The Far Side of the Sky Page 33

  “We never do. There is not nearly enough food for the residents, let alone the volunteers.” Just as Franz felt his throat opening again, Esther added, “Oh, except this week. On Thursday, the cook, that young Mrs. Schnepp, made a potato soup she wanted us to try. We each had a small bowl—”

  “Oh, God!” he croaked. “Bring Hannah here straight away!”

  Franz slammed the receiver down. He dashed out to the ward to find it overflowing with newly arrived patients. Several women lay curled up on their beds, others sat hunched over, holding buckets to their lips. Retching sounds filled the room. The stench of vomit was almost eye-watering. Berta and Liese rushed between patients, carrying flasks of rehydration fluid. It took Franz a moment to spot Sunny in the far corner, inserting an intravenous needle into a patient’s arm.

  “Miss Mah! Sunny!” he called, ignoring the woman in the nearby bed who clutched her belly and waved frantically to him with her free hand.

  Sunny’s head swivelled in his direction. “Yes, Dr. Adler?”

  “I need two beds readied!” he cried.

  Berta gaped at him. “Dr. Adler, we have no more beds.”

  “It’s Esther and Hannah!” Franz cried. “They have it too, Sunny!”

  Sunny sprang up from her crouch beside the patient and raced over to him. “Cholera?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  The colour drained from her face. She pointed to a stout woman who sat up in her bed worriedly watching the commotion around her. “Berta, put Mrs. Shapiro in a chair in the hallway.” She swung her finger to an older woman who lay dozing in another bed. “And Mrs. Steinman can be put in the cot in the staff room.”

  Berta grimaced. “The staff room? With cholera? You cannot—”

  “Dr. Adler’s child is coming!” Sunny’s words silenced Berta.

  Franz rushed out to the street to wait for Hannah and Esther. He paced up and down. His open lab coat flapped in the icy breeze, but he was indifferent to the chill. He kept thinking of the four-year-old who had died before even reaching the hospital. Wringing his hands, he called out to the empty street, “Where are you, liebchen?”

  Forever seemed to pass before a woman and a man, the latter carrying a child in his arms, rounded the corner. Simon carrying Hannah? Franz rushed toward them. After only a few strides, he realized that they were strangers.

  “Herr Doktor!” the man called urgently and motioned to his staggering wife.

  Franz waved toward the entrance. “Inside, my friend! They will help you there.”

  Five or six minutes later a rickshaw swerved around the corner. Franz darted out to meet it. He saw his daughter lying in the back huddled against Esther’s shoulder, her coat pulled up and over her face.

  “Hannah!” he cried. “Do you hear me?”

  Hannah didn’t stir at the sound of his voice. Esther’s face scrunched in discomfort. “Franz, Hannah was mumbling only moments ago. Then she just stopped!”

  Franz shot his hand inside the rickshaw and pulled the coat from Hannah’s head. Her face was ashen and her eyes closed. Time stopped.

  Then Hannah’s lips sputtered.

  Franz scooped up his daughter. She hung limp in his arms as he ran her down the pathway toward the hospital.

  Meeting Franz at the door, Sunny raced them to the ward and guided him to the waiting bed. His hands were damp from Hannah’s soiled clothing as he lowered her onto the mattress. Head flopping to one side, she lay as still as her old doll, Schweizer Fräulein. Berta stripped off Hannah’s coat and sopping dress, while Sunny reached for an intravenous needle.

  Franz shook Hannah’s shoulder again. “Liebchen, it’s me. Papa!” Nothing. “Please, Hannah, wake up!”

  Hannah’s lips bubbled and she muttered something incomprehensible.

  Franz stroked the loose strands of hair back from her forehead, his fingers warmed by the fever ravaging her brow.

  Esther appeared at the far end of the bed, holding herself upright by the railing. Berta and Liese joined them at the bedside, but their flasks of fluid were useless to the unconscious girl. Liese laid a hand on Esther’s elbow and tried to guide her to the other waiting bed, but she clung to the bed railing and weakly shrugged her off.

