Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Our next session, I walk in to a plate of gingerbread cookies on Dr. Evert’s desk. He has his feet up on the desk and his hands behind his head. I take one of the sugared cookies and my taste buds dance, shocked after all the bland food I’ve grown used to.

“I’ll let you eat one, and then you must start talking before you take another morsel.”

“They are well worth it.” I wipe my fingertips over the plate to shake off the extra sugar, even though I wish I could lick them off.

“Tell me, then. Tell me about the most recent life you’ve known me.” He realizes how he sounds and corrects, “Or how you think you’ve known me.”

“We were soldiers in the American Civil War.”

“You were a soldier?”

I nod, smiling because I want him to believe that we were both males. “Your name was James and people called me Joe.”

He looks up at the ceiling for a moment. “Funny.”

“What?”

“I have quite a collection of American Civil War books in my library at home. I’ve always been drawn to it.” He checks back to me, though, and quickly adds, “But it’s an extremely popular subject in America.”

“We ended up in a prisoner of war camp in the south. I made it out, and I don’t know what happened to you.”

I can tell he thinks of something, but he doesn’t want to share it with me. “Anything else?”

If he’s going to hold things back, I’m going to as well. “Things aren’t very clear.”

He puts his pencil in his mouth like a cigarette and daydreams for a moment, then disappears behind his desk. When he pops his head back up, he drops a box down in front of him. “Can you guess what I have here?”

“More Civil War memorabilia?”

He laughs. “No, seeds. Hundreds of them.”

He pulls open the box and sifts through the little brown packages like snow. I reach in and bring one close to read, “Poppies.”

“They’re all here. Each one on your list. Except for the roses.” He brings another box up on the desk. “These are the cuttings you’ll need to plant.” The box is full of what look like leafy twigs wrapped in burlap. I’m glad that Odelia will know what to do with them.

I turn the packet of seeds over in search of instructions, and my heart races when I see a blank side.

“Don’t worry.” He pulls out a book from beneath the packets. “All the information you can find in here.”

I sit back in the chair and run my hands over the beautiful gardening book. “I’ll start reading it immediately.”

“You better. Some of these will need to be planted right away, others after the frost.” He looks at his watch. “I was going to go check on Teresia today. Would you like to come with me before I take you back?”

I tuck the book under my arm and hesitate at the boxes.

“You can leave the seeds and roots here until we know what to do with them.”

I nod and follow him out to the little hutch. I’m surprised by the high fence that surrounds the whole garden.

Dr. Evert sneers. “It’s unfortunate that it’s so industrial. I was hoping for more of a secret garden look, but this will have to do to keep intruders out.”

“And a certain bunny in. I bet we could let Teresia out to run once in a while.”

“Just make sure she doesn’t help herself to too much of our harvest.”

I lay down my book as he unlocks the hutch with his key. I reach in to feel a tiny nose tickle my hand. “She came out to me this time.” I grab her up in my hands and cradle her to my chest.

“She doesn’t seem so petrified anymore,” he says as he strokes her, sometimes bumping into my hands.

“We all aren’t as petrified as we were before.”

He smiles. “I can’t believe how much things have changed since you’ve come. I had a feeling you belonged here.”

“All of these changes are credited to you, not me.” I bring her silky fur up to my mouth and breath in her earthy smell.

“Well, it doesn’t matter who has changed things, but that it’s changed. I actually enjoy waking up each morning.”

I look up at him as he focuses on the bunny. I hadn’t ever thought that he could’ve been suffering here as well.

He scoffs. “I nearly quit a month before you came. I felt like I couldn’t help anyone here. I was going to try to start my own practice, counseling bored housewives.”

“You might just go back to that if this project is a failure. I’m not completely sure we’ll get anything to grow.”

He breaks out in laughter. “I never thought of that. Imagine how that will go in front of the board.”

I giggle along with him as I put Teresia back. He spills in more pellets into her bowl from a pouch and locks up the hutch once again. I stoop to sweep up my book.

On the way out of the garden, I look up at the steel fence. “I’ll plant morning glories to grow up this fence to cover it all.”

“We might get our secret garden after all, then.” My stomach flips with his perfect wink.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

I stand out in the cold as Odelia, Verena, Ursel, Elfi, Minna, and Gitta stare down at me from behind the bars of the windows. A bitter wind takes my breath away, and I turn to see a dark cloud with Hitler’s swastika looming over the hospital. I take cover under the brush beside the building as the swastika cloud opens up in hail, lightning, and freezing rain. The buildings around me catch fire, and the people inside the windows gasp and clutch the bars before they slump to the ground. Suddenly I see Dr. Evert help them back to their feet and pull them away from the windows. He’s trying to save them and I’m just hiding here. I hold my sweater over my head and make my way to our building. A man grabs me from behind. I spin around to see green-eyes through the darkness.

“Get out of here,” he cries out.

I hold on to him. “No. I have to help them. Help you.”

“Forget about me. I have to stop him.”

“Who?” I look around. No one else is here.

“This is my responsibility. I have to stop him before he kills more.” He rips away from me and all I hear is his voice through the darkness. “Save yourself!”

The smoke fills the stairway, but I crawl up to our floor and scream out each one of their names. I hear coughing in reply and the girls emerge, holding on to one another. “Follow me!” I call, and turn to follow the pathway I came up. As soon as we’re outside in the fresh air, I say, “Where is Dr. Evert?”

As soon as Gitta stops coughing, she says, “We lost him.”

I look back to the building, fully consumed in flames and black smoke. Both of them are lost.