In the recovery room, Marlena Falke sat beside the body of Colonel Robert Hogan. She touched his cheek from time to time, or held his limp hand in hers. To check his vital signs. To check his sutures still closed his wounds. To act as a conscientious physician should. She kept rehearsing that line, over and over, in her coolest, calmest, most professional voice, to sound convincing if questioned.
Clinical detachment was the emotion to strive for. An emotionless emotion. "Save your energies to cure the disease, not to comfort the sufferer." She knew that a 'good' doctor must be clinically detached, a scientist rather than a healer, but a spark deep within her refused to treat her patients as human Petri dishes. They were not receptacles for disease. They were human souls. She could not become like those of her colleagues who wrote in the medical journals about the superiority of the Aryan race, so she feared for herself. She half suspected upon whom their experiments were being conducted, so she feared for Sergeant Kinchloe and the non Anglo Saxon prisoners of war in 'her' Stalag. It was no secret that Jews and 'defectives' had been forcibly taken away for their 'protection'. Who 'they' were who were being protected: the people interned, the Reich, the Aryan race, was left an open question. Where they were taken to was a question no one dared ask, but there seemed to be an abundance of articles about Jewish skulls being too large or small, of the intelligence of Negroes being 'proven' subhuman to Aryans, of the organ of homosexuals being 'substandard'.
And there was propaganda about her pacifist co-religionists being 'non-German'. As if that was possible. Mennonites had lived in the Palatinate for hundreds of years, almost since the Anabaptist movement began. They had to keep hidden or deny their beliefs or they would be thrown into 'punishment' camps. So would she. No Geneva Convention protected them. None would protect her if she was found out, so she had to keep quiet. Mouselike.
There was the other reason her silence was vital. She knew the secrets of men dear to her, who had given her the will to survive. She knew of their covert guerrilla operation beneath Stalag Luft XIII.
She could not allow herself to be questioned. She touched her masked face, taking strength in the one amazing fact that Major Hochstetter had not asked her the one question that would have made his wildest dream come true. He had demanded she give up her body. He had demanded she give up her antibiotics. He had not thought to demand she tell him that Colonel Robert Hogan was a spy and saboteur.
He'll come again. Did she have the will to resist him? Could she blank her friends out of her mind when he attacked her again? Should she run away? No, she could not get away. The Gestapo were everywhere. Should she kill herself? No, she would damn her soul. She thought of Sergeants Kinchloe and Carter, of Corporals LeBeau and Newkirk. She thought of the other men at the Luftstalag. They were her patients. Could she kill herself to save them? Would God forgive her suicide if she gave up her life for them? It would not be a pure sacrifice, since she would be killing herself out of her own fear of torture.
She yawned. Now that the colonel's operation was over – the operation upon his body she thought with a smile, not the one in the tunnel – she was tired. She knew if she closed her eyes, the nightmare memories would return. But she must not inject herself with morphine. Not here. Not now. Colonel Hogan needed her now. Afterward. But if she took more morphine, she would become addicted to it. Wasn't that committing suicide?
What a time to go through a moral crisis!
Recalling her duty as a doctor, she checked the colonel's skin. The unbruised portions were white against her hand, and cold to the touch. She reminded herself that the ether would have depressed his vitals, and he had lost a lot of blood. The surgeons had been careful. So had the anaesthetist. So had she. Blood supplies were low, even plasma, due to the war and the bombings. They would not have spared any for a prisoner of war, but she had insisted, on behalf of the Red Cross and the Protecting Power in Geneva. That was why Doktor Kruger had wanted her in the operating room. What little clout she had with the Red Cross, Herr Doktor Kruger wanted her to use. He would not turn a patient away, but he wanted all the authority he could muster on his side before operating upon a man that a Gestapo major suspected of espionage.
She held a small mirror above Colonel Hogan's bruised lips. The mirror gradually fogged. He still breathed. So did she, she discovered after heaving a sigh. She smoothed a lank lock of raven hair from the colonel's forehead. Do not smile, even with your eyes, she admonished herself. Look grim. Act brisk. People are no doubt watching us.
