“I—I thought I was supposed to—monitor the effects from the injection. This can’t be done within one short period.” He must hear the desperation in my voice. No one would beg to do more work for this mad scientist.
“I suppose if you can find him, you can continue your evaluation.” He smiles. His prideful grin, sickening. “Though, there may be no use for further notes.”
My body tenses, flashing between waves of hot and cold. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s a problem, isn’t it?”
This man speaks in riddles that only amuse himself. “What is the purpose of sending me on a search? I’ve been assigned to assist you in evaluations. How can I do this if you’re not cooperating?”
“Pardon?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.
“The purpose…” I repeat. Anger spikes through me like shrapnel.
“Purposes are complex,” he says with a hazy, dreamlike stare—as if lost in bewilderment. “Causes and effects that intersect with genetic abnormalities offer insight.” The doctor shakes his head, amazed with his babbling thoughts, then scratches his chin. “As well as studying a patient who can only absorb the fear of those around him while he’s kept from the person he’d die for.”
A person he’d die for…
Me.
The doctor shouts, calling for a guard. “Take her somewhere else. I can’t focus.”
The guard takes me by the arm before I can take in a full breath, yanks me over the door’s threshold where I catch one last glimpse of Stefan’s boot lying in the rubbish bin.
The doctor thinks he can discard me just as he did with Stefan as if his existence means nothing.
I search the overfilled tiered bunks as I’m pulled down the center row, searching for any trace of him.
He’s gone from here.
I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.
But I will find him.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ROSALIE
SANOK, POLAND
March 12, 1942
Stefan and the Silberg estate fall behind, swallowed by the hill as I sit rigid in the back of the SS Mercedes. The leather is cold against my palms, and the air is stale with old cigar smoke. Two officers ride in front, silent as death.
In those final seconds before I was shoved inside, I prayed the officer would shoo me aside, tell me to scatter like a stray cat. Even the wind howled at our backs as if demanding my release. But the clouds closed in, thick and dark, and I knew there would be no release. Even as the car rolls away, I don’t dare glance toward the woods. Not toward Stefan. Where he begged me not to go inside the house. And where I fought him because his well-being means more to me than my own.
I had just managed to collect the prescription bottles from Stefan’s bedroom when I heard the heavy boots thudding through the main floor. I knew any chance of escape would be unlikely. I wrapped the bottle of pills in brown paper then dropped them out the upstairs window into the snow, prayinghe would see. I’d made it downstairs and to the back door before the officer apprehended me. I was so close.
The car bounces along the icy rubble, taking me away. Away from Stefan. If I throw myself from the car, would they shoot me or laugh at my attempt to escape? I’m not even sure where they’re taking me.
Somehow, at least one of them knows of me. It feels as though they were specifically waiting for me. “You must be the girl who saves babies, the self-taught midwife—talk of the town, according to some…” the officer in the front passenger seat said to me when grabbing a hold of my arm in the house.
My lack of response was enough of an answer. I was doubtful that anything I said would change the outcome.
On the outskirts of Sanok, the car pulled up behind a small factory where another black Mercedes was parked. There’s no one here to hear me scream, and no cry for help will save me from these two.
“I appreciate the help,” the officer in the passenger seat says to the other.
“I hope everything works out for you,” the officer in the driver’s seat says.
