TWO
At the end of another long day and with a freshly split and bleeding lip, Patrick shuffled his way back towards the barn with his armed escort not two steps behind him. His feet felt heavier and more difficult to lift with each step and while he knew true exhaustion was part of the cause, it was not his primary ailment. The invisible weights strapped around his feet seemed to be saddled onto his shoulders as well. A few of them may have even made it into his gut and he had absolutely no hopes of being rid of them.
Although it was difficult to keep track of the days with each of them feeling like the same merry-go-round of despair, Patrick suspected it had been a little more than a month since he was taken captive. By that point in the year, the leaves had begun to drop off the trees on the small hospital property and the air was decidedly chilly in the mornings and late in the evenings. Thanks to the holes in the roof above the loft where he slept, he would have been quite cold at night were it not for the woolen blanket Sarah had procured for him. (He was fairly confident it had once been meant for horses, but a blanket was a blanket, so he didn't complain.)
Throughout his month of captivity, most of his days had followed a similar pattern. He would be woken at dawn with coffee, water, and bread delivered by Sarah. Then, one of the soldiers would fetch him, and he'd spent his day in the hospital sometimes doing surgeries, sometimes checking in on patients recovering from treatment, and sometimes doing some sort of janitorial work, like mopping the floors. At nightfall, he was returned to the barn to wait for Sarah to bring him dinner, which was often his only substantial food of the day and, even then, it wasn't much. As such, he had lost enough weight to make his trousers quite loose. If a lack of sufficient food had been his only predicament (save the shackle on his leg at night), he may have been able to bear it, but being hungry was far from the worst part of his day.
Patrick knew how to be a doctor and he liked to think of himself as a rather decent one. At the time he was captured, he was still new to treating combat wounds and performing field surgeries but was confident his skill would improve over time. He was confident—before he landed near the Italian front, but he had underestimated the gruesomeness of the injuries the soldiers would possess.
During his second surgery in the Italian hospital, he'd been faced with a young man with multiple chest wounds. One of the bullets had stopped millimeters from the heart and the blood loss was significant. Despite this, he had managed to stem all the bleeding, remove three bullets, and get the man breathing on his own again after surgery. This triumph had proved his value in the eyes of the Italians and, while they were far from complimentary, he'd been given a cigarette by another doctor on staff, which understood to be as good as a word of praise. For one, brief, foolish moment, he'd allowed himself to be hopeful that perhaps his stint as a captive would not be all that bad. Unfortunately, that moment had been the only high point.
Nearly every day, he was forced into the operating theatre quite literally at gunpoint and instructed to "help" whatever poor soul had been most recently delivered to the hospital. As they had often traveled quite a distance from the front, many of the man were beyond saving. Some had no heartbeat at all and probably had not for quite some time; yet he was still expected to perform surgery on them, which was a particularly ghoulish task when the individual no longer had blood flowing through their veins. Whenever he would fail to save (or revive) one of these men, he was punished generally with a slap to the face, but sometimes a punch to the back or the gut.
With the number of men leaving his operating theatre with a beating heart being somewhere around fifteen to twenty percent, despair set in easily. Though he always knew the success of surgery in the field would be far lower than in hospitals back home, a survival rate that low was demoralizing. If they came to him already dead, it was simply an exercise in compartmentalizing his emotions enough to get through a legitimate looking surgical process before announcing time of death but failing to save the ones with beating hearts often had him second guessing himself—and his skills.
Fifteen days' worth of as many dead men had all but broken him. During his last surgery of that day, removing the bullet had nicked an artery, causing blood to spurt everywhere. He had managed to stop that bleeding, but with the man having a gaping shrapnel wound in his flank, Patrick did not expect him to survive the night. The blood covering Patrick's face and neck had earned him a shower, though. The muzzle of a weapon had been jammed into his back as he was led to the toilet area generally reserved for patients. He'd been told to strip and pointed towards a shower with ice cold water, but it was his first proper bath since he arrived, so he savored it. As he dressed, another guard came into the room, hissed, "Lui e morto," at him, slapped him, and then began to laugh hysterically as he left the room.
