A nurse in the Holocaust meets an impossible order

Lena spotted Dr. Kreindl, who without his cigarette, seemed a bit lost. But he knew better than to light up: the Gestapo would have never tolerated such an act of freedom, coming from a Jew.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Listen, it’s quite simple. Most of these patients have ingested large doses of Veronal. Do you know this drug? It’s a highly powerful sedative. Anyway, many of these people were selected for transport, you understand. We need to revive them, that’s what we’re here for. You know the Nazis. They don’t want to let a single life slip away from their grip.”

“Yes, doctor!”

The two women worked fiercely, setting up IVs designed to flush out the poison from every patient’s blood. But it was overwhelming work. After an hour, the confined workspace, compared to their usual treatment rooms, the heat, noise, and overpowering smells of urine and gastric content took their toll on Lena. She looked for Sophie and approached her unsteadily. Sophie, always the stronger one, was moving from one patient to the next without showing any signs of fatigue.

“Sophie, I’m feeling dizzy. Could you finish setting up this IV, please? I need to rest for a minute.”

“Of course, my dear. I’ve got you. Those Gestapo bastards are busy at the other end of the corridor.”

Lena approached the window and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. Outside, autumn was quietly exhaling. “Air,” she thought. She opened the window and filled up her lungs. Beneath her, the weeping willow stretched its thin arms. Her vision blurred, and she thought she saw her mother’s face in the intertwining of bare branches. “If only I could touch her,” she thought, leaning forward as if in a dream.

“Miss, miss!” a voice said behind her. She startled and caught herself on the windowsill. “Miss, be careful. You almost fell!”

Lena turned around, her heart racing.

“Ah, you’re awake! I’m glad. How are you feeling?”

“Were you going to jump?” asked the young girl, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“Jump? Oh no, not at all. I just had a moment of weakness. The fresh air is doing me good.”

“Are you my nurse?” She wore a blue blouse with faded linear patterns. Her long, black lashes shielded an ageless sadness.

“Yes, I’m the one who gave you the IV. You took a lot of medication, didn’t you?”

The girl averted her eyes and clenched her jaw.

“Please, miss, could you close the window? I’m afraid I’ll catch pneumonia with this draft.”

Lena paused for a moment, then simply stood up, closed the window, and returned to place her hand on the girl’s forearm. They remained like that for a while. Then, Lena pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and moved on to the next patient.

An hour remained before lunch break. Gone were the early days, when every patient was an opportunity for joyous discovery. She had always dreamed of becoming a nurse. But as a country girl, the path leading to the hospital wasn’t an obvious one. Her father was a butcher, and so was his father before him. One of the joys of her childhood was digging her fingers into the henhouse straw, feeling around for the warmth of a freshly laid egg. Life had been simple, and beautiful. There was home, school, and the rabbi’s lessons. Sometimes, she earned some pocket money by watching over the neighbor’s children, and during one of those mornings, she’d stumbled upon a photograph of a nurse in a newspaper. Oh, what elegance she’d seen in the white uniform, the rolled-up sleeves, the pristine cap! Her destiny had suddenly become clear. That very evening, still exhilarated, she’d announced to her parents: she would be a nurse. They were used to her bursts of enthusiasm, usually short-lived (just days earlier, she had imagined herself an explorer in Africa), but that time, the whim had turned into a lasting passion.

Lena was busy setting up an IV for an elderly man with veins as thin as a child’s hair. After two attempts at the wrist and one at the elbow fold, she had only managed to create rapidly spreading purple bruises. She sensed Dr. Kreindl standing behind her.

“So, Schwester Lena, are you planning to place that IV in this lifetime or the next?”

Dr. Kreindl’s exasperated tone took Lena by surprise. Was it the pressure from the Gestapo that had been harassing him for hours, the unbearable heat in the corridor, the relentless stream of patients? The doctor was undoubtedly under immense pressure. Lena didn’t have time to ponder further and was already looking for a vein on the other arm. But Dr. Kreindl grumbled behind her, his heavy breathing distracting her.

“What’s taking so long? Six more patients have just arrived.”

“Just a moment, doctor, I’m almost there.”

Then, the doctor made a strange noise with his mouth, a kind of dry click, followed by a long sigh. He sunk his head into his bow tie and said, in a barely audible voice, “Anyway, it’s pointless. All these people will be gassed, no matter what.”

Those words traveled through the air, surpassing Lena’s inner ear, the three small bones and all the usual machinery, and made their way to her brain, where they encountered a significant obstacle: nowhere in her vocabulary or experience did Lena have the means to connect those two words, humans and gassed. How does one gas a human? It made no sense. She blinked, continued to search under the old man’s skin, and finally, the purple liquid flowed back into the needle. Pleased with herself, she loosened the tourniquet, filled three tubes which she gently placed on her tray, connected the saline bag, and crafted a smooth and clean dressing, applying exactly enough pressure to prevent bleeding. Then, she moved on to the next patient.

Dr. Kreindl, for his part, had already moved away. He would have given anything for a cigarette.

Jonathan Hammel is a cardiologist in France.