Panic and anguish gripped Sorena as she knelt beside Axel, pulling the belt from her borrowed dungarees. His lifeblood was seeping from him … because of her stubbornness. With freezing hands she threaded the leather strip beneath his leg, then tugged it tight across the wound and buckled it.
Was he still breathing? Her hands shook as she saw the nearly imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. She touched his arm. His skin felt so cold. She glanced around for something to use to cover him. Nothing. Heaven help her, she had to keep him warm. She lay beside him, spreading her soggy coat over them both. Thoroughly wet and cold herself, she doubted she’d be much more than a windbreak, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“Please, God, help Shimon to find help quickly,” she pleaded through chattering teeth. “I’ve already lost two loved ones to the Nazis. I don’t think I could bear to lose Axel, too.” She felt him take a deeper breath beneath her, and hoped that was God’s way of saying He’d heard and cared.
“Down there!” The young voice sounded like Shimon’s.
Already? He’d left only an instant ago. Struggling to her feet, Sorena scanned the top of the low bluff.
One fellow, then another popped into sight. They charged down the bank with the energy of men not yet thirty. Close on their heels, Shimon followed, swaddled from neck to ankle in one of their coats.
Sorena had never felt such relief. She blinked back pooling tears.
“How bad was he hit?” the first yelled in a Swedish lilt.
“He’s unconscious,” she called, “but still alive. You got here so fast!”
“We heard the gunfire,” the coatless man offered as he neared, “and were coming to investigate.”
His companion dropped down to examine Axel. “Good. You’ve stemmed the bleeding.” He glanced up at the other fellow, sturdy and muscular as himself. “Olaf, help me lift him. We must get these folks inside before they freeze.”
Moving to assist, Olaf eyed Sorena, then nodded in the direction of the shore. “You came across in that rubber boat?”
She peered toward the water.
The bullet-flattened raft was being dragged along on the swell of a gentle wave. And the rag doll! Surely God’s work. Caught in a fold of the collapsed rubber, it bobbed listlessly in time with the raft’s movements.
“Yes,” she answered past numb lips as she went to fetch the money-stuffed toy. “It was our only choice. Everything else was being used to ferry the Jews across.”
“Don’t we know it.” The one called Olaf grunted as he and the other man hoisted Axel’s dead weight. “For two nights now they’ve been landing all up and down the coast from Hoganas to Falsterbo. So many folks needing shelter and food.”
“But we’ll manage to find places for them and for you, too,” his friend added as Sorena hurried to catch up to them, the doll in her hand. “We always do.”
The men carried Axel to one of a cluster of small homes set back from a boatyard and marina cluttered with nets and buoys.
When Sorena opened the door to make way for the group, a blast of heated air hit her face like a thousand needles. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this cold.
But no colder than Axel, she surmised as his limp body was carried past her.
Or Shimon. She caught the skinny boy’s hand and hurried him inside, monumentally grateful that one of their rescuers, the man called Olaf, had loaned the child his coat.
“Sven,” he directed, “we’ll put him in the front bedroom.”
Watching after the pair attired in the sturdy rubberized boots and knit caps of fishermen, Sorena concluded the home must belong to Olaf since he knew its layout.
A petite blond woman with a pleasant face stood in an archway leading from the tidy front parlor to the low-ceilinged kitchen. Drying her hands on her apron, she motioned to Sorena. “I am Greta Lagerlof. Come. Bring the boy in here. It’s warmer by the cookstove.”
“Thank you, Greta. I’m Sorena, and this is Shimon.”
Shimon balked, planting his feet. “What about Axel?” he asked, oblivious to his own chattering teeth. “I need to stay with him. He’s hurt bad.”
With her thumb, Sorena smoothed the worry lines pinching his brow and attempted a confident smile. “We wouldn’t want to be in the way just now, sweetheart. And you’re very cold. As soon as you’re warm again, we’ll see if it’s okay for you to go sit with him. In the meantime, we’ll both pray very hard that God will make him better. Is that a deal?”
“I guess,” he said grudgingly. “He has to stay alive, you know. Me and him have important things to do.”
“I know. So you have to be well and strong, too, not sick in bed.”
He nodded and went with her to the kitchen, where their hostess was pouring a kettle of hot water into a large pan.
“Greta,” Sorena began, “I’d really appreciate it if you would help Shimon out of his wet clothes and into something dry.”
“Of course. And you, too.” A kind smile deepened the fine lines on the woman’s attractive face as she nodded toward the stove. “I’ve also made some cocoa.”
“That sounds wonderful. But I need to check on Axel first.” She gave Shimon a nudge toward Greta. “I’ll only be a little while, I promise.”
As she started through the homey confines of the house for the door to the bedroom, Sven came out, his sharp blue eyes halting her in her tracks. “I am going for the doctor. I’ll have him here in a few minutes.” Adjusting the knit cap he’d pushed back on his head, he left.
