“You’ll have to walk back,” Red said, “and wait for us then.”
“She’s not walking back!” I said. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Red folded her arms. “Is it, Kit? Is it?”
The doctor turned around after hearing Red’s tone. “We’ll think of something,” he said. “You can’t walk back.”
“I’ll hold you,” Gail said, and Roxy looked up. “Like the doctor said. Arm in arm, hand in hand.” She gave herself a reassuring nod. “We can do it, Roxy. I won’t let go.”
It had been a few days since Roxy was speechless, and if I could have held the moment forever, I would have. They took each other’s hands.
“Well, what are we standing around for,” Red said. “Let’s get going.”
We walked back the way we had come so we could pick up the trail on the other side. Without the rain, our walk felt faster, but now the flies were out, and the bees, and the air was humid from the rising sun. I knew I shouldn’t have thought it, but by the time we made it back to where we’d started, I wanted to get in that river, despite the rapid, growing swell of it.
The doctor slid down off the vanishing bank into the river, holding my hand and then taking my arm once I had fully got in. God, it was cold, too cold to breathe, and I instantly wanted to be back onshore. Red, Roxy, and Gail followed, hooking on to us as we waded in a swirling eddy, our packs strapped around our necks to keep them dry.
“Gail,” Roxy said, inching across the river. “Don’t let go!”
I felt Red squeeze my arm, and I looked at Doctor Burk who gave me a nod. And we waded across, one careful step after another in chest-deep water. “Almost there,” I said down the line, looking at Roxy. “Almost there.”
Twigs and sticks floated by us in patches. Nothing alarming at first. It just looked like river debris, but it turned thicker and more unnatural-looking. “Ouch, ouch,” I said when a piece of wood hit my neck. “What is that—” A sound came from upriver. Not a plane, or the hum of a panzer tank. A mighty roar that eclipsed the rushing river, wood on wood, and metal on metal. “Red?” I said, and we froze, trying to make sense of the change in the water upriver, from gray to black like a dark cloud rolling over the swells.
“Oh no,” the doctor said. “It’s another blown bridge!” Beams and the side of a bridge washed down the ri
ver in forceful clumps, headed straight for us. He let go of my arm and made a swim for it, but the swirling current grabbed hold of him and pulled him away. Red shrieked, doing her best to reach for him, but it was my hand he tried to grab.
“Doctor!” I lunged for him, but our fingers slipped from each other’s in the water and he vanished under a swirl of white water. And he was gone. Long gone.
We screamed and yelped under the roar of waves as Red yanked us to shore, and one after the other, we washed up on the bank. Red immediately burst into tears in the grass. Roxy was the first one to throw up, lying half out of the water with Gail. I was the second, bawling on my knees in the river and in the muck, looking at my shaking hands.
And there we were, just the four of us, behind enemy lines.
10
KIT
The last of the blown bridge washed down the river in jagged chunks. The sun was higher, and the air much warmer. I wrung out my socks near the river’s edge. We were all very quiet. Roxy and Gail sat together in the grass, looking at the ground and recovering from exhaustion. Red covered her face with one hand, refusing to move for many minutes after the doctor got swept away.
I looked at my hands, my waterlogged palms. He’d been so close. I squeezed my socks out one last time and laid them flat in the sun. So close.
“We should do a prayer,” Gail said, and me and Roxy joined with her in a circle. Red watched from a distance.
“Hello, God,” I said, eyes closing. “Please watch over Doctor Burk.” The words crumbled in my mouth as I remembered the look on his face before he got swept under, eyes stretched, a sense of disbelief.
“Bless him,” Roxy said. “He was one of our boys, like all the others.”
Gail prayed in whispers, kissing her hands and blowing her words to the sky. “In God’s hands,” she said.
“Red,” I said. “Do you want to add something?”
She got up slowly. Roxy and I took her hands, closing our eyes. “Watch over him, God,” Red said. “He was an excellent doctor. A good man.” She paused. “But dammit, he left us here without a map!”
Our eyes popped open, and Red ripped her hands from ours.
“Oh no!” Gail said.
“He had the gun too,” I said. “What are we going to do?”
Red paced around in a circle, hands on her hips. “I don’t know.” Her arms flew up. “Does anyone remember what he said? Something about a building after the square?”
“Third building,” I said. “On the left.”
“I thought it was on the right,” Roxy said.
I tried to remember the doctor’s face in the grass when he spoke to us, what he’d said. The river was rushing, coldly swirling with rain, and gray. I remembered him talking about the village, and a building. I briefly squeezed my eyes shut. “I misspoke. It’s the third building on the right.”
“Are you sure?” Red said, and she waited for me to answer, but now I second-guessed everything. “Kit!” she snapped, and I looked at her, fingernails between my teeth, chewing rabidly.
“Yes,” I said, and I dropped my hand. “Third building on the right.”
“You know what’s gonna happen if we show up at the wrong place?” She pointed behind her off in the distance. “We might as well save the Germans some trouble and load the train to one of their POW camps right now.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Third building. On the right. I know it, Red. I promise.”
Red cooled down, breathing normally again, only to cry a little more. And we stood in the grass, waiting for Red to stop sobbing. I put a hand on her shoulder for comfort when a sudden pop of gunfire shook us all. Bap! Bap!
Birds flew from the trees and over the river. We grabbed on to each other, half searching the air for a direction, the other half looking for a place to hide. “Over here…” I said, and we scooted into the weeds where it seemed abnormally still. No birds overhead, and no more shots.
