I kept checking for Kaz. As I did, on the stretcher to my right, I saw a Luftwaffe pilot, an amused look on his face. His blue tunic displayed the Luftwaffe eagle, grasping a swastika in its claws. I don't know if he spoke English, but he seemed to understand exactly what was going on. Our eyes met and he smiled. His entire left leg was swathed in bandages, and from what was left of his pants, it looked like he'd been burned. He must have been pretty doped up; I doubted he'd be smiling tomorrow.
I wandered back down the hall, feeling weak in the knees, went through the emergency entrance and checked the casualties stacked up there. No Kaz. I went through the treatment rooms, all filled with patients, doctors, and nurses. Everyone was too busy, or in too much pain to notice me. I began to wonder if this was a dream. I seemed to be invisible when I was close to the worst casualties. Whenever I was outside the main treatment area, some nurse or orderly would stop and check me out. I didn't know if I could convince the next one that I was okay. My head was swimming, and although the ringing was down to a reasonable volume, I was feeling more wobbly and I had to keep reminding myself what, or rather who, I was looking for.
Then I saw him. Kaz, on a gurney, being pushed down the hall. A nurse was doing the pushing. I tried to call to her, but I couldn't get my voice to work. My yell came out as a croak, and my head rebelled against the effort. She turned a corner and disappeared down another hallway. I forced myself down the hall after her, stumbling against an orderly carrying a tray of instruments. He and the tray went down with a crash, the noise in my ears ratcheting up the ringing up even worse.
'Hey, those were sterile! Watch it!'
The floor seemed to tilt. I had to swing my arms to keep my balance. I knew I looked like a drunk but I had to catch up. I couldn't hold onto the wall without stepping on the guys lined up alongside it. I focused on the floor in front of me, placing one foot in front of the other, turning the corner just in time to see the back of a nurse leave a patient's room. She was headed down the hall away from me. Had she seen me? I couldn't tell, but this time I managed to call her name out.
'Stop,' I called once, and heads turned. I couldn't tell how loudly I'd said it with all the noise in my head, but I must've yelled pretty loud. Maybe she didn't hear me because she disappeared, her green fatigues blending into a crowd of nurses, orderlies, and wounded. There were three doors on the right but I couldn't remember which one she had walked out of. I looked in the first room, and it was full, three hospital beds and two gurneys crowded in together. I went into the middle room.
Kaz was there, lying on a gurney pushed next to two others. A young nurse was tending to a patient in one of the beds. She was trying to get him to take a pill and he was shaking his head back and forth, mumbling. The others were all asleep or unconscious, nicely cleaned up and bandaged. The sign on the door said Post-Op.
I went over to Kaz. He hadn't been cleaned up, and it didn't look like he had just been operated on. His breathing was harsh, small gasps followed by gulps for air. There was a fresh bandage on his arm, he had a black eye, a cut on his eyebrow, and a serious welt on his forehead. Other than that he looked okay. But why was he in Post-Op?
'Kaz,' I said. 'Can you hear me?'
'What are you doing in here?' the nurse asked, glancing at me before she turned back to her patient. She put a pill in his mouth and held his chin as she lifted a glass of water to his lips.
'Just checking on my friend-'
'Out,' she said, pointing to the door. 'I'll take good care of him.'
'What's wrong with him?' I asked. 'Why is he here? In Post-Op I mean.'
That question delayed her for a second. She looked at me as she went to check the chart hanging on the end of the gurney.
'What's wrong with you?' she asked. 'You look like you should be lying down.'
'Can't disagree,' I said, trying to smile. 'Will you just check his chart and tell me what's wrong with him? His breathing doesn't sound right.'
She seemed exasperated, but relented, putting a hand on Kaz's chest. His uniform blouse and shirt were open, but not cut away like the others. She frowned as she read the chart. I checked the front pocket on his blouse where Kaz had kept the notebook. It was unbuttoned, and empty. I checked his other pockets. Nothing. It was gone.
'Probable concussion, X-Rayed, no visible fractures. No subdermal bleeding, re-dressed existing wound. Patient was conscious upon admission,' she said, summarizing the information on the chart.
'In other words, he was fine except for a bump on the head,' I said. She didn't say anything. She checked his pulse.
'It's weak,' she said.
'He has a bad heart,' I said.
'Billy,' Kaz said weakly. He half opened his eyes. 'How are you?' He sounded almost giddy.
'Kaz,' I said, 'what happened to you?'
'I feel much better now…' I swear he smiled, then closed his eyes. I opened one with my fingers. His face swam back and forth in front of me. The ringing grew louder and the floor started shifting from under me again. I held onto the gurney with one hand, trying to get his face to hold still.
For just one second it did. I saw it, a tiny, contracted pupil, just like Jerome's, only he had already been dead, and Kaz wasn't. Other images popped up in my mind, Kaz in the jeep waiting to go back to the hotel the first time he was admitted here. Dunbar giving him the okay to leave. Rita kissing him goodbye. Gloria and Harding having a heart- to-heart before he got into the jeep for the drive back to the hotel. Jerome. Harry's grandmother. Click, click. Things fell into place and I had to tell this nurse before the floor came up and whacked me.
'Nalorphine,' I said. Both hands were on the gurney now and my legs were shaking. 'Nalorphine, now! Hurry!'
I turned to look at her and try to explain, but all I saw were her eyes; wide with a fear of me, a raving lunatic. I tried to step forward and tell her something but I couldn't remember what. And why was I thinking about Harry's grandmother? I couldn't remember what was so important and then the goddamn bells drove everything else out of my head and all I felt was the gritty concrete floor slam into my cheekbone as someone picked up the floor and hit me with it.
Chapter Thirty-four
It was dark when I awoke. There was a light on a small table next to a window. A dark blackout curtain was drawn over the glass panes, the light from the gooseneck lamp lost in the black fabric. It was quiet. No bells rung. A figure was slumped in a chair next to the light, in shadow. I turned to my right and in the half darkness I could see two other beds with sleeping forms lying on them. I lay there, eyes adjusting to the darkness, trying to remember how I'd gotten here. The train. Bombers. The jeep. Ambulance. Kaz.
'Kaz!' I said out loud, and sat up as memory flooded into my waking mind.
'Billy, it's all right,' said the form in the chair, getting up and limping over to me.
'Harry? Is that you?' He came closer and I saw that it was. Dressed in U.S. Army fatigues and sporting a. 45 automatic in a holster. 'Kaz, is he…'
'He is fine, sleeping right over there, thanks to you.'
'Where's Major Harding?'
'Right here, Boyle,' said Harding as he sat up on the bed facing me and swung around. He had been sleeping with his boots and gun belt on, ready for anything. He spoke in a soft voice. 'Lieutenant
Kazimierz is fine. He's in the last bed against the wall. I don't know how you knew, but you were right. He'd been overdosed with morphine. They administered the antidote to him just in time. You nearly scared that poor nurse to death, but as soon as you fainted, she checked on him. Doc Perrini figures Kaz had about ten minutes left before it would've been too late.'
'Is he going to recover?' I had visions of paralysis, brain damage, all sorts of terrible things to add to the agonies Kaz already had to bear.
'According to the doctor, he has recovered. He'll have a headache from that knock on the head, but that's it. You were X-Rayed, too. You have a very slight fracture of the skull and a moderate concussion. You should be fine if
