Loved. Wanted. Known.
The fantasy was abruptly interrupted when the doctors came back into the room, talking quietly among themselves. They were speaking German and it was so hard to focus. Two voices, one deep, one higher and breaking with emotion.
“They told me these women were all English or French and had no idea what the injection was. They specifically said we did not need the Gestapo here to do this because there would be no resistance!” The deeper voice dropped to a furious whisper. “I was not expecting to have to argue with them about undressing. I admit—Gustaf, I was thrown by that, and I wasn’t concentrating as I should have been. I think I have given one of them too much—there was not enough left by the time I got to…”
“She is skin and bone,” the higher voice said uncertainly. “Will it be enough to keep her unconscious at least until…？”
The grating sound of metal on metal as the wheel on a trolley squealed, then silence. I was awake enough to wonder what the sounds were, too drowsy to open my eyes at first. Long minutes passed, then the trolley and the footsteps returned. My eyelids were fluttering and the darkness in my mind was receding. The trolley went again. I was barely even dozing now, lethargic but awake. I was still holding Eloise’s hand until they disentangled our fingers. I remembered all over again what was really happening and grief for her might have overwhelmed me.
I hoped she went peacefully. I hoped she was with her husband already, looking down on their baby boy.
I was in an in-between place—my mind wanted to go, but my body kept pulling it back. And was that smoke in the air? No, something so much worse. Something that made my stomach lurch and my heart race.
I opened my eyes abruptly. I was alone in the hallway on the chair, wide awake and panicking. The door opened, and the two men were there, staring at me. The youngest was standing aside from the older again. This time, he looked as if he might cry.
“What do we do?” he said, sounding panicked. He turned to the older man. “There is no more phenol. Doctor, what do we do?”
There was a moment of horrifying silence. They stared at me, I stared at them, and not one of us in that room knew what to do. I flicked my glance toward the other door, the one we’d entered the building through. It was a long hallway—a few dozen feet back to the outside. And even if I made it, where would I go? Escape into the camp?
“Just hurry,” the older doctor said.
“Hurry?” the youngest was alarmed. “But—”
“Just get this over with so we can go!”
Get this over with. My life meant nothing to these men. My murder was one last task they had to tick off before they could leave for the day.
All my life I had been written off, underestimated, forgotten. Wendy and Mary were gone. Eloise, gone. But me? I was still there, and I had no more left to lose. I was in the last moments of my life and nothing I could do now would change the outcome. In some roundabout way, that made me the most powerful person in the room.
A burst of furious adrenaline shook the last of the grogginess from my mind and I shot to my feet and took off toward the door. But the older man bolted toward me, quickly catching up. He scooped me up from behind, tightening his arms around my waist and hoisting me into the air in front of him. I fought with everything I had—throwing arms and legs wildly, screaming for help as he dragged me down toward the younger man, who looked at me, stricken, but did nothing to help.
“Gustaf, for God’s sakes,” the bald doctor hissed. “Open the door!”
The younger man slumped in defeat, and pushed the door open, revealing a steaming hot, cavernous room. At the center of the room was a large brick structure, set beneath a massive chimney that disappeared up into the roof. The structure had four arched doors. Three were locked closed. One was open, and a long metal bed on rails hung out of it.
Behind the bed was a raging fire.
“No!” I cried, and I turned toward the younger man. “Please. Don’t let him do this.”
He was already scrambling toward a cupboard. He threw the door open and started searching, knocking vials all over the place as he went.
“There has to be something—” he stammered. “Anything! Something to just—”
“I told you, it’s all gone,” the older man grunted as he struggled to drag me closer to the furnace.
“We cannot put her in there alive! Awake!”
With every step, I felt the blasting heat grow stronger and I struggled harder, screaming until my throat ached. “Help! Help me!”
“The Kommandant said there must be no witnesses! Get over here! Someone will hear if she keeps shouting.”
The younger man hesitated again, but then he straightened his spine and ran toward me. He caught my upper arm in his fist but held me too loosely, and I tugged my arm out straight away, setting my hand into a claw and swinging wildly toward him. I connected with his face, gouging a deep, angry scratch across his eye and cheek. He cried out, taking a hasty step back, and just then I kicked behind me, managing to inflict enough pain that the bald doctor’s viselike grip around my waist relaxed.
I landed awkwardly… heavily, winding up sprawled on the hot concrete floor, looking up at them, just five or six feet from the furnace.
“I’ll be gone soon,” I said, my voice shaking not with fear, but with fury. “…but I will only be set free into peace. You’ll never know how that feels, not either one of you, because your role in this war will haunt you for eternity.” I was a shy girl, then a quiet woman, but now I was a lioness and my roar became louder, echoing from the walls around me. If I shook, it was only with the injustice of it all. I had moved to a place past fear—even past regret. “One day you will stand before your God and try to justify even this moment and you will fail because there is no justifying what you’ve done. You’ll never even convince yourselves this wasn’t an execution tonight—it was cold-blooded murder.”
I fought with every precious breath left in my body, even though I knew they would overpower me. And as they pushed me down onto the tray, the flames from the furnace burning so hot the pain was already blinding white, I used my very last breath to shout one final war cry.
“Vive la liberty! Vive la France!”
What lay beyond what I could see—the universe, and all of the sparkling stars and planets and galaxies? In the vastness of the one life I had lived, I had given my all to what I knew to be right. I had used my days for good, in every way that I could manage, even when it was hard and even when it didn’t seem enough.
Pain left my mind cloudy but I knew it would be over quickly—I could already feel myself slipping away. I reserved my precious last thoughts for those I had loved the most. For Aunt Quinn, who I so wished I’d had more time with. For my mother, who had given me everything and who had shaped me into a woman who would try to make a better world, even against the odds.
I’m sorry, Maman. I’m so sorry. I love you. Forgive me, please. I hope you’re proud and find happiness.
And for Noah, who had been my hope for the future. With my very last breath, I set out a prayer that he would find a different path without me—a happy path, in freedom and in love, in the world that we had hoped so much to build together.