Chapter 2
There were advantages to being in a coma: I felt no pain. Now that I was awake, the pain ebbed and flowed in torrents. Anna gave me an injection before she left. I spent the rest of the morning in a morphine haze. By late afternoon, prickles of pain twisted back into my consciousness. I begged for more medicine. While I waited for a nurse to administer my newfound friend, I struggled to remember what happened to me. I tried to picture being dressed in a uniform. Carrying a rifle. Marching in formation. Fighting in a battle. Nothing came to mind. Try as I might, I could not remember.
The next morning Anna asked, “How did you sleep?”
“Very . . . little.”
“How would you rate the pain?”
“I . . . need . . . medicine.” I was desperate to return to that dreamy state where I floated and felt naught.
“Not so fast. The doses need to be spaced out. We don’t want you to become addicted.”
That scared me. Not the addiction part, going without that magic juice. I needed it. “I . . . don’t . . . care!”
“You say that now,” said Anna, “but you’ll regret it later.”
*
Sometime thereafter—it may have been days, for I lost sense of time—a man in his fifties, somewhat balding but still with enough hair to comb, appeared at the foot of the bed. He sported a salt and pepper moustache. Bushy brows heightened his stern gaze. He was dressed in a herringbone suit with a stethoscope draped around his neck. Anna stood behind him.
“I wondered how many more days you would be sleeping,” he said.
“Are you my doctor?” My speech had become easier to understand.
He bowed. “Jacques Joseph, chairman of facial and plastic surgery.”
“Have you examined me before?”
“Many times.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Between the coma and the morphine, you’ve been asleep most of the time.”
“Can you tell me when these bandages are coming off?”
“You’re not fully healed. They have to stay on a bit longer.” He glanced at Anna with a look of conspiracy. “Before we change them, would you like a mirror for a preview? This way you won’t be shocked.”
Why would he say that? I plumbed Anna’s face for guidance; she smiled, but said nothing. “Won’t I look the way I did before?”
Again, Dr. Joseph glanced at Anna. He cleared his throat. “The truth is, we had no idea what you looked like.”
“How different can I be if you put all the parts back where they came from?”
“There was shrapnel embedded in your forehead and scalp. Your right orbit was fractured, as was your cheekbone. Your nose was smashed in. There were deep gashes everywhere. Flesh was hanging loose. Your jaw was broken. You have to understand, there were no landmarks or references I could use except this.”
He reached into his pocket and handed me a photo.
I took it with my left hand. “What is this?”
“I hoped you could tell us.”
It was a picture of a family: a father, mother, and two children: one boy and one girl. All well-dressed. The father in a suit, the mother in a dress. The boy and girl outfitted in party clothes. The boy, perhaps ten or twelve, was too young to predict his adult features. There was a date on the back: 1908.
I handed the picture back. “Who are they?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Should I?”
“There was no identification when they brought you here. Everything was either left behind at the aid station or, most likely, lost in the blast. We found this photo in your boot.”
“I can’t remember anything that happened.”
“That’s not that uncommon as a result of severe head trauma.”
“How long before I get my memory back?”
Anna stepped forward. “Most of the time, it returns after the heavy pain medication ends.”
“And the other times?”
“There’s no telling how long it will take,” answered Dr. Joseph. “We’ve come to call you Patient X. Try to remember the town you came from. An address. Somewhere you might have lived.”
“Nothing comes to mind.”
“Perhaps a nickname?”
I made light of this. “X has a catchy ring to it, don’t you think? I could get used to it.” Anna’s smile lifted my mood.
“Let’s change his bandages,” said Dr. Joseph.
With care, they removed my mummy-like wrappings. Where the bandage tugged the skin, they cut around it so as not to rip the scab or pull an embedded suture that could open a wound. Anna removed the stitches with light touches.
Dr. Joseph inspected each area with great care. I smelled mint on his breath. He straightened up and stepped back. “There is no sign of infection anywhere.”
“What about the bandages on my arms and legs?
“Anna can replace them later.”
I wanted to touch my face. My nose. My skin. “How do I look?”
Dr. Joseph nodded to Anna. “You tell him.”
“X, you are going to be a dreamboat.”
She fetched a silver-trimmed, round mirror and held it so I could see myself. What I saw was a young man who might be between twenty to twenty-five years old. While there needed to be more healing, I now had an idea of what I looked like.
“Are you pleased?” Dr. Joseph asked.
“I don’t know if this is me or someone else.”
“You will have the fräuleins swooning. What do you think, Anna?”
Anna gloated. “Most men would kill for a face like yours. You look like Conrad Veidt.”
“Who is that?”
“An actor. He appeared in The Mystery of Bangalor.”
“I just want to look like me.”
The doctor explained, “I need to examine the rest of you before Anna puts salve and covers the wounds with fresh bandages. You will have plenty of time to admire yourself after I leave.”
Dr. Joseph inspected the burn areas and graft sites. He checked my breathing and then issued an order to Anna. “His lungs are not as clear as they should be. Arrange for a chest X-ray.”
“I need more morphine.”
He grabbed my chart and flipped to the list of dispensed medicines. “You have to wait a couple of hours.”
That was not the answer I wanted. The moment Dr. Joseph left, I asked Anna for an injection. “I’ll see what I can do,” she answered.
“Do you think you have a family? A wife? The picture you carried was not of a woman,” Anna asked as she rolled me back from the X-ray department.
“I haven’t thought much about any of that. Right now I’m more concerned with how my wounds heal. What about my identification? Didn’t I have a wallet or identity tags?”
“No. You were stripped down to your underwear and boots when we got you. Your face was torn apart. Broken bones. All we cared about was saving you. I don’t mind telling you those first days were touch and go. We weren’t sure you would survive. The last thing any of us expected was that you would have no memory when you came out of your coma.”
Over the next few weeks I learned about Anna’s personal life. Widowed at the outbreak of the war, married eight years before that, childless, she seemed drawn to me, although there were many years between us . . . or perhaps because of it.
Charité Hospital, October 1, 1918
I remained in the hospital three months. During that time I endured additional skin grafts over burned areas, had facial scars smoothed out, and started a therapy to strengthen my arms, legs, and core muscles.
Eight weeks into my stay, the hospital dentist and technicians fabricated removable bridges to replace missing teeth. My physical progress was great, yet Dr. Joseph continued to express concern.
“I am worried about you,” the doctor said. It happened to be Anna’s day off.
“There’s no need. I’ve all but stopped using painkillers. Just Bayer once in a while.”
He dismissed my statement with the flick of a wrist. “Drugs are not my concern. You need to know who you are.”
“Patient X suits me just fine.”
“That is part of the trouble. The way you embrace it worries me. We are not equipped to deal with this sort of problem. I’ve signed orders for you to be transferred to another hospital. You leave today.”
My throat constricted. I was terrified to leave the only place I knew . . . and Anna.
Dr. Joseph continued, but I barely heard him. “It’s far from here. Pasewalk Hospital. They have doctors who treat soldiers with different kinds of wounds.”
I struggled into a hospital-issued uniform, slipped the lone photograph from my boot into a small kit and left without a goodbye to Anna. I had no choice. I did leave a note. It was all I could do.
*
Pasewalk Hospital was more than one hundred kilometers northeast from Berlin, near the Polish border.
Given that it was wartime, it took half a day to travel to Pasewalk. I kept to myself during the train ride, gazing out the window but seeing little of the countryside. Dr. Joseph was right. While I was now free of all bandages . . . freedom would be illusory without an identity. Pasewalk represented that hope.