It was hard to take an accurate pulse through linen surgical gloves. She stripped the glove from her right hand and properly timed the pulse in his neck. As she did so, she caught sight of the red ring of abraded skin around her wrist. Squeezing her eyes tight shut, she again thrust the memory of her ordeal at Hochstetter's hands behind her. She could not look at her examination table without a shudder, after she had been bound to it.
But Corporal LeBeau had lain upon it, she reminded herself. God had performed a miracle then, that he lived through her attempts and those of his friends to close the wound in his chest. Remembering that would make the sight of it easier to bear next time.
Skin cold, unnaturally pale. Pulse slow. Respirations slow. "Liebe Gott. Please keep him alive. I do not want to deliver a corpse to his good men." She gripped his fingers and released them. Flipping up the blanket, she did the same to his toes. She heaved a sigh of relief when they slowly flushed pink. Blood circulation to extremities had not shut down. "Come on, Colonel. Stay with me." As she vigorously rubbed his legs, she checked the plasma draining from the intravenous bottle into his wrist. It was the last bottle she was allowed to give to him. "Come on, Herr Oberst. Make your Doktor Pacifist's thorn worth the sticking into your flesh. Tell your spleen to make blood."
It seemed to her that she had mentally coaxed each drop of that plasma through the tube and into his vein. She attached a bottle of saline in water and monitored his heart carefully for signs of shock. She had to keep his veins open and what blood he still had flowing freely.
It also seemed like hours of checking, chafing and praying had passed before his fingers twitched. "That's it Colonel. Revive. Come back to me." She again placed the oxygen cone over his mouth and nose. "Come on," she urged him. "Come back to your sour spinster of a pacifist pain the butt."
Colonel Hogan stirred on his gurney. Doktor Falke adjusted her mask and tugged down her surgical cap. She drew her glove over her right hand. Reassured that they covered the scars and bruises, she bent over him and took his hand in hers.
"Colonel Hogan …" She shut her eyes and steadied her voice. Remember Marlena. You are a German physician, in a German hospital, and he is an American prisoner of war. You've aroused suspicion already, sitting vigil over him.
She wished that she had allowed Sergeant Schultz to be with him in the recovery room. She would need his strength to hold him to the gurney if he raved. But the operation must be kept secret. Who knows what Colonel Hogan might disclose in his postoperative delirium?
She had shooed the nurses away in her most severe, spinster guardian of morals, 'Fraulein Doktor' manner. "I will not have you heaving sighs over an enemy of the Third Reich, no matter how handsome, how heart-meltingly vulnerable, he appears. He is my responsibility, according to the Red Cross. I alone will see to his care." She had kept Klink and Schultz away by reminding them that she was a physician and they were not. She did not need them hovering over Colonel Hogan and getting in her way. She certainly did not need them contaminating the recovery room by puking all over it. "Colonel Hogan has never molested me in over two years acquaintance, when he was strong and uninjured, and he is unable to do so now," she had told the Herr Oberst Klink Nor, since he was unconscious, was he able to escape. Sergeant Schultz could stand guard outside the room if the Herr Kommandant was anxious, but there was no need and she preferred he did not. She was fully capable of dealing with a post-operative patient.
She had braced herself to argue with the Herr Doktors Kruger and Eckert, although she had no valid argument to offer them. They were the attending surgeons, and had the right to examine their patient whenever they chose. But, strangely, Doktor Kruger saw no impropriety in her watching over Colonel Hogan.
Perhaps it is because I am so obviously unwell. He wants me kept out of harm's way in a safe place, where I can be guarded and will not disturb the routine of the hospital and where the staff will not disturb me. She looked down at the restless man. Or perhaps he thinks I am in love with Colonel Hogan. I must have looked quite stricken when I saw him on the table.
Colonel Hogan began to moan and mutter incoherently. She bent low to hush him.
"Herr Oberst. It is Doktor Falke. You are in the Krankenhaus." She squeezed his hand, willing him to listen and understand. He must realize he was not yet safe in his tunnel. "You in the Krankenhaus, Colonel Hogan. You must lie still. You have had an operation and are still heavily sedated. You had an operation on you ribs, and arm and head; but I was there. Nothing bad was done to you. Please, Colonel. Lie still."
