by Daniel Kalla
“We have hardly any medicines or supplies left in our cupboards, Mr. Ghoya,” Franz said. “The hospital is basically a convalescence home. A place where we can sometimes keep people a little more comfortable before they improve or they die.”
“I think you are being most modest,” von Puttkamer said. “I would very much like to tour this hospital of yours.”
Franz shrugged his shoulders and held out his palms. “You would be wasting your time, Baron.”
The younger German man lunged forward, looking for a moment as if he might tackle Franz. “The baron does not take advice from a rotten Jew!”
Von Puttkamer smiled in a paternal manner. “Please excuse Gerhard’s exuberance, but my young colleague does have a point, Dr. Adler. I would like to see the hospital for myself.”
“Yes, yes,” Ghoya said. “We will go there right after the school and the temple.”
* * *
Sunny resisted the urge to run as she and Franz returned to the hospital. “How long do you think we have, Franz?”
“Half an hour? An hour at the most. How long can it possibly take them to tour the synagogue and school?”
“So there is no time for the night soil barrel,” she said.
“Absolutely not. We must get Charlie out of the hospital immediately.”
“I’ll find a straw hat.” Sunny thought aloud. “We have to just bundle Charlie up in a rickshaw and send him to the warehouse. I will go with him.”
Franz stopped and caught her arm again. “No, Sunny! If you were to be caught . . . I should go.”
“You are not allowed out of the ghetto without a pass. It’s too risky for you, Franz.”
“Then Ernst will have to take him.”
“That would draw even more attention. No one will take notice of two Chinese riding together.”
“Joey, then.”
“It’s not fair to ask him.” She marshalled her courage. “I will do it. There is no other choice.”
Before Franz could argue further, they reached the door to the hospital. Panicky voices could be heard inside. Ernst’s was the loudest.
Franz took off down the corridor, and Sunny followed. They reached the ward to see Charlie staggering across the room in a shirt but no pants. Ernst supported him on one side, while Max Feinstein supported him on the other. The dressing around his leg had unfurled, and blackish blood trailed behind him. Panting heavily, Charlie was reaching his hands out in front of him as though trying to catch imaginary butterflies that were fluttering past his head.
“You have to go back to bed, Charlie,” Ernst commanded, but Charlie continued to grasp at air.
“He is delirious from the infection.” Max shook his head. “His fever is through the roof. Gangrene must have set in.”
Sunny rushed over. Wordlessly, she pushed Ernst aside and slid an arm behind Charlie’s back. Even through his damp shirt, she could tell that his skin was on fire.
“The railway station,” Charlie mumbled to her in Mandarin. “Don’t you see? It is the key. We must get to the station.”
“We will, yes,” Sunny reassured him as she forcefully guided him back toward the bed. Charlie didn’t resist, but he could barely hold himself upright. Max and Sunny had to drag him onto a stretcher, manoeuvering him past a line of patients, who watched with expressions ranging from bewildered to petrified.
With Franz’s help, they hoisted Charlie back onto the bed. He kept trying to lift his head up off the mattress, despite being too weak to hold it up. “The explosives,” he mumbled. “How will we get the explosives in?”
Max squinted at Franz. “You must take him to the operating room and remove more tissue. Surely it is his only hope.”
“There is no time, Max,” Franz blurted. “Ghoya is on his way over. Von Puttkamer too.”
Max’s face blanched. “That vicious Nazi is coming here? Mein Gott! Why?”
“I have no idea,” Franz said. “We must get Charlie out of here before they arrive.”
“Why would they care about Charlie?”
Sunny waved her hand. “We will explain later, Max,” she said in a tone that left no room for argument. “Go get Joey. Straight away.”
Max hesitated as if to argue but then turned and went in search of Joey.
Franz gazed at her. “What do we do now, Sunny?”
He looked as lost as she had ever seen him. “Joey and I will take Charlie home,” she said.
“Home?” Franz asked incredulously. “To Hannah, Esther and the baby?”