In that moment, Patrick realized the patients they were bringing him were a purposeful form of torture. They had threatened him up on arrival that not saving patients would result in his death, which meant that every lost patient had him on edge fearing for his life. In addition, losing so many patients was a form of psychological torture for him as a physician. On top of all that, each man's death brought upon a physical assault by a member of the Italian army. It was a true trifecta of misery.
As this realization processed in his mind, Patrick allowed himself to wallow in it and, for the first time since being taken captive, broke down in tears. Sarah found him later that evening, curled up on his side with tears staining his cheeks. He couldn't bring himself to sit up, eat the food she brought, or even explain what was wrong. He'd expected her to leave, but she hadn't. She'd rubbed his back for a few minutes and then sat beside him for another five before ultimately leaving him to his sorrow.
By morning, he'd resigned to the fact that he was not ready to accept the fate of dying as a prisoner, so he decided to change his mindset. He would go into each surgery knowing he would try his best, but also accepting that most likely the unfortunate soul would die. Despite this knowledge, he vowed to do his very best each and every time in the hopes of learning all that he could despite the horrid situation. Hopefully, by doing that he would gain enough skills to prove helpful when he returned to hospitals run by the Allies.
His new mindset was certainly beneficial, but not a complete remedy to the difficulties he faced. As the weeks wore on, the punishments doled out for the loss of a patient grew more severe, and the reward for bringing a soldier back from the brink was nonexistent. The only thing he had to look forward to each day was eating dinner with Sarah.
Never before in his life would Patrick have expected to have a friend with whom he could barely communicate with. He supposed given his situation, he was lucky to have found anyone—friend or foe—who could understand him easily. As such, speaking with her had become rather therapeutic even if she rarely gave more than a nod or a smile in response. He knew she understood him, though, because sometimes she would try to mime a response, though more often than not he was not able to translate whatever message she attempted to convey. Still, considering the alternative of spending his evenings completely alone or with an Italian soldier looming over him, Patrick found himself grateful for Sarah.
Barely a meter from the entrance to the barn, Patrick stopped walking when he heard shouting voices approaching. Thanks to the full immersion he was experiencing, his Italian had improved, but he understood far more than he could speak—and he generally understood only if the other person was speaking with average speed in a normal tone of voice instead of angry and shouting. As such, he did not understand what the other soldiers were saying to his guard, but he did not believe the message related to him. This was confirmed a moment later when the guard gave him a shove towards the barn and instructed, "Vai dentro."
Tired and frustrated by the taste of blood in his mouth, Patrick did as he was instructed and went inside the barn. He climbed up into the loft and flopped down on his straw mattress. He lay flat, waiting for the guard to return and shackle him, but he never did. Twenty minutes passed and finally the barn door opened, but from the softness of the footsteps he knew the visitor was Sarah.
"Hello," he greeted her when she hoisted herself up into the loft. She gave a little wave and then handed over a bowl with that evening's meal, which appeared to be a stew with tiny bits of meat in it, which was a real treat as he was mostly given grains and vegetables. As he ate, he half expected his guard to storm back into the barn, but he never did, which told Patrick he needed to act before the opportunity was lost.
"Sarah was there a guard outside of the barn when you entered?" he asked. She shook her head. "Good, that's good. They haven't chained me up, you see." He swung his legs around, so he sat perpendicular to the bed to demonstrate his range of motion. "I'm going to get out of here."
She grabbed onto his forearm and shook her head before pointing to his chest and then down towards the bed.
"I can't stay here, Sarah; I'm a prisoner. I have to get back to my unit."
Again, she pointed to his chest and then down towards the bed though her actions were even more emphatic that time.
"I have to go. If I stay here, they'll kill me eventually, whenever they feel I'm no longer entertaining to them." He didn't bother using the term "useful" because at present he genuinely was not useful. Granted, that was not his fault since they continued to bring him half- or fully- dead soldiers no doctor would have been able to revive.
Sarah continued to shake her head aggressively. Then she leaned forward and grasped at the giant chain lying loose beside his mattress and then tapped his ankle. She then pointed to something outside of the barn, but he didn't understand the gesture.
