33

Stanislaw was in such poor condition, Corey was surprised the hospital allowed a visitor.

The girl looked confused, and so fragile Corey was afraid she’d fall apart if she touched anything. Her eyes were hollow in their sockets, her hands spindly. If the doctors hadn’t told him she was ten years old, he would have thought her to be a grandmother.

It felt rude to stare at her. She reminded Corey of someone. Maybe a younger version of some actress, he wasn’t sure. He turned away. Like the girl, he stared at Stanislaw’s motionless body.

The nurse who had ushered her into the hospital room asked Corey something in German, but he shrugged and said, “American.”

“Ah.” With a nod, she fell silent. But she didn’t leave. Instead she stood protectively by the girl’s side.

Stanislaw was moving in the bed now. He had been in a long, drugged sleep, his head and his left arm wrapped in fresh bandages, his leg suspended above the bed with a winch. As he turned, his eyes blinked for the first time in hours. “Grrrommmm . . . wieder saaberrroff . . . nnnnngahh.”

Corey was sure that bore no relationship to German or English. But at the sound of his voice, or maybe at the sight of his battered features, tears began rolling down her cheeks. When she finally spoke, her voice was tiny and meek.

“Hallo?” was all she managed before choking back sniffles.

With a grunt, Stanislaw tried to sit up, but instead fell back into the mattress. “Owwwww . . . der Schmerz . . .”

“This means, the pain,” the girl said, her voice barely over a whisper.

Corey glanced at her in surprise. Her English was refined, British sounding. “Thanks,” he said. “I thought so.”

Now she stepped closer to Stanislaw. With a slow gesture, graceful and sure, she touched his hand. His eyes were clenched, but the lids seemed to relax a bit.

“Du siehst ganz schön aus, Bruder,” the girl said.

Stanislaw’s eyes blinked open like they were on a spring. “Helga?” he said. “Bist du wirklich da, oder träume ich?”

Corey didn’t know what any of that meant. But he recognized the only word he needed. A name.

Helga.

Helga Meyer, his mom had said, as she smiled at the old black-and-white photo of Mutti and her family, before she became Helga Velez.

“You’re . . .” Corey said, but the words choked in his mouth.

The girl gave him a startled glance.

“You’re my grandmother.” The words left Corey’s mouth before he could stop them. “What are you doing here?”

“Excuse me?” She flashed a frightened, unsure glance at Corey. “I—I was brought here. By the Resistance. They told of two heroes, who held off a Nazi attack. One, they told me, was an escaped prisoner. When they mentioned the name, Stanislaw . . .”

Corey nodded. The girl kept talking, but his thoughts were drowning out the words.

He knew this story. Helga—Mutti—had lived it. That was what his mom had said. Thin and weak, she was smuggled away by the Resistance, to a border town in Austria. From there they managed to smuggle her out of Europe entirely, to South America. That same day the Nazis ambushed the village, killing everyone. Blessedly Mutti was on her way to Brazil and then eventually to Puerto Rico. That’s where she met Papi, where he was stationed in San Juan. It was love at first sight.

Kurtstadt was the border town.

Corey thought hard about Stanislaw’s story. Mom hadn’t mentioned a village. All she said was that Stanislaw had almost reached civilization, before he’d been killed by Allied soldiers in disguise.

But it made sense now. It wasn’t a coincidence that Helga and Stanislaw ended up in the same place. Helga was smuggled to an Allied-controlled former Nazi border village. The Nazis were taking prisoners there, thinking the same village was under their control. How many possible sites were there? This had to be the one!

In the old story, Helga had never known that her brother died in the woods. Now she was here with him. Because Stanislaw hadn’t been killed. He and Corey had intercepted the Nazis. And that had tipped off the village. Which had not been ambushed.

“Hello, how is our patient doing?” The voice interrupted Corey’s thoughts. He looked up to see Dr. Feder entering the room.

“Dr. Feder,” Corey said, “how many people are in Kurtstadt?”

She smiled, cocking her head at the odd question. “Ten thousand, I believe?”

The Nazis ambushed the village, killing everyone, his mom had said.

“Uncle Stanislaw saved ten thousand lives . . .” he murmured.

Stanislaw let out a wheeze that sounded like a laugh. “It was you, Corey,” he rasped. “You did this. Helga and I thank you.”

The sight of his little sister seemed to make Stanislaw’s pain magically lift. He began talking, haltingly at first, and then a torrent of German words, spilling over one another. The girl’s face seemed to grow redder, more radiant. She laughed and gave him answers that made him laugh, too.

Corey could not stop staring at the girl’s face. He could see the resemblance of this smiling, smooth-face girl to the papery old woman bound to a wheelchair. Before Mutti’s mind had begun to weaken, when she was married to Papi, she had smiled just like this girl. A broad, goofy smile that made her eyes shrink to crescent-moon slits. The way Helga was laughing, right now—the soft hoo-hoo-hoo—that never changed. Corey had grown up loving to hear that laugh.

It made him very happy now.

“This is my sister, Corey,” Stanislaw said, his eyes rimmed with tears. “She was not home when the Nazis came for our family. One of the neighbors hid her for months. They were poor and could barely feed her. When the Resistance found out about her, they smuggled her to the closest safe village. Here.”

“I know,” Corey said.

Helga smiled. “My brother tells me you saved his life. If not for you, I would not have found him here.” Now she took Corey’s hand in hers. It must have been frail and cold, but to Corey it felt warm and thick. To him at that moment it had the fragrance of Mutti’s favorite perfume. It held the promise of dinners with mofongo and schnitzel, gifts from Puerto Rico and Germany, where she and Papi traveled every year. “How can I ever repay you?” she said.

The words caught in Corey’s throat. “You . . . you will. Many times.”

“Maybe you give me a list? I will do everything on it.”

Corey smiled. “Tell your brother to come to New York,” Corey said. “I have a feeling that if he does, you two will see a lot of each other.”

“Yes,” Helga replied. “Yes, I will!”

“And both of you, the minute you hear about a company called Apple, buy stock,” Corey said. “Promise?”

Helga gave her brother a wry glance. “This boy is very strange. I like him.”

“Me, too,” Stanislaw said.

Corey burst out laughing. One by one, the others in the room joined him.

Laughter, he realized, was infectious. And some infections were helpful in a hospital.

It was great to have something to look forward to.