The colonel seemed to understand. He quieted and his dark eyes, unfocused, blinked at her. "Kinch… 'cillin." Her heart jerked violently, as if a jolt of electricity had shot up her arm from their clasped hands. His eyes were bright and frantic, begging her. "'Monia. … Kinch … Save …"
She forced her voice steady. "Sergeant Kinchloe has pneumonia?" but Hogan's eyes had closed and his land now lay limp in hers.
"Penicillin." She had no penicillin to give him. Major Hochstetter – the Gestapo – had taken all she had on that horrible day they burst into her examination room.
Maybe she could requisition more from the Red Cross, but by then it might be too late. Herr Kinchloewen needed it urgently if he had pneumonia. So did Colonel Hogan now. She looked around the recovery room. There wasn't much here to steal. The constant bombings had injured thousands of people and destroyed the sanitation facilities in many cities. Antibiotics were in very short supply throughout Germany, hoarded like gold. She would steal it if she had to. If she was prudent, she could stretch the dosage each man needed. She had to save them both. Colonel Hogan depended on Sergeant Kinchloe. He was the operation's radioman, their link with London, and he was the tunnel's guardian and manager. He "minded the store".
Nothing came before the operation. That was the first article in the creed. Colonel Hogan insisted upon it. "And the colonel is the operation," Herr Kinchloewen always said. "He makes it run. Nothing comes before keeping him alive."
But Herr Kinchloewen was ill with pneumonia, and Colonel Hogan wants me to save him.
She shook herself mentally. Maybe she was leaping to a wrong conclusion. Maybe Colonel Hogan meant she should give the penicillin to Herr Kinchloewen for the sick Russians. But why would Colonel Hogan, a 'true blue' American, and a proud believer in 'free enterprise', worry about the plight of Russian communists? She studied Colonel Hogan's lax face, as if she was seeing him for the first time. Had she misjudged him since she had met him? Had her hatred of war and those who made war their business made her jump to false conclusions about him?
No. Colonel Robert E. Hogan was a warmonger, a womanizer, and a manipulator of far better men than himself. If the war did not end soon, his reckless bravado would kill them. Smug, arrogant foolish man.
Then, from within her heart, she heard his voice again. "We will get you home, Doktor Falke. Trust me. We will get you home and free."
She wiped her eyes, disgusted at her outburst of tears. He gave me his promise, and I believed him. I am as gullible as his men. She gazed down on his unconscious face. "What are your promises worth now, Colonel?"
She nearly said the caustic words aloud, but something inside her denied that her anger was just. Colonel Hogan had truly believed he could get her home and have her Canadian citizenship restored to her. How an American colonel could so, she did not know, but she had seen what he had done and clung to the hope that he could produce a miracle or two for her. Sometimes he had held the promise over her to make her do things she would baulk at, but he had never demanded that she take a life – except perhaps that of the child in Helga's womb, and even then he did not press her. He had taken her refusal as final and had not held it against her. He had never carried through his threat to go back on his word to her, no matter how much they irritated one another. Except for the times when it was unsafe for her or for them, he had not prohibited his men from visiting her. He knew those visits gave her the heart to keep faith. Besides, she thought with a knowing smile, they kept her loyal to him. After all, could he trust a woman who called him 'an arrogant, empire building, American warmonger'?
"But what about mein Herr and the penicillin?" she pondered, troubled. She glanced at Colonel Hogan's still face, then at the outer door. She moved to the door, looked back at the man on the gurney. Straightening and inhaling a deep breath, she turned the knob. "Herr Schultz. Komm hier, bitte."
Sergeant Schultz lumbered in. His eyes went first to the still form on the gurney, then around the room, then to the gurney again. He heard the door click shut behind him and turned to Doktor Falke in trepidation. "Colonel Hogan …?"
"Beginning to wake. I will tell you and the Herr Kommandant his condition, if Herr Doktor Kruger has not already done so." She pulled the big guard to the far side of the room.