"I'm not going to chain myself up, if that's what you're suggesting."
She shook her head and appeared rather frantic for a moment before reaching out for his hand. He resisted at first, but her grip was strong as she pulled it towards her and moved his hand so that his palm was flat and facing up. She then began to use her index finger to draw lines across his palm. It took him a minute to realize she wasn't drawing lines but printing letters.
T-R-A-P
"Trap…you think it's a trap? That they didn't shackle me purposely, so I'd try to run away?" he guessed. She gazed at him wide-eyed, still obviously distressed, but at least that time she nodded.
"But can you be sure it's a trap? Maybe it's not and this is my only opportunity to get away."
She shook her head and wrote "trap" again followed by "shoot you."
Patrick's gut tightened. He certainly knew that being shot as he tried to escape was a possibility, but Sarah's message seemed to elevate the odds in his mind significantly. He still had not discerned what sort of captive she was at the hospital, but it was clear she had been there far longer than he had. Was he perhaps not the first captive doctor? Had there been others who were shot when they tried to escape. Part of him wanted to defer to her presumed expert knowledge, but the potential for escape was tantalizing.
With a heavy sigh, he gazed at her and said, "You realize I cannot stay here forever. They will eventually kill me. Escaping is my only chance to survive long term."
She wrote, "trap" once more, and then, "please."
They stared at each other for another few seconds before he rounded his shoulders and dropped his chin in submission. "Fine. I won't go. Maybe…maybe if they realized I'm not running at night, they'll give me a bit more freedom during the day and then I can escape," he rationalized.
Sarah appeared satisfied with this answer, because she gathered his hand up in hers and gave it a little pat. He gazed down at their joined hands curiously. They'd never held hands or touched in any significant way before. It was…interesting, but he reminded himself he was not allowed to feel anything more than appreciation for the Italian village girl he would never see again after he made his escape.
After a moment, she collected their bowls, loaded them back onto the tray and began her decent down the ladder. As he was able to do so for the first time, he watched her go, and even scooted over to the small window to watch her walk around the corner of the barn and disappear. He then sat by the window for another fifteen minutes. He felt frustrated at first, because he did not see anyone in the immediate vicinity of the barn, but just as he began contemplating breaking his promise to Sarah, he saw the two guards walk by. He then decided it was wise to watch the guards to see if he could discern a pattern to their monitoring. Surely any knowledge he gained would help him break free if and when the opportunity came.
After hanging up the last of the linens she'd pulled from the washing machine, Sister Bernadette shivered as she made her way back into the kitchen. The wet linens had dampened her dress and the air that day was rather cool. She took a moment to warm herself in front of the fire before beginning her midday routine for the hospital.
She collected pitchers of water and carried them to the hospital, where she went through the task of filling the bedside glasses of all the patients. She found Patrick in a corner of the large ward using tweezers to remove small bits of shrapnel from the leg wound of a young soldier. She nodded politely to him and made sure to provide an extra glass of water for him as well. She wasn't permitted to bring him a mid-day meal, but she always made sure he had water to drink. She knew all to well that a stomach full of water was better than an empty and cramping one.
Nearly a week had passed since their conversation about his potential escape, and she was relieved he had not brought up the subject again. Granted, four of those six nights he had the shackles affixed to his leg so escape would not have been an option. She hoped he was not cross with her for stopping him, but she knew she had done the right thing as she had seen several other men try and fail to escape the compound.
During the six weeks he had been at the hospital, Sister Bernadette had prayed for Patrick nearly every day. She was not yet sure exactly what God's plan was, but she felt confident God had brought them together so that she could help him and perhaps protect him from the Italians, who surely did not have his best interests foremost in their mind. Of course, keeping him safe would have been far easier if she had been able to communicate with him normally, but she remained too afraid to reveal herself. She did not fear he would report her to the hospital authorities in order to gain favor with them, but he was generally heavily monitored and thus she could easily be overheard. Even when they were in the barn loft, she knew guards sometimes stood right outside the barn door, and the building was far from soundproof. For the time being, she needed to maintain the status quo and have faith that, in time, God would reveal his plans to her.
