Nightingale (33 page)

He looked away, clenched his jaw.

“I'm a stupid girl.”

He winced.

“I know you told me, but I thought… I thought you'd still see me.”

“I do see you.”

“No…not really. You may want to, but…” She touched his chin, turned his face. He cupped her hand in his. “I can see her in your eyes, you know. She's there, a distant flicker of longing. Of hope. She's the reward you're holding out for.”

He pulled Rachel's hand from his face, held it a moment before giving it back to her. He couldn't meet her too-kind eyes. “I met her in America. In Wisconsin. She was a nurse, and I had no business falling in love with her. I'm not even sure it was love, now. Maybe just that thing that keeps the embers inside stirring. Maybe she simply believed in me, and that was enough.”

He put his hand to his chest, pressing against his sternum.

No. He
had
loved her. Enough to taste the promise, enough to linger and nourish and hold him. Enough to wait.

“I haven't heard from her in more than two years—since I left
Wisconsin. I thought she would write, but… I've been so many places, how would she—”

“Oh! Peter, the International Red Cross catalogues the addresses of refugees, sends letters to the centers located around Germany.” Rachel gave him another of those wavering smiles. “I—I found a box when I was searching for your mother.” She turned away, toward his bed. His burlap bag of rations lay there. “POW packages and a bundle of letters I discovered with your name.”

Letters.

He looked at the bag then to her. She held her hand to her mouth then swallowed, whisking a quick tear from her cheek. Tall and thin and regal, she could have been easy to love. Had he been a different man.

“I'm sorry, Rachel. I never meant to hurt you.”

She touched his hand, one feather-light caress. “It's my guess that you would
never
want to hurt someone.”

Oh… Well…

Then she pressed her hand to his cheek. “Ana's baby is surviving. Thank you for the milk.” She stepped away from him. “I'm leaving in the morning. My replacement is already here. I told her to expect the Nightingale.”

He barely felt his breath in his chest.

“Don't stay here, Peter. They'll find you. Come to the hospital. At least there we might be able to hide you.”

She waited a moment—probably for his response. When he walked over to the bed and dumped out the burlap sack, he heard her slip away into the night.

February 1947

Dear Peter,

The New Year was met with a band and glorious speeches of endurance and bravery.

Of course, I thought of you.

Sadie turned four and has entered preschool, already learning, thanks to the tutelage of Rosemary, who has become, unexpectedly, a close friend. She has forgiven me, it seems, although I'm sure the presence of her own curly-haired daughter, Agnes, helps in the healing. Nevertheless, Linus has found the father inside him, and with Agnes's birth finally realized how to love his daughter. Sadie cherishes him, and we've both agreed, despite the ache in my breast, that she should attend Roosevelt Grammar.

Meanwhile…I can admit I long for another child, to be living my life like the nurses around me, caught finally in the arms of their beloved. I, like Annie in the musical I saw last weekend, might be able to stand alone, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't want someone beside me, reminding me of your words: God loves you more than you can imagine. Perhaps.

It's because you gave me this tender hope that I discovered how to take the steps toward the woman I am today. I once told you that I was lost. You told me to let God find
me. To be found in Him. I've discovered that the finding is not to find myself—but to find Him. To discover, step by step, His grace, His forgiveness, His courage, His strength, His hope, His love, His peace, and finally His joy.

I have truly found myself…in Him. And finally can look in the mirror and see a woman I want to know.

It's because I am no longer lost, no longer thirsty that I am drawn to Dr. Casey's proposal of marriage. I have grown quite fond of him, and while his brilliance at surgery draws me, it is his kindness, the way he wraps me in his coat while we are catching a cab from the theater, or perhaps the way he addresses me as Nurse Lange, a flavor of respect in his voice that tells me that I will never want for compassion.

And, when I stand at the window, watching the wind as it stiffens the hedgerow outside the residence hall overlooking the hospital, the room I share with Maude Fisher, sterile despite the picture of Gary Cooper she has pasted to her wall, I know the truth.

You are not coming back to me. Either by will or by fate, our moment has passed, and while it nourished me, I cannot hold on to the hope that you will disembark on one of the troop trains, that I might find myself in your arms.

However, I do know our love was not a lie.

It lies in my pocket like a star, a treasure forever in my clasp.

Esther

Peter smoothed his hand over the letter, the indentations in the paper like creases in his palm. Six months ago she'd penned this. Six months…

He'd still been slogging his way home through Holland, then Germany, hitching rides on transports, counting the pinpricks in the sky.

Six months.

He closed the letter. His hand shook as he fought it back into the envelope. Then he brought the flap to his lips and ran it over his skin, a whisper against time.

His throat tightened as he gathered the letters together, stacked them into a pile. They made for a thick wad that he could barely grip in one hand.

He stood there then, scanning the room. His dirty bedroll, the tin pot that held his fire, the bag of hospital supplies, the box of food from desperate patients. The CARE packages.

May your God whom you serve continually deliver you
.

He picked up his medical bag, dumped the contents out onto the bed. Then he opened the CARE package, took out the candy, the coffee, the corned beef, and the chocolate. He shoved these into his bag, on top of the letters.