Schultz swallowed. "He is … He will …?"
"It is too early, but he moved, and his pulse and respirations are stable. I think he will recover."
"In body," Schultz murmured.
Doktor Falke held back a sigh. "In mind too, I hope." She attempted a bright smile, and then realized Sergeant Schultz could not see it through her mask.
"He has a strong, defiant spirit, Herr Schultz. We both know that all too well."
Schultz managed a smile. "Ja. His monkey business. So full of what he calls 'practical jokes'." He sobered. "I think he played one joke too many upon Maj…the Gestapo." He shot Doktor Falke a look of embarrassment.
Her face went sombre. "Herr Schultz. He spoke Sergeant Kinchloe's name and mentioned 'pneumonia' and 'penicillin'. Why?"
Schultz shuffled his feet and looked down at them.
"Why, Herr Schultz?" She grew alarmed. "Answer me! What happened at the Luftstalag? Why was Colonel Hogan brought here injured?"
Schultz looked up. "Sergeant Kinchloe carried the Russian sick into their barracks when they arrived. He caught the pneumonia from them. We had no medicines to cure them. You know that. You were to bring us some from the Red Cross, but the Gestapo enclosed the camp. Sergeant Kinchloe became very sick and weak. Many of the Russians he had carried and had cared for died. Colonel Hogan was afraid he too would die and so became frantic to obtain penicillin. The Kommandant put him in the cooler when he physically attacked Major Hochstetter. Then the little cockroach LeBeau told him that Carter was ill. Major Hochstetter offered him penicillin for information, to trap him into admitting he was a spy.
Marlena felt her breath stop. "And the colonel accepted the offer?"
"He told lies to the major, and when they were found out to be lies…" Schultz closed his eyes, shuddering. "It was terrible, Fraulein Doktor. Do not make me describe what I heard." He gestured to the colonel's immobile body.
Marlena's eyes moved with his. "Did he get the penicillin?" she whispered.
Schultz nodded. "Ja. He did."
She swallowed the lump in her throat. "How much was he given?"
Schultz told her. It was exactly the amount stolen from her.
"And Sergeant Kinchloe? Sergeant Carter?"
"Recovering. Sergeant Kinchloe is greatly weakened, but he does not cough so hard, nor so long."
"Dank sei Gott!" Then she reminded herself her full duty was to all the men in Stalag Luft XIII. "The Russian prisoners of war? How are they?"
"Half are dead." Schultz admitted sadly. He brightened. "But half are alive. Colonel Hogan gave them penicillin also."
"He gave the Russian communists penicillin?" She asked, incredulous.
"Ja. Colonel Hogan is compassionate. I have always known that."
I've never thought of him as that. A man who blows up factories and bridges and trains. A man who gives me more casualties than I can cope with – a compassionate man? A man capable of showing mercy to a foe?
A low moan from the bed disturbed her reverie. Her eyes and thoughts flew to Colonel Hogan, then to Sergeant Schultz. The tunnel! I have to get him out of here!
She steadied her breathing, forced herself to act composed. "Herr Schultz, bitte inform the Herr Kommandant Klink that Colonel Hogan is coming to consciousness and will soon be discharged into his care."
Schultz looked at Colonel Hogan, watched him stir, and then turned to the physician. "Jawohl, Fraulein Doktor. Do you want him summoned?"
"In an hour, Oberfeldwebel. We have to prepare the colonel for the journey back to Stalag XIII. He will be in great pain, but he is still weak with loss of blood. I cannot administer a sedative or pain reliever to him so soon after his operation without disturbing the stability of his vital signs. If the Kommandant could obtain brandy…"
Schultz nodded and nervously wet his lips. "Jawohl. Do not worry, Fraulein Doktor."
Doktor Falke gave him a hasty 'Danke' and sent him away with a little push. She turned to her patient, dismissing Schultz from her mind. She knew that he knew his safety lay in 'knowing nothing'. From the look he had just given her, he seemed to know that all their lives depended on it too, and that he would comply.
"Colonel Hogan…Please, dear God, make him just aware enough to heed my words and not notice my face! … Colonel Hogan. It is Doktor Falke. Do you recognize my voice?"