Later that afternoon, after more linens and glasses had been cleaned, Maria sent her to the captain's office with coffee and biscuits for what appeared to be an afternoon meeting. She made her way swiftly to the appropriate office, knocked, and entered only upon hearing confirmation that she could enter. She pushed open the door, gave the captain a polite smile, and he grunted in response. She walked in, put her tray down on the small round table in the corner of the room, and began setting out three saucers, three cups, and the dispensers of sugar and cream because though both those items were in short supply, the officers seemed always able to procure some for themselves.
Barely a minute passed before there was another knock at the captain's door and two uniformed men entered. They greeted each other tersely before moving to sit at the small table. Sister Bernadette tried to move out of their way quickly, but in her haste, the edge of the tray bumped against the end of the captain's desk and a stack of files fell to the ground.
"Ragazza idiota!" The captain spat at her, and she quickly dropped to the floor to clean up the mess.
Sister Bernadette felt her cheeks heat as she reorganized the files, hoping she was doing so correctly, but managed to stop herself from crying by reminding herself that the role she had carved out for herself as "ragazza idiota" or "idiot girl" was an important one. As the idiot village girl, she was dismissed as worthless and not a threat and was thus able to do things like remain in the captain's office during one of his meetings in the hope of overhearing information that could prove to be critical in helping her find a way out of the hospital. Like Patrick, she knew she eventually needed to escape, but she could not do so without having a better gauge of her surroundings for fear she might inadvertently escape in the direction of more danger.
In her first minute of eavesdropping, she discovered that one of the two men who joined the captain was a doctor. He was sent from Rome to assist with their needs. When the new doctor asked about their current staff, the captain responded with the name of an Italian doctor and explained that their second was "un prigioniero dall'Inghilterra," an English prisoner. Upon hearing this, the new doctor laughed and suggested that perhaps the English doctor needed to have an unfortunate accident.
Sister Bernadette felt her stomach churn as the men began to laugh about what sorts of "accidents" the doctor might stumble upon. She did not understand all their words, but their tone was enough to display a menacing intent. Despite feeling progressively more ill, she cleaned up the downed files as efficiently as she could, grabbed her tray, and hurried out into the cool November air.
Leaning against the side of the building, she tried her best to breathe deeply and formulate a plan. If the Italians had ill intentions towards Patrick, she needed to find a way to warn him, but how? How was she going to find a way to mime, "Be careful, they want to kill you?" Maria had not left any scraps of paper in the kitchen lately, so while a note would have been the clearest method of conveying that message, it seemed the unlikeliest. It was possible she could wait until the captain or one of the other officers was out of the hospital and steal some paper and a pen from their desks, but she could not count on them being away at a time she was able to access their offices—at least not before they made an attempt on Patrick's life.
As she made her way back to the kitchen, she continued to fret. Even if she could properly warn Patrick, would the message be so vague it was unhelpful? He already seemed aware that his life was regularly at a low level of danger. She could not provide any specifics as to what threat might come his way. True, she could urge caution, but no amount of vigilance on his part could stop a bullet to the back of his head (then again, that would not be so much of an "accident" as it would be "murder" though she imagined a ruthless soldier wouldn't be overly concerned with semantics.)
Ten more minutes of thought on the predicament led her to the conclusion that her only option was to pray. She would ask God for his guidance. Perhaps, through Him, she would find the best way to save Patrick from a terrible fate.
Patrick grunted as he bent his legs and leaned forward enough to stack a heavy wooden crate on top of another. The glass vials inside rattled when he let go, but they were packed with enough straw that nothing was broken. After double checking to make sure the box was secure, he turned and walked back outside to collect another.
At the front of the Italian hospital there was a gravel drive about twenty meters in length that led to a main road. Patrick had never been out to that road. In fact, before that task was assigned to him, he had never been allowed to exit the front of the hospital. As it was, he was only permitted to walk the five meters from where the crates had been stacked on the drive to back inside the hospital, all while being watched by an armed guard, who of course was providing no help in moving the heavy crates.
