42. Emilie

FORTY-TWO

Dachau, Germany

Three weeks ago, a U.S. airborne plane was shot down, and crashed a street away from where we live in Dachau. Fortunately, it missed us, and it missed the Dachau camp. No one was hurt or killed from the explosive crash and flying shrapnel except the poor U.S. pilots. However, the heart of Munich was not as fortunate. The shot down plane was part of a large U.S. attack serving the city over three million bombs. Half of Munich has been destroyed. It was the first time in my life I thought it might be my last night on earth. There was no telling how wide the targeted area would be.

We all hunkered down together in the utility room of our house—the neighbors, and our family. It was too hard to consider the possibility of another explosion hitting one and not all of us so for that one night, we all showed our true selves, the weaknesses we each carry, the hopes, dreams, and futures we all would like to have, and most importantly, the mistakes we’ve all made. We’ve all made wrong decisions.

We must have been let off the hook, but not Otto. He’s remained weak and fragile. The headaches have become more prolonged, and he can hardly keep his eyes open. No matter how many times I read through my medical books, I can’t find a solution.

“Can I get you anything other than aspirin?” I ask, kneeling by his side, stroking the side of his face with my knuckles.

“There’s nothing more you can do, Emi.” His eyes are half-lidded, his lips downturned into a grimace. He alternates between staring at me, and shifting his gaze back to the wall. He rests his hand on his head and squeezes at his temples. “I can’t take much more.”

“Yes, you can. You’re a fighter. You can handle much more than you give yourself credit for.”

I grab the bottle of aspirin from the night table and pour two into my hand. “Here, it’s time for another dose,” I say, handing him the pills and a glass of water.

He takes both and tosses the pills into the back of his throat then washes them down, finishing his glass of water.

I take the glass from his hands and set it down next to the aspirin, and turn back, finding him squeezing his head between his hands so hard his fingers lose blood circulation. “Stop it. You’re going to hurt yourself,” I scold him. “I’ll get you another cold compress.”

“No, no, I don’t need another compress,” he groans. “I—I want to go fly a plane.”

“What?” I ask, moving closer to his face, wondering if I’m misunderstanding him.

“I just wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to fly and see the world from the sky. I wanted to feel the rush of the wind taking me on its back and soaring me through the cloud drops. I never got to do that.”

“There’s still time. You will be able to fly. You don’t have to be a doctor. You can be a pilot or whatever you want to be. We’re young. You still have your whole life ahead of you. It’s not too late to change our direction.” I speak as if it would be so easy to pick up and choose a different life, knowing it’s impossible. He might have options and yet Danner and all the others in that camp seem to have had their fate already determined. No one knows if this war will end. It’s not even a matter of when…it’s just, if…

“I’m not getting better, Emi. Something inside of me is dying. I can feel it.”

“No, you’re going to get better. You need to stay positive. You need to fight. That’s the way through. We fight for what we want.”

“At whose expense?” he asks, his mouth hardly moving along with his words.

“Emi,” he cries out. “Help me, please. Make it stop.”

I cup my hands around his cheeks, staring him in the eyes. “Take a deep breath, try to relax your muscles.”

“Stop,” he cries again. “I need to tell you that Danner was at our wedding. I don’t know why, but he was there, and I’m sorry for never telling you that he came back from Poland to be there.”

I choke on my breath, trying to inhale. “What do you mean?”

“He was in the back. He loved you that much. He just wanted to make sure you were happy. I know. I just know. If you can help him, you should… Promise me you will?”

Danner was there. I repeat the words in my head several times, my face burning with pain and anguish. Why was he back in Germany? What if it was because of me? God, I hope that wasn’t why. He could be in the camp because of me…I’ll have to live with that now. If I’d known Danner was in the church that day…I’m not sure our life would be what it is right now. Maybe I could have spared him from suffering in that horrid camp. But the other prisoners should have been spared too. They all deserve to be saved and helped. I can’t understand why Danner wouldn’t want me to know he was there. Did he know I was thinking about him in the moment I took my vows? How guilty I felt for what I was feeling and not feeling. And Otto kept this from me.

“I—why—I don’t understand.”

“Promise me,” he demands again.

“Okay,” I whimper. “I promise, but we can talk about this later…”

“We won’t,” he says, sniffling. “I do love you with all my heart, and I should have been a better husband. I should have supported your dreams. I have so many regrets, Emi, but you aren’t one of them.”

“Otto, you are?—”

“Could I have more water please and ice for my head,” he cries out.

In a frenzy, I glance at the pitcher of water, finding it empty. “I—we—I ran out of ice this morning—I’ll go next door…just take a—take a breath,” I say, grabbing the pitcher and running out the door. I should have refilled it earlier. I race down the steps and out the front door to bang on Ingrid’s door. She’s quick to answer.

