soil and a bacterial culture of Clostridium tetani. Each patient would have a different infectant introduced into her wound. Dr. Gebhardt arrived from Hohenlychen Sanatorium by private car that morning.
“Glad you are in early, Dr. Oberheuser. Dr. Fischer is not able to join us.”
“Is he ill, Doctor?”
Gebhardt removed his jacket. “Transferred.”
I tried not to let my disappointment show. Fritz really gone?
“If I may ask, where, Doctor?”
“The Tenth SS Division as chief surgeon of a medical company assigned to the Tenth Panzer Regiment on the western front,” Dr. Gebhardt said, his face flushed. “Apparently thinks he can be of more use there…”
How could Fritz leave without a goodbye?
“I understand, Dr. Gebhardt. By the way, prisoner-nurse Gerda Quernheim is on today as well.”
“Good. I have been very impressed with your attention to detail,” Dr. Gebhardt said. “Would you like to take the lead today?”
“Operate, Doctor?”
“Why not? You’d like the practice?”
“Yes, thank you, Doctor,” I said.
Was this really happening?
“Make sure the faces stay covered, Doctor,” Dr. Gebhardt said. “Just a precaution for anonymity. And be aggressive. Jump right in. No need for gentle tissue handling.”
One after the next, Gerda wheeled the patients in, towels across their faces.
We worked well into the evening. I was careful not to rush the closing, crafting my square knot sutures, spiky and black, like tracks of barbed wire guarding each incision.
“I don’t compliment often, Dr. Oberheuser, but you have a gift for surgery that cannot be taught. All you need is practice.”
Such praise!
We finished the night with a few sterilizations, a new treatment ordered by Himmler himself. I walked back to my room through the quiet camp and slept soundly thanks to my sleep aid of choice, Luminal, waking only once, to the sounds of Binz and her boyfriend Edmund making love in the bathtub.
—
I TOOK MY TIME getting dressed the next morning, knowing the nurses would record patient vitals and Halina would handle the Revier for me, but when I arrived there, things were chaotic. I found a new camp staff nurse sitting in for Halina, and the line of those awaiting medical attention was out the door.
“Madame Doctor, we have run out of paper bandages,” the nurse said, as she shook a thermometer.
“Where is Halina?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Madame Doctor. Wardress Binz told me to sit here.”
I went to the recovery room to check on my patients from the previous day, and the smell there was terrible. I knew that meant the cultures were doing their jobs, but the charts were untouched, no vitals recorded. One of the patients was already out of bed, hopping on one foot, visiting with the other patients.
“Please, we need water,” she said. “And more bedpans.”
I left the room and found Gerda in the hallway enjoying a cigarette.
“Keep them in bed,” I said. “Movement prevents the infection from taking root.”
I locked the door and went to locate Binz. After trudging about half the camp, I found her at the Angora rabbit pens, a vast complex of cages heated and kept spotless by the Bible girls. She and one of her subordinates were cooing over a baby rabbit, a white ball of fluff with ears like feather dusters.
“What is going on in the Revier?” I asked.
The other Aufseherin slid the rabbit back in the cage and beat a hasty retreat.
“You come out here without a word of hello?” Binz said. “Someone had to take charge in there.”
“You have no right—”
“It could not be helped,” Binz said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Make some sense, Binz.”
“You don’t know?”
It was all I could do not to shout at her. “Where is Halina?”
“Maybe we should talk about this elsewhere.”
“What have you done, Binz?”
“For God’s sake, don’t cry. You don’t want my girls seeing you emotional. I warned you about the Poles, didn’t I? You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, that makes two of us. Suhren couldn’t believe what that Pole of yours was up to. Let’s just say you’ll be needing a new assistant.”
1942
“All the way to the back, and face the front,” said our new elevator operator, Estella.
In her orthopedic loafers and nylon knee-high stockings, Estella was a far cry from Junior Rockefeller’s ideal elevator attendant. Since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous year, America had finally entered the war, causing young men of all walks of life to enlist, including our elevator boy.
“Any word from Cuddy, Estella?”
“The U.S. Army does not send me updates, Miss Ferriday. Seems you’ve got big problems in France right now. That’s