“Just until we can find somewhere more suitable.”
“And what will we possibly do for him there?”
She looked down at the blackened wound on Charlie’s thigh. It had begun to blister around the edges. “We have to take care of that,” she said softly. “You must bring home the necessary equipment.”
Franz watched Charlie thrash at the air above him. “Ernst was so right. This is lunacy.”
Joey popped his head through the curtains and seemed to immediately understand what was happening. “What do you need?”
“Go get a coolie with a rickshaw—someone you trust, Joey—and have him wait out front,” Sunny instructed. “And find a straw hat if you can.”
As soon as Joey left, Sunny retrieved Charlie’s trousers from their heap under the bed. With Max pinning his shoulders down and Franz holding his thighs, Sunny managed to slip the stained garment over his legs. Charlie screamed as the fabric rubbed against his raw wound. Berta arrived at the bedside holding a syringe of morphine and two Aspirin tablets. Together, they managed to sit Charlie up. He choked on the water but swallowed the pills. Sunny exposed a patch of skin on his shoulder and injected the painkiller, then wrapped a blanket around his torso while Berta dabbed at his brow with a compress. Throughout it all, Charlie kept muttering about railways and explosives.
“The coolie is waiting,” Joey said from the end of the bed, where he stood holding a ratty bamboo hat.
Franz turned to Sunny. “Let me come with you.”
“No. You have to be here when Ghoya arrives.”
Joey and Sunny hoisted Charlie to his feet. Joey secured the hat firmly on Charlie’s head. He was like dead weight now and mumbling incoherently. Together they dragged him across the ward and down the corridor.
“I will check the street.” Franz darted out the door without waiting for a response.
Charlie’s eyes were closed, even as he continued to mutter. Joey stared silently at the door. Sunny’s pulse pounded in her ears. Moments later, Franz burst back inside. “There is a soldier at the end of the street. Just standing there. I’m not sure which way he will go.”
“And the coolie?” Sunny asked.
“He’s at the curb out front.”
“We have no time to wait for the soldier to go.” Sunny shuffled Charlie toward the door and Joey followed her out.
They practically carried Charlie down the pathway to where the coolie stood beside his rickshaw, viewing them with only mild interest as he held tight the handles of his carriage.
Joey hopped inside the rickshaw and helped Sunny manoeuvre Charlie into the seat beside him. Just as she squeezed in herself, the soldier marched up to the rickshaw. He waved his rifle at Charlie and barked at them in Japanese. Joey and Sunny shrugged to indicate that they couldn’t understand him.
The soldier took a step closer to the rickshaw. He studied Charlie, then motioned for them to remove his hat. Fighting to steady her hand, Sunny feigned indifference as she pulled the hat off Charlie’s head. The soldier leaned forward and examined his face.
Sunny’s breath caught in her throat.
Suddenly, Joey let out a loud cackle, and the soldier turned to him in surprise. Joey formed a bottle with his thumb and his fist and pantomimed drinking from it. He nodded toward Charlie. “This one starts very early in
the morning,” he said, laughing.
The soldier’s lip curled into a disgusted scowl. “No-good drunk Chinaman.”
Chapter 18
Franz stepped inside his bedroom to find the others crowded around the bed where Charlie lay glassy-eyed. His calmness suggested that he had emerged from his delirium. Still, despite the breeze from the open window, the faint smell of decayed flesh hung over him.
Sunny stood at the head of the bed speaking to Charlie in a low voice while pressing a compress to his brow. Wen-Cheng, dressed in a surgical gown and gloves, had wedged himself between the bed and the wall and was assembling an impromptu surgical tray from tools he had smuggled over from the hospital. A hacksaw perched ominously on the far end of the tray.
Sunny looked over her shoulder at Franz. “What happened with Ghoya and the Nazis?”
“We can discuss it later.” Franz could still picture the crazed little man leading the Nazi contingent around the silent ward as though showing them an apartment whose tenants he was about to evict.
Charlie winced. “This is too much.”