“Emilie, is everything okay?”

“No, I—I uh—” I press my hand to my forehead. “Do you have any ice?”

“I don’t, but I believe Helga does. I’ll go see if she does. Is it for Otto?”

“Yes, please, hurry,” I say. “Thank you.” Before she can say another word I rush back home to fill the pitcher of water.

I return and fill his glass, my hand shaking as I do. “Here you go,” I say, holding up the glass.

He doesn’t take it from me. He just stares forward, passed me toward the wall.

“Otto?” I whisper, placing the glass down on the nightstand.

I move to wrench his shoulders and shake him out of this motionless position, but his head falls back against the pillow, his eyes still open, still staring. The medical bag I left on the chair beside him is open on his lap. I lift it and two glass bottles roll off the bed and hit the ground. One shatters, brown glass sprinkling the tops of my shoes. I glance down, spotting pieces of an empty aspirin bottle that was full the last time I gave him a dose. The other bottle didn’t break. I scoop up the empty bottle of phenol antiseptic, staring at the stark skull and crossbones warning. I shake my head as my throat tightens. I toss the medical bag to the ground and grab Otto’s arm, finding a syringe dangling from his fingers.

“No! Otto! No!” I wrench open his mouth, finding a trace of white residue around his larynx and a drop of blood around his carotid artery. “Why? Why would you take your—” I cry, shrieking at him as I press my fists into his stomach and pump my hands up and down, to expel the bottle full of aspirin he’s ingested.

I yank him to his side and drag him to the edge of the bed, so his head hangs down. I thrust the heels of my palms into his back, hitting him over and over, relentlessly without success.

“Why would you do this? Why?”

I slide off the bed, dropping to the side of the shattered glass bottle and his hanging head, grabbing his face between my hands.

“Otto.”

A sob bursts from my chest and the thought of everything that has become my life—our lives—over the past however many years has been enough torture and pain to last a lifetime, and now this. This wasn’t the answer. It didn’t have to be the answer.

“I failed you. I’m sorry, Otto. I’m so sorry.”

I lift his hand, pressing my first two fingers against his wrist to check his pulse.

There’s no pulse.

I reach for his neck, my hand shaking so hard I’m not even sure I’m near his artery. Foam snakes out of the side of his mouth and I glance at my fingers, knowing they are where they should be to feel for a pulse.

“No, no. Otto. No. I lean my ear up to his mouth, listening for the air that won’t pass through his lips.

He’s still warm, but he’s dead. He’s gone, and I never loved him the way I should have. Maybe if I had, he would have taken a different path. I could have shown him a different way. “I’m so sorry. I am. I’m so sorry.”

My chest aches, and the pain is relentless no matter how hard I press my fists against my sternum. I don’t know what to do.

I need to get help.

I run downstairs and check our phone, not expecting it to be working since the line was damaged during the explosion. It doesn’t connect. There’s just silence…like the rest of my house at this moment.

Spinning around again, gasping for air, I race out the front door, spotting Karl’s car out the front of their house. I’m barefoot, running over debris, trying to get to their front door as fast as I can, but it’s as if the front door keeps moving away from my reach.

I trip up their front steps but catch myself on their door and bang as hard as I can. “Help!” I scream. “Help, please.”

Marie, Ingrid’s eldest daughter, opens the door, horrified to see me like this, and I should have thought better than to come here and scare the poor children after what they’ve already been through this month. “Mama!” she shouts, pointing behind me where Ingrid is running back from Helga’s with ice wrapped in a rag.

“What happened?” she yelps, panic lacing her eyes as she reaches me. She pulls me in against her chest to offer me comfort but that’s impossible right now.

“He’s gone. He’s gone. I don’t know what to do.”

“Who’s gone? Who? Otto?” she cries back.

“Jesus,” Karl says, sprinting out of their kitchen. “Is he upstairs in your house?”

“Yes, yes. He was in so much…”

Karl runs out the door and Ingrid continues to hold me in her arms, spinning me in a slow circle, hushing me and cradling her hand against the back of my head. The tears clear from my eyes for a moment, and I spot the picture frame across the room—the one she didn’t want me to see the first time I came over. It was face down every time since.

And now I know why.

A photograph of Ingrid, Karl, and Adolf Hitler smiling in front of the Dachau iron gates. She’s pregnant in the photo.

“I should go help Karl,” I say, trying to catch my breath.

“Of course. Come back once—well, I’ll come check on you in a bit. I’m so sorry, Emilie. I can’t imagine?—”

“I know. There’s a lot I haven’t been able to imagine too,” I utter before stumbling back out her front door, knowing I’ll never be able to set foot in her house again.

I stumble, like I’m blindfolded, into this nightmare of a life. I have been trying to save Danner at whatever cost.

I believe the cost might have been my husband.

And it’s because I didn’t give him enough to live for.