Red crept up ahead to look through some bushes but came charging back moments later. “In the river,” she said, shooing her hands at us to get back in the water.
Roxy hyperventilated the moment Red said river and wouldn’t move even while me and Gail jumped in.
“Hurry!” Red said, and she grabbed Roxy by the scruff of her neck and threw her in the cold water with us. We locked our arms together, hiding in an eddy protected by a tangle of tree roots and brambles. A heavy car, a military type of wagon, sputtered on the bank somewhere behind us. “Maybe they’ll drive away,” Red said, but then the engine turned off.
Car doors shut, and I swear I could hear German words. It was then I remembered my socks were still in the grass, flattened from trying to dry them out. “My socks,” I whispered, and Roxy’s eyes bulged.
Two men in gray-green uniforms walked over to the riverbank, but what kind of uniforms I couldn’t tell. One had a gruesome scar cut into his cheek. “Get down,” I hissed as they moved closer, and we slid even more into the water, eyes and ears barely above the waterline. The men laughed and pointed into the river, before pulling out their guns and getting very excited about something floating in the current.
Bap! Bap! Bap! Pistol haze drifted like cigarette smoke after they popped off several more shots. “Thousand-year Reich!” one said in German, and Gail clamped a hand over her mouth under the water.
Two bodies drifted by face up. A man, dark-haired, and a young woman with brown hair, eyelids sprung open, transfixed. The current took the man away, but the woman’s lifeless body floated near us in the eddy. Her tangling hair snagged in the roots, then her blue dress, her body listing like a sinking ship. Roxy closed her eyes, but Gail’s got big as anything as the water rushed over the woman’s arm, drawing her toward us even closer. Red quietly released the caught clothing from a branch and her body bobbed along, hugging the shore, before the water finally took her under.
My socks shined up in the grass, warming in the sun. The Germans gazed at the river. All they had to do was look down, then to my horror, they walked over to the muddy bank with one of them catching my sock on the heel of his boot. They lit cigarettes and talked about the rain, not one mention about the people they’d killed seconds ago.
Roxy puffed above the waterline, eyes bouncing from holding in a sneeze. “Ahh… Ahh…” we heard muffling from her throat, and I prayed she could hold it in. Just once. Please, hold it in! Red reached over to cover Roxy’s mouth. “Achoo!” A horn had honked and the men ran off just as Roxy let it blow, sneezing into the water and all over Red’s hand, but thank God the Germans were already getting in their car.
Roxy looked at me, lips pinched, after they’d sped off.
“What?” I said, and she rose up out of the water and slapped me coldly across the face.
I gasped. “Roxy!”
“Don’t ever take off your socks again.” She shivered and shook in the water, and I held my cheek where it felt cold and numb from having been slapped on wet skin. As shocked as I was from Roxy’s slap, it was nothing compared to the look she had on her face.
“Leave it,” Red said to me, then we all climbed out of the river.
“Who were they?” Gail said, dripping on the bank, taking her pack off and tossing it on the ground.
Red shook her head. “Wehrmacht? I don’t know. Germans. Isn’t that enough? In case you didn’t figure it out. That river—” she pointed “—is the damn Rhine.” She looked at us standing in shock on the muddy beach. “That’s right, ladies. We’re in Nazi Germany, not France.”
I covered my mouth. Behind enemy lines in France was dangerous enough as it was, but inside Germany? I should have known with name like Lichtenau, and then especially after the doctor brushed me off when I questioned it.
“God,” I said.
“What do we do now?” Roxy cried.
Red rubbed her eyes, shaking her head, and I thought of the map I had in my pack. I went to dig it out, searching my deep pockets when it flopped heavily onto the ground between my legs.
/> “What’s that?” Red said, and my stomach sank.
It was soggy and had started to tear. “I… ahh… I just remembered I have a map,” I said. Red walked up behind me as I unfolded it carefully. Sure enough, on the other side of the Rhine was a tiny dot of a village called Lichtenau, Germany.
Red held my gaze as if trying to read my thoughts, then she squinted. “Why do you have a map—how’d you get a map?”
I pointed to the dot on the map, tapping my finger, and she finally looked at it.
“We’re not far, maybe only a few miles away,” she said, and I turned away hoping she’d forget about her questions, but Red rarely forgot anything. “You going to answer up about this?”
I shrugged. “Doctor Burk gave it to me earlier.”
Red looked at me for a long while, straight into my eyes, and I gulped. Out of all the stories I’d told her, all the little white lies about wine and extra cigarettes, this was a big one and I felt she saw through it. I waited for her to chew me out for lying, demand I tell her the truth, but instead she pushed the map at me.
“Here,” Red said, and I turned away, blowing a relieved breath of air from my mouth.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Roxy said.
Red huddled us into a circle. “We have a choice. We can go back. Or, we can continue what we started,” she said. “Like it or not, this is our hand.”
“Continue,” I said, followed by Roxy.
“Continue,” Gail said.
“Okay,” Red said, rubbing her forehead. “Let’s dry out our gear and change into those dresses.” She started unpacking her gear.
We lined up our bottles of antiseptic. Only one had broken, but we lost the plasma with the doctor. Red asked Gail to sanitize our instruments, setting aside the broken bottle for her to use so as not to waste it, but Gail had gathered up the instruments and headed for the river.
Red stopped her. “What are you doing?”
Gail looked confused and embarrassed at the same time.
“The river isn’t sanitary,” Red said. “Use the antiseptic.”
Gail smiled a little “I’m sorry” kind of smile before walking back. She opened up her hands. “I suppose I’m still not thinking straight.”