“What is?” Sunny asked. “The pain?”
Charlie shook his head slightly. “Just let me go,” he croaked.
“We cannot allow that,” Wen-Cheng said. “We are your doctors. We know how to fix you.”
Charlie’s eyes drifted over to the saw. “Fix me?”
“Dr. Huang is correct,” Franz said. “You should improve once we—”
“And if I don’t?” Charlie asked.
Sunny dabbed his brow again. “Do you not owe it to your men to try?”
“A soldier has to . . . to know when to abandon his losses,” Charlie said.
“You are not lost yet, Charlie.” Franz held a hand out to him. “So let us to do what has to be done.”
Charlie’s eyes drifted shut. Sunny spoke to him in Chinese, her tone soft and soothing. After a few moments, he nodded.
Franz looked from Wen-Cheng to Sunny. “The ether?” he asked.
Sunny lifted up a small smoked-glass bottle. “Joey’s contact cheated him. He mixed it with water. I am not sure there is enough ether to be effective.”
“What choice is there?” Franz asked, though inwardly he was horrified at the prospect of amputating the leg of someone who might still be awake.
Wen-Cheng held up his gloved hands. “I am already scrubbed. May I perform the surgery?”
Franz had no idea why Wen-Cheng would want to take the lead but was relieved that he wouldn’t have to use the saw himself. “I’ll assist you,” he said.
Franz donned a gown and mask, then scrubbed his hands with the last sliver of soap in the basin of lukewarm water. He dried his hands on the pillowcase that was serving as a towel and then slipped them into the rubber gloves.
Wen-Cheng draped Charlie’s right leg with thin sheets, exposing the edges of the blistering wound. He cleaned the area with a soapy sponge. Sunny covered Charlie’s face with the ether mask and dripped anaesthetic onto it. Franz could tell by the faintness of its odour that the drug didn’t possess its usual potency.
Sunny shook the bottle to extract a final drop or two, but Charlie remained alert. She looked from Wen-Cheng to Franz. “He is not anaesthetized.”
Franz squeezed into a spot across the bed from Wen-Cheng. “The quicker we do this, the better.” He took a scalpel off the tray and handed it to his colleague, feeling irrationally complicit in something terrible.
Wen lowered the blade to a spot two-thirds of the way down Charlie’s thigh, at a point where the skin still looked like human flesh. He glanced over at Franz, who nodded his agreement. Wen-Cheng sliced through the tissue in one fluid movement.
Charlie groaned and kicked his leg. Wen-Cheng’s hand froze. His eyes darted over to Sunny. She grimaced as though the knife was cutting into her own leg. “I have nothing more to offer him for pain.”
Franz fixed Wen-Cheng with the commanding stare that he had once summoned to motivate hesitant surgical interns. “Do not stop now!” he barked.
Wen-Cheng sliced the blade across the man’s thigh. Charlie moaned again, but his leg held still. Franz followed the incision with his sponge, dabbing away blood. The unwholesome odour intensified the deeper Wen-Cheng cut, as did Charlie’s stuporous groans. Wen-Cheng deftly dissected out layers of diseased flesh and muscle, then used two sutures to tie off Charlie’s femoral artery and vein, the large blood vessels responsible for supplying the leg with blood.
Franz lifted the saw from the tray and, heavy-hearted, passed it to Wen-Cheng.
Chapter 19
Most of the class had been elated about the sudden cancellation of the school day. Not Hannah. The instant she had spotted Ghoya in the hallway, she assumed he had come for her and had almost bolted in the opposite direction. Only her fear of drawing his attention stopped her.
Hannah recognized from the newspapers the tall man who accompanied Ghoya. She couldn’t remember his name—did he have some kind of aristocratic title?—but she was certain he was a leader among local Nazis. Despite his distinguished appearance, Hannah sensed malice behind his smile. An Asian man and a young German followed behind, the latter screwing his face into a permanent scowl, as though he were being led through a pigsty.