"Mar..lena. Dok…tor Pa- …" He blinked his eyes open, realized where he was and why uttering his usual nickname for her was too dangerous. "Doktor Pain in … the Butt." He managed the tiny beginning of a smile before the pain made him moan. "Know…your blue eyes…anywhere."
The mask hid the answering smile on lips but not in her eyes. "Colonel, the Herr Kommandant Klink and Oberfeldwebel Schultz brought you here, to the Krankenhaus. Remember?"
"Re…member you … told …me." His eyes searched hers anxiously. "Did…talk?"
"Not during the operation. You were anaesthetized. You are still heavily sedated. And not here in the recovery room. I was with you."
"Be..fore?"
Marlena paused. "I do not know."
His eyes searched hers. "You…alright?"
Marlena swallowed, blinked, and then lied, "Yes. I'm fine."
Hogan did not look convinced. "Why … mask?"
"Sergeant Schultz told me there was pneumonia in the camp. You might be contagious."
"Cautious. Like Kinch." He frowned, troubled. "Schultz told you … about Kinch?"
"Ja. He said the sergeant was growing stronger though." Was Sergeant Schultz lying? "Colonel Hogan, you seem aware of your surroundings and condition. Are you? Where are we?"
Hogan smiled. "Hospital. … Aware …of pain … too. … Get me … to Kinch. … soon. …Be fine then."
Doktor Falke glanced at the large clock. "Another half hour, Colonel. The Kommandant will come and take you back to the camp. Let me examine you first."
"Still … have my pants on." He touched the blanket over his chest. "My shirt…?"
"You were not wearing one when you arrived, Herr Oberst. The Kommandant has your shoes and socks."
"Wanted … die with … boots on. … Soldier's way."
Marlena Falke felt tears sting her eyes as she took the pulse in his neck. "You will have another opportunity soon. Just make sure you're the only one who does."
"Fraulein … Doktor … Thorn …" He winked. "Promise. … Can't … guarantee."
"In wartime, one learns to be grateful for whatever is offered, Colonel." She checked him over. Pulse. Respiration. Heartrate. Blood Pressure. The colonel endured it until she put a tongue depressor in his mouth and told him to say 'Ahh',
He swatted her hand away. "You …make a saint swear." The flat stick dropped to the floor. He saw her suddenly wince and grasp her wrist, unable to bite back a moan. "Marlena?" His eyes widened as he saw the tearstains on her mask. "Marlena?"
Gowned and gloved from top to toe. He was about to tell her that she did not have to hide her wounds from him, that Hochstetter had flung into his face every disgusting detail – but it cost his all to deal stoically with the ever increasing pain.
"I'm fine, Colonel."
"I don't buy that, Marlena. Not one bit."
She did not want him to know. She thought she was 'sparing' him. She finds comfort for herself in that. Let her have that comfort until we're both stronger. Then I'll tell her she does not have to feel ashamed to show her scars to me. When she sees Kinch and Carter alive and well, she'll feel better. She loves those two more than she loves herself. They will tell her she still is lovely to them, and she will believe them.
Kinch and Carter – alive and well. That sight will satisfy us both. Hogan recalled standing beside Klink in the winter dawn, silently watching Hochstetter's thugs drag out the dead bodies of the Russians and throw them in the fire as if they were burning garbage. He swore he would not let that fate happen to Kinch. When Carter – his trusting, trustworthy klutz – also took sick, he had to do something drastic to save them. He knew he was risking the operation, but when it came to the crunch, he had to risk it. The operation, his life, was not more important than their lives. So he accepted the offer to trade secrets for the penicillin.
But the knowledge that Hochstetter raped Marlena Falke to get of that penicillin – harmed a harmless woman too weak and frightened to resist – burned inside him. Hochstetter could have taken it from her without ripping apart her body and her soul. He felt his wrath rise, stronger than his pain. For his men, for Marlena, for the slain and tortured, for himself, he would be the avenging angel. Whatever it took, he would kill Major Wolfgang Hochstetter.