  “Speak to me, Hannah!” Franz implored.

  “Please, God!” Esther moaned. “Please!”

  With the intravenous needle in hand, Sunny leaned forward. She tied a rubber tourniquet under Hannah’s armpit and then ran her fingers up the girl’s arm in search of a vein.

  “Can you feel anything?” Franz demanded.

  Sunny poked the needle through the skin and wiggled the tip back and forth. Hannah didn’t flinch. Holding his breath, Franz stared at the hub of the needle, desperate to see a drop of blood form.

  I will do anything, God. He prayed for the first time in his adult life. Anything. Just—please—do not take her from me!

  Franz stepped around Berta to where Sunny hunched over the bedside. She looked up at him helplessly. “She’s so dehydrated, Franz. Her veins have all collapsed.”

  Leaning forward, Franz took the needle from her hand. He burrowed the tip deeper under the skin, pivoting and angling it, but unable to pierce the flattened vein. Heartbeat drumming in his ears, he withdrew the needle and poked the skin higher above Hannah’s elbow. Still no blood.

  Franz yanked out the needle and jabbed Hannah’s arm again. His vision clouded over as the tears welled and fell onto the child’s arm.

  “No, God, no!” Esther sobbed. “Please, no!”

  Sunny jumped to her feet. “Franz, there is another way!”

  CHAPTER 41

  The doubt engulfed Sunny as she ran down the hallway toward the storeroom. Is the needle even still in Father’s medical bag?

  A few weeks before, Sunny had stuffed all the medicines she could find into Kingsley’s bag and taken them to the refugee hospital without even checking what other equipment had been left inside.

  Sunny burst into the storeroom, swept the bag off the lower shelf and spun back for the ward. While she ran, she rummaged blindly through the bag. A glass syringe fell and shattered on the floor but Sunny kept moving. Her anxiety soared as she dug deeper without finding it. Then her fingers touched the long skinny sheath that rested on the bottom. She dropped the bag where she stood and stepped onto the ward holding only the needle in its cloth sheath.

  Hannah lay statue-still on the bed. Esther and the two nurses stood as motionless. With sweat streaming down his brow, Franz hunched over the bed jabbing the intravenous needle back and forth in his futile search for a vein.

  Sunny’s respiration was ragged as she reached the foot of the bed. “Liese, please get me a syringe and prime the intravenous tubing,” she panted.

  Her eyes skeptical, Liese turned and reached for the nearby bottle of Ringer’s lactate.

  Franz looked up at Sunny, his face anguished. “What more can you do?”

  Holding up the sheath, Sunny extracted the enormous needle from inside. She had not laid eyes on the tool since the day, three years earlier, when her father had used it to save the life of the diabetic boy.

  Sunny leaned forward and laid her free hand on Hannah’s exposed shin, palpating upward until she hit the bony ridge near the knee that was the tibial tuberosity. She measured two fingers’ width below and planted the tip of the huge needle against the skin. She flattened her palm over the top of the needle and pushed down. The tip easily penetrated Hannah’s skin but glanced off the thick bone below and slid away.

  The child remained motionless.

  Feeling the sweat bead on her lip, Sunny pulled back the needle and repositioned the tip over the initial spot. She placed her palm back on the hub of the needle, locked her elbow and leaned her entire body weight down on it. She felt the resistance of the bone against the needle and worried that it might bend the metal. Suddenly, her hand plunged forward with a gut-wrenching crack as the needle perforated the bone.

  Sunny let go and the needle stood upright, anc
hored inside the bone marrow. “The syringe!” she called to Liese.

  Sunny attached the syringe and pulled back on the plunger, comforted by the sight of the gelatinous bone marrow flowing into the glass. “The tubing, please.”

  Sunny hooked the tube to the end of the needle and opened the flow. Her eyes darted to the bottle of Ringer’s lactate. A moment passed, and then fluid began to drip into the tubing. Sunny removed the bottle from the pole. She stretched her arm and held it as high as she could above her head, maximizing the force of gravity on the flow.