Despite the coolness of the day, beads of sweat formed on his brow as a result of the excursion from lifting another crate. Patrick could not tell if the crates were genuinely very heavy or if he had grown weaker from limited nutrition and the stress of captivity. Given how many previous times in his life he had moved boxes of medical supplies without issue, he suspected the latter.
After two more trips, he'd removed all the boxes from the drive, he returned to the guard by the door to the hospital and said, "Ho finito," to indicate he was done and looking for his next assignment. Several days had passed since he was directed to an operating theatre or was handed a stethoscope. He'd instead been relegated to grunt work of scrubbing, sweeping, and washing. He did not see this demotion in duties as a good sign, particularly since he had seen a second Italian doctor working in the ward. He knew his need to escape was drawing ever closer but hoped he would have the opportunity to observe the movements of the Italian guards for just a few more days to make sure his escape would be a success.
"Ci sono altre scatole nel camion," the guard said, pointing out towards the road. At the end of the gravel path just before the road was reached, there was a stone archway. On either side, was a stone wall about three meters in height. Just beside the archway on the interior side of the wall was a green army truck. Though Patrick had not had much opportunity to casually gaze out the windows on the front side of the hospital, the operating theatre did face that direction, and every time he had been inside, he had seen the truck parked in the exact same position at a rather awkward thirty-degree angle to the wall. Given this, he had assumed the truck to be derelict, or, at the very least, rarely used, so the guard's instructions confused him.
"Scusa?" Patrick questioned, hoping the guard would repeat his instructions, and he did, but with the exact same phrasing. For emphasis, he grabbed Patrick's shoulder and gave him a little shove down the driveway.
The muscles in his arms and shoulders still throbbing from exertion, Patrick sighed and began to shuffle his way over the gravel towards the truck. He had no idea what boxes would be inside or behind it but felt mostly frustration that they could be equally heavy, and he would have further to carry them.
When Patrick had walked half the distance to the truck, he heard what he thought to be a mechanical click. As he had been trained to watch out for landmines, he immediately looked down at his feet, but of course there was no landmine in the gravel drive that was heavily traveled by military vehicles each day. Shrugging it off, he took another step, but the moment his shoe hit the gravel a piercing scream filled the air. Birds immediately began squawking and a few of them flew out of a nearby tree. On instinct, Patrick looked back towards the hospital, confused by the scream as most certainly had come from a woman—and there weren't many women at the hospital. If he hadn't known better, he almost would have thought it was—
BANG!
He was nearly thrown back by an explosion emanating from the truck in front of him. The wooden sides of bed of the vehicle blew outward, showering him with splinters and shrapnel. He instinctually threw his arms up over his face and then dropped to the ground, bracing for another impact, perhaps from above, but none came. Instead, he heard raucous laughter.
Taking a deep breath, he lifted his head to see the Italian guard by the hospital entranced was now flanked by several others, all of whom were practically doubled over with laughter. It was then Patrick realized that of course there were no supply boxes in the derelict truck; it had been a set up to injure and possibly kill him.
As distressing as this notion was, he did not want to give them the satisfaction of seeing him ratted. With as much dignity as he could muster, he pushed himself up from the ground, brushed the soot and debris off his clothing as best he could, and walked back towards the hospital. He could feel something trickling down the right side of his face—blood, presumably—but did not want to acknowledge the injury within sight of his tormentors. He walked past them with head held high and did not let out a breath until he was behind the closed door of the storeroom.
The remainder of Patrick's day could have gone better but considering there were no more attempts to maim him, he considered it a success. He was returned to the barn loft, shackled, and left with his thoughts. He took that opportunity to brush through his hair, which was growing quite shaggy, and try to remove the remainder of the debris. During this process, he inadvertently bumped his thumb against the gash on his head and hissed with pain. As he felt warmth on his temple, he realized it had begun to bleed again and cursed to himself for he had nothing on hand to stem the bleeding.