Sorena’s heart contracted in alarm. Hurrying to Axel, she joined Olaf, who was bent over the bed. The man had unconscious Axel lying on his side while he worked off the soggy wool coat.
Still holding the equally limp rag doll, Sorena dropped it on a nightstand. “I’ll help you,” she told the brawny Swede, and together they eased the jacket off, then Axel’s shoes and socks.
His feet, she noted, were even colder than her hands. She began rubbing them brusquely to create some warmth.
“That’ll help, madam,” Olaf said, “but I think we can do better. Go ask my wife to fill a hot water bottle for his feet. And have her put some flannel sheets in the oven to warm.”
When she returned a short time later with the rubber bottle, she noticed Axel’s clothing on the floor. The blankets had been pulled up to his neck. She moved to the foot of the bed and lifted the covers just enough to place the hot water container at his feet. “How does Axel’s leg look?” she asked Olaf. “Is it very bad? When you took off the belt, was it still bleeding a lot?”
“Ah, so Axel’s his name. Good to know. As for the bleeding, with him being so cold, that probably helped keep it to a minimum. And your name is?”
“Sorena Bruhn. The boy in the kitchen is Shimon.” She noticed a bloody white cloth beneath the scarf at Axel’s head, and all effort at making polite conversation fled.
Olaf saved her the trouble. “Yes, the head wound is still seeping a bit. That’s natural. Those are always the worst for bleeding. But his breathing is steady, and your man looks to be in good shape.”
Sorena was more than ready to latch on to any scrap of hope. “Do you really think so? Oh, yes, Greta said it’ll be a few minutes more for the flannel sheets.”
“Fine. Now how about going and getting out of your own wet clothes while I wait for Dr. Heidenstam to get here?”
“I’d rather not leave Axel in case he wakes.”
“And I’d just as soon not have two invalids on my hands. Go on, now, before you come down with pneumonia.” He gestured toward the door with a nod of his head.
The man spoke logically. After all, she’d said nearly the same thing to Shimon moments ago. But …
Her gaze was drawn to Axel again. He looked so pale, so …
The sturdy fisherman took her by the arm. “Go. Now.”
Momentarily, Sorena found herself seated next to Shimon in front of the open oven door, both of them wrapped in blankets, with their feet soaking in pans of heated water. Mrs. Lagerlof had been a godsend, and Sorena had never felt more coddled in her life—especially when the lady handed them cups of hot cocoa. She was beginning to believe that becoming warm again was possible. She sipped the sweetened drink and let it trickle down to the cold reaches of her insides. “You have no idea how wonderful this is,” she said, hoping to express her thankfulness.
Greta smiled. “This is hardly the first time someone’s come in freezing. My Olaf’s gotten drenched a time or two himself.”
“I know what you mean.” Sorena chuckled at her own memories. “I come from a seafaring family, too. Our home port is on the Isle of Fyn.” The smile faded. “Or was before the war.”
The blond woman placed a hand on her shoulder. “And it will be again. Soon. Our government wouldn’t have had the nerve to stop the Nazis from using our railroads to cart their troops across to Norway if they thought Germany was still capable of doing something about it.”
“That’s encouraging. But the Nazis still rule the Baltic Sea. I can attest to that.”
“Not for long. I truly believe God is on our side.”
“Yes. He has to be.” Sorena glanced at Shimon, a child of God’s covenant with Abraham. His eyelids had drooped along with his curly top. Poor little tyke. He’d been through so much in the last few days and hadn’t slept much, yet he’d been amazing throughout the whole ordeal. She reached over and deftly lifted the cocoa from his hands.
Greta came forward and took the cup from her. After placing it on the table, she stooped and removed the sleeping child’s feet from the pan, then dried them. “I’ll take him into Hildy’s room. It’s time for her to get up for school anyway.”
School? It was hard for Sorena to digest such an everyday happening. “You have a daughter?”
“Yes. Hildy’s seven,” she whispered, reaching down for Shimon. “This is her first year, and she’s very excited about going.”
As the hostess carried Shimon through a door adjoining the kitchen, Sorena wondered how long it would be before he, too, would be returning to a classroom. At least that could now be a reality for him.
But had it cost Axel his life?
Urgency overtook her again. She lifted her feet out of the water. Bending to dry them with the provided towel, she heard a quick knock at the door and turned toward the entrance.
The man called Sven burst in, his cheeks flushed.
Right behind him came a distinguished older man in faded black, carrying a worn leather satchel.
“This way,” Sven directed.
Before Sorena could get up and secure the blanket around herself properly, the two men had disappeared into the front bedroom.
Hiking the edge of the blanket off the floor, she flew after them. She had to be there when the doctor examined Axel. Had to know if he would live.
He has to.
For Shimon’s sake … and for hers. There was so much she needed to say to Axel, so much to take the blame for. She was the very reason he lay at death’s door. She and her stubborn determination.