“Excuse me, Doctor,” I called. He turned back, his expression harried. “Do we have any sort of diagnosis? What are you doing to help him?”
“He’s ninety years old,” he said. “His systems are just wearing out. Nothing much that we can do apart from keeping him comfortable.”
“Surely there’s more you can do. He was fine yesterday morning,” I said. “This seems pretty sudden.”
“Sometimes it happens that way. It’s better than lingering.”
It took every ounce of my restraint not to pull the doctor by the lapels of his pristine lab coat and shake him. “Excuse me, that’s my father you’re talking about. He’s not just some old man.”
“You’ll forgive my wife, she’s tired,” Greg said, now sitting up in his chair.
The doctor nodded and headed back out the door to younger patients more worth his time.
“How fucking dare you?” I rounded on Greg. “First of all, I’m not your wife, so don’t call me that. Secondly, don’t dismiss my concerns in front of medical staff ever again.”
“Come on, Beth. You’re exhausted and stressed. The doctor is right. And you know Max wouldn’t want heroic measures.”
“Third, don’t you dare presume to tell me what my father would have wanted. Wants,” I corrected. I’d convinced him to stay on a few of his more essential medicines as we continued our search for Margarethe and the baby, and his mood had been far more optimistic since we began looking.
“Fine, Beth. Of course you know better.” Greg threw off the hospital blanket and slipped his shoes back on. “Clearly you have everything under control here and you don’t need me.”
“No, I don’t. I texted you in a moment of weakness, and I’m sorry to have disturbed your sleep,” I said, not bothering to look at him. I had my gaze fixed on Dad’s face and willed his eyes to open.
“Look, Beth, I’m sorry. I don’t want things to be like this between us. Don’t be mad at me.”
“I am mad, Greg. And I’m not going to accept your apology. You might be sorry that I’m angry, but you don’t think you did anything wrong. That was always one of our problems. You were never sorry enough to actually fix what wasn’t working.”
“And you were in no way to blame here? You weren’t being the least bit irrational with an overworked doctor?”
“Demanding care for my father and wanting a real update on his condition isn’t irrational. And right now I don’t give a fuck if he’s overworked, so let’s save the debate about the state of our health care system for another day.”
Greg shook his head in equal measures of defeat and exasperation and walked out.
“To hell with him,” I said, still looking at Dad. “I’m not ready to let you go. You need to wake up, Dad.”
I wiped the fresh tears from my cheeks and kissed his knuckles.
I wondered if I was sitting my last vigil with Dad as I had just barely managed to do with Mom the year before. I’d screeched into her room about twenty minutes before she passed. I had been drained from a round of mediation with Greg, and I’d wanted to ignore the call altogether. When I answered, and they warned me that her time was close, I sat, unable to react until a nurse made a second, more frantic call, insisting that the situation was more dire than I was allowing myself to believe. It was only then that I had the courage to get in the Prius and make the trip to Encinitas. The looks on the nurses’ faces were stormy as they saw me enter the room. What could have been more important than this?
I held her hand as she died, though I couldn’t know if she was aware of my presence. Her passing was as calm and dignified as she would have wanted, and that made me happy for her. But she’d been alone so much in the weeks prior, the grief I carried was interwoven with fine strands of guilt. It always would be. I would not bear that same burden with my father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WHAT REMAINS OF HATE
MAX
April 29, 1945
Near Dachau, Germany
We were ordered to drive our jeeps and tanks northeast of the town of Dachau. The ache in my gut let me know that there was no quaint village or relieved welcome waiting for us. The fighting had all but ceased, but there were still the risks of ambush and guerrilla attacks that were in some sense more terrifying than the monstrous direct attacks we’d faced for the past months. None of us rested well. We were all in dire need of our mothers’ cooking, hot showers, and proper beds, and the knowledge that the German war machine was slowing to a halt made the longing for creature comforts all the more acute. We were close enough to victory to see them in our futures.
We were no longer warriors; we were liberators.
The mission was to explore what was happening at the old munitions factory on the outskirts of town. I was hoping for an empty skeleton of a building, but we all worried about an ambush or a fully functional factory pumping life back into the Reich.
The first thing we happened upon was a train stalled in front of the massive factory complex. There was no movement from inside. The silence was heavy, oppressive like the worst humid day in summer where the air is so thick you can hardly breathe. Without being given the command, the men held their rifles at the ready. It was always silent before the worst happened. Major Dawes, our commanding officer, descended from his jeep and took the initiative to open one of the boxcar doors, rifle aimed at whatever awaited us inside. He stumbled back and covered his face with his sleeve.
“Medic!” he screamed.
I stumbled down from my own jeep and dashed forward, a steel band constricting over my heart as I ran. Perhaps he’d taken a blast of some chemical weapon to the face. A booby trap seemed a fitting trick for an army in retreat. Snare a few last victims before defeat.
“What is it, Major?” I said, pulling his sleeve away from his face to assess the damage. His face was intact, though he coughed and sputtered, obviously fighting back the urge to vomit.
My adrenaline subsided as I realized he hadn’t been injured. The stench coming from the train finally processed, and I could see why the men within fifteen feet were doubled over. Some were retching, the others on the point of it.
“Clear out,” I ordered. The men willingly complied, scattering from the train like bullets spilling from a dropped box of ammunition.
Being unarmed, inspecting the train car meant risking my very life, but the smell of human misery could not go without investigation.
I was rooted to the very spot, my knees locked as if anchored by pillars of concrete. The car was filled with dead bodies. Dozens upon dozens of them. If not hundreds.
“Keep the men at bay,” I advised the major. “I don’t know how long these poor people have been dead, nor what killed them, but whatever it was might take the rest of us down too.”
Major Dawes, now more collected, along with a half dozen other men, opened the doors to the rest of the train cars. Each and every one of them was the same picture of carnage.
“Blumenthal, take your crew and examine the bodies. See if you can get a cause of death. Then we’ll see what else is to be done.”
I nodded and entered the first of the train cars, having fastened a mask around my face. It was about as effective at blocking the smell as a silk parasol would be at keeping you dry in a typhoon, but it might protect me against any diseases.