Lying in the darkness, Patrick contemplated the terrifying nature of that day's events. Whether or not it was an actual attempt on his life, he was unsure. If nothing else, they intended to harm him, and considering his surgical skills were no longer being used, he knew his need to escape was more urgent than ever. With the shackles regularly being applied to his leg again at night, this left his only choice to be a daytime escape, which would be rather treacherous, but he would rather be killed trying to run to safety than to be murdered by the enemy for sport.
He was still contemplating his options when Sarah arrived with their evening meal. As a break in her usual pattern, she carried his tray of food up to the loft, gave it a shove so it landed within reach of him, and then she climbed back down the ladder. He frowned towards the ladder as he watched his, wondering if she had been warned to stay away from him. Surely that would be another major sign that he had been marked for death. Such a notion removed his appetite almost entirely. He took a half-hearted bite of bread but ignored the soup.
A few minutes later, Sarah returned. He assumed it was to remove the tray, but she surprised him by climbing up to the loft with a different tray with various instruments she must have taken from the hospital. She crouched down in front of him, pointed to the still-bleeding cut above his eye, and then pointed to the tray. Then, with her index finger and thumb pinched together, she made a motion as though she was sewing a button onto a shirt.
"Oh. No." He shook his head. "You shouldn't do that."
One thing that had become quite obvious over his time as a prisoner was that every person he encountered spoke rather disparagingly about Sarah and rarely used her name but instead called her an idiot. He was not surprised by the assumption that a mute woman was considered unintelligent, but medically he knew that was not necessarily the case. From his interactions with her, he had no reason to believe she had below average intelligence. If anything, the fact that she knew both Italian and English spoke to the contrary—but that did not mean she knew how to suture a wound.
He watched as she pointed to herself and then made a rounded motion above her lower belly. Then, she cradled her arms and rocked them back and forth gently.
"Baby? You have a baby?" he guessed.
She shook her head and pointed to the tray and then held her arms in the cradling motion again.
"You…you've delivered a baby?" he guessed. She nodded enthusiastically.
He assumed this meant she had helped deliver one of her mother's children or that of another relative which, while commendable, did not mean she could stitch his wound successfully. He was about to refuse her again when he took a closer look at the tray. She had procured a proper suture kit as well as cotton and antiseptic, which was curious. Looking at her again, he asked, "Have you had medical training?"
She nodded and once again cradled her arms.
"Midwife?" he guessed, and she grinned and nodded. "Oh…very well." As she could have been lying, he was not overly confident in what kind of sutures she would put into the wound on his forehead, but on the off chance she was trained as a midwife, he would allow it. Any stitches would be better than having the cut continue to bleed for the next several days.
She got to work using cotton and antiseptic to dab onto his wound, which stung horribly. She then sluiced her fingers with cleaning solution before picking up the tools she needed to close his wound. Without any numbing solution it was horrendously uncomfortable, but she made quick work of it. When she was done, she gently touched below the spot on his head and then held up three fingers in front of him.
"Three sutures?" he guessed. She nodded. "Thank you."
Only once she was done did she pick up her bowl of soup. As his appetite had returned, he did the same, but he did not feel much like speaking so their meal was silent. After she finished her food, she stacked the suture tray atop the food tray and slid it towards the ladder, but before she could leave, he reached out to touch her hand. She stopped and gazed at him curiously. He took her in, remembering the moment from earlier that day when he'd been certain he heard a woman's scream.
"It was you, wasn't it? You screamed to draw my attention. You knew they were going to blow up that truck."
She didn't so much as blink as a reaction which, in a strange way, only succeeded in confirming to him that she was the source of the alarm that had been raised. This led him to two conclusions. First, she was not a true mute (though, medically, he knew it was possible for someone to be able to make vocalizations without actually being able to pronounce words), and second, that she was more than just the idiot village girl the others seemed to believe she was. How much more, he was not yet sure, but he was confident there was to her story than he realized.
When, after twenty seconds, she had yet to react, he released her hand from her grip and simply said, "Thanks again, Sarah." She gave him a nod and then made her way down from the loft. Once the light from her lantern had disappeared, Patrick lay back and tucked his hands beneath his head as he stared up through the holes in the ceiling wondering what the following days would bring.