Then he folded the bag under his arm, grabbed the other over his shoulder, and slipped out into the night, leaving the door ajar.

He didn't even bother to hide himself as he made his way to the grocery, didn't care that he passed at least three Russian patrols. Perhaps he'd already vanished—he'd certainly lost hold of himself, of even knowing how to describe the terrible whooshing in his chest.

He managed to steal his way to Elise's shabby quarters, dropping the remains of the CARE package into the room. He said nothing to
Ana as she lay in the bed, cast his gaze briefly over the baby kicking in a cotton blanket next to her.

She roused just as he left. He didn't look back even as she left her question in the darkness.

The hospital lay under guard—two brown uniforms, the scrubby faces of boys smoking cigarettes, their laughter, their language curdling the night.

He watched them, too long perhaps, but let himself linger in memory inside the corridors of the hospital, smell the sting of rubbing alcohol, the brisk iodine, hearing his father's voice resonate from his office, seeing his white coat, tasting the thick, deep satisfaction of saving a life.

Then, as the night turned thin, Peter fed himself into the shadows of the city.

The Elbe had turned to silver in the moonlight, and he found a spot beneath the bridge, enclosed in shadow. On the beach the spiny branches of a linden tree waved, as if beckoning him near. The wind shivered off the browning leaves, dropped them, glistening like monocles upon the water.

He stayed in the muddy shoreline, under the canopy of the Carolabrücke. It reeked of fish and the foulness of humanity, as if not too long ago it sheltered bodies.

Tonight it hid only Peter as he drew out the letters.

One by one, he dropped them into the river. Square airmail leaves, like the linden tree, littering the water. The moon turned them to stars as they floated away.

He stayed there, the wind lifting his collar, the breeze carrying the lick of the coming winter, until the darkness devoured the last of them. Then, leaving his bag behind, he crept out of the alcove and back to the boulevard.

It didn't take much effort to find a patrol. He gave them no fight as they wrestled him to the ground, pressed the cold muzzle of one of their Kalashnikovs to his ear.

“I know who killed your soldier,” he said in German. Then in English, just in case. He tried Russian, the little he knew. “Ya zniaio….” I know…I
know.

A thicker man, built like the Kremlin, pulled him from the dirt, shoved him against a building. “What do you know?”

German. Spittle edged the soldier's mouth, vodka washing into Peter's face—yes, he'd found the right patrol.

“I know who killed your countryman. That soldier—by the black marketer. I know where you can find him.”

He took a breath, let the rage nourish him. “But only if I get the reward.”

Peter always loved watching the night separate from the day. How the sun dented the darkness, piercing it, its rays bleeding color into the sky. How, as the sun rose, it carved out the horizon with fire, toppling night from its moorings until finally the light burned it away, leaving only the bruised sky to heal in the morning.

Peter often rose early when he lived in Iowa to watch the sunrise turn the cornfields to torchlight, and even in Wisconsin, lifting his face to the heat, letting it slide over him like a warm hand upon cool skin.

He waited for it today, huddled in the well of the bridge where he'd cast away Esther's letters, where he'd slunk back after his Russian interrogators tired of him. One eye pulsed, thickened by the Russian soldier's fist. He wiped a hand across his mouth. It burned, taking off a fresh scab.

At least nothing felt broken. Except, well…

He hadn't slept, not really, the images behind his eyes causing him to gasp, to open them in a sort of horror, to hear again his words.

You'll find him at the opera house. Early.

When they'd released him, he'd run the opposite direction. Because what kind of man betrayed his countryman?

Or his honor? He probably deserved to escape with only his life. Peter ran back to his barter bag he'd hidden, only—for what? He'd held on to the dream of passage back to America so long in the dead of night, he'd simply turned toward it out of habit.

But, really, what did he have waiting for him?

He watched the water, his reflection dark, warped.

He didn't recognize it either.

God loves you more than you can imagine.

He closed his eyes against the words, hating how they found him. Hating how, even now, he leaned into her memory, drew nourishment from it.

I know our love was not a lie.

No. He leaned his head back against the gritty, cold cement. No.

But she'd been wrong about the rest.
You are not coming back to me. Either by will or by fate, our moment has passed, and while it nourished me, I cannot hold on to the hope that you will return for me.

He would have returned.

He touched his forehead to his knees, clasped them hard, and let the truth wring him out.

God didn't deliver. No matter his faithfulness, no matter his sacrifice. God didn't deliver.

The thought chilled him through and made him cup his hands over his eyes.

I'm lost, Peter. I'm lost.

He understood it then. Understood her expression, the unthreaded fabric of her voice.

Understood losing himself, the person that he'd always thought he'd been.

I'm lost, Esther. I'm lost.

O God, don't leave me alone in my disbelief.

He shuddered out the prayer, not even bothering to lift it to heaven. Because how could God hear the prayer of a traitor?

He got up, slung the bag over his shoulder. Crawled out from under the bridge. The sun had begun to touch the city, women already out,
moving rubble for ten cents a day, or hamsters—young men scurrying to find transport out of the city to scavenge for food.