When Hannah informed Freddy Herzberg of the visitors, he did not seem the least bit concerned. Even when she explained who the men were, he shrugged it off with his usual bluster. “Did you see any soldiers with them?”
“No.”
“Are they armed?”
“They’re wearing suits.”
“So what is there to worry about?”
“A Japanese commander of the ghetto brings Nazis to our school! Doesn’t that seem bad?”
For a moment his face darkened, but he brushed her off with another shrug. “We have the day off. We ought to enjoy it.”
Hannah did not know how Freddy could be so cavalier, but there seemed to be no point in arguing. She turned down his offer to visit the market and instead headed straight home to share the news with her family.
Hannah found Esther sitting still and silent on the chair in the corner of the living room. She was staring dead ahead at the closed bedroom door, while Jakob slept at her feet in his basket. It took Esther a moment to register Hannah’s arrival, then her head snapped toward her niece as though she were emerging from a trance. “Hannah! What are you doing here?”
“They cancelled school today, Tante Essie. We had visitors come to the—”
“You must go now,” Esther snapped before Hannah even had a chance to finish. “Frau Eckstein has a skirt that needs hemming. Go fetch it for me. Straight away!”
“Tante,” Hannah pleaded. “Ghoya came to the school today. He brought Nazis with him!”
But Esther would not listen. “We will discuss this later. You must go now.”
“Why, Tante?”
A loud moaning sound reached her from under the bedroom door, then Hannah heard voices on the other side. She recognized her father and Sunny but could not make out their words. More groans came from inside the room.
Hannah started for the bedroom door.
“No!” As Esther jumped up from her chair, her foot knocked the basket holding Jakob. She dropped to her knees to steady it as Jakob began to howl.
Hannah froze. “What is it, Tante?”
Esther reached into the basket and lifted up Jakob. She cradled him under one arm. “Shush, my darling,” she cooed as she gently bounced him up and down.
Jakob settled quickly in her arms. Esther looked over to Hannah. “Your father and Sunny are in the bedroom. They are not alone.”
“Who is with them?”
“Dr. Huang.” Esther hesitated. “And a patient from the hospital.”
Hannah felt her fists clench. “Why would Papa bring a patient into our home?”
“This
man is special.”
“Special how?”
“He is a friend of Ernst’s.”
Hannah’s heart skipped a beat. “Is Onkel Ernst here, too?” She had not seen him in a year. Was he really back?
“Yes. Well, no. He had to . . . to step outside.”
Hannah opened her mouth to inquire further when another noise from the bedroom stopped her. She hesitated, then placed it: it sounded like wood being sawed.
Chapter 20
The surgery lasted less than twenty minutes. Although Charlie had remained semi-conscious the whole time, his moans eventually subsided. After Wen-Cheng tied the final suture, he wrapped thick cotton bandages over the freshly created stump.
Charlie swivelled his head drunkenly from side to side while Sunny discreetly tucked the sack holding his amputated limb under the bed.
As Franz was slipping his gloves off, Wen-Cheng said, “Surely you cannot keep the general here.”
Franz jerked his head up, one glove still hanging from his hand. “How long have you known?”
“Since the moment I laid eyes on him,” Wen-Cheng said as he bent over to finish wrapping the wound.
“Another one,” Franz muttered, struck again by how fortunate they were to have not already been arrested. He doubted that their good fortune could hold up for much longer. “I never dreamed Charlie would end up here in our own home.”
“He cannot stay.” Wen-Cheng pointed to the door. “Not with children out there.”
“Absolutely not,” Sunny agreed.
Wen-Cheng frowned, deep in thought. “Perhaps we could keep him at my apartment.”
Sunny shook her head. “No, Wen-Cheng. That would be too great a risk for you.”
Wen-Cheng stared at her for a moment before he turned his attention back to the bandages around Charlie’s stump. “Bao Chun has sacrificed far more than I ever have.” He paused. “Or ever will.”
“Frenchtown is full of spies and informants, Wen-Cheng,” Sunny murmured. “What if the Japanese found him in your home?”