  Franz’s fingers flitted over Hannah’s neck in search of a pulse. They finally came to rest just beneath her jaw. He blinked in obvious relief. “The fluid runs directly into the bone marrow?” he asked Sunny.

  “Yes,” Sunny said. “And from there into the veins. My father taught me this approach.”

  “Can it possibly work?” he asked, his voice husky. “It did the last time.”

  “Please, God, let it also work now,” Esther murmured. Still clutching the bed railing, she began to sink slowly toward the floor, her legs no longer able to hold her up.

  Berta responded with remarkable speed, catching Esther by the armpits before she hit the ground. She half-dragged the fainting woman to the nearby stretcher.

  Sunny’s arm ached as she held the bottle high over her head. Almost half the fluid had already drained into Hannah. Without taking her eyes from the bottle, she said, “My father told me that since the needle’s calibre is so wide, the fluid actually runs into the bloodstream faster through the marrow than a vein.”

  Franz kept his fingers glued to Hannah’s neck, as though afraid that her heart would stop beating if he lost contact with the pulse. “It’s a little stronger, I think,” he said.

  Sunny lowered her arm and secured the bottle of Ringer’s lactate to a pole. “Liese, we’ll need at least two more bottles.”

  The nurse hurried off toward the storeroom.

  Franz stroked Hannah’s hair. “Everything will be better now, liebchen.” He glanced at Sunny. “These fluids will fix you. Sunny has brought you back.”

  Sunny became aware of the moans and smells around her. She knew that other patients, including Esther, needed attention too, but her feet were glued to the ground. She could not leave Hannah or Franz. The bottle emptied and Sunny hung a second one. Berta brought Franz a wet cloth, and he tenderly dabbed Hannah’s face and neck while murmuring constant reassurances.

  Hannah’s eyelids fluttered. Franz’s hand froze in mid-dab. His eyes darted to Sunny. “I saw her blink too, Franz!” she said.

  Franz squeezed Hannah’s hand in his. “Liebchen, can you hear me?”

  Her eyelids opened and she stared back at him glassily but said nothing. “Oh, Hannah!” He kissed her brow joyously. “Liebchen, you are awake.” “Where am I, Papa?” she croaked.

  “At the hospital.” His voice faltered. “You lost so much fluid. You passed out.”

  “Will I get better?” she mumbled as her eyes drifted shut again.

  “Yes, liebchen!” Franz laughed and kissed her forehead again. He looked at Sunny, his eyes brimming with gratitude. “Thanks to our wonderful, brilliant Sunny, yes, you will.”

  Simon burst onto the ward. Sunny had never seen him so flustered. He rushed back and forth between Hannah’s and Esther’s beds, repeating the same questions and tossing his hands around as though juggling imaginary balls. Eventually, Simon settled down beside Esther’s bed. He peppered her with non-stop nervous chatter as he clung to her hand.

  The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Patients from the same cholera-contaminated heim soon overran the small hospital. The staff had to lay down mats and blankets along the hallway to accommodate the overflow. Eventually, Max set up a triage desk outside the front door, where he turned away all but the sickest of patients. Before noon, the intravenous fluids had been depleted and the nurses could offer only oral fluids. Three other victims, including two children, died in the span of six hours. One nurse had started vomiting.

  Word of the cholera outbreak spread through the refugee community. Several people showed up to volunteer. With Simon coordinating, they helped feed fluid into the weakest patients, scrub the beds and hand-wash the sheets.

  By the evening, the worst of the crisis had passed. Sunny had gone to the staff room to rest her legs for a few minutes, but she nodded off in her chair almost as soon as she sat down. She woke to the aroma of steeping tea, a welcome reprieve from the stench of disease that permeated the hospital.

  Face haggard but calm, Franz sat across the small table from her. He slid a steaming cup of tea toward her. Sunny sat up. “Hannah? How is she?”

  “Much better,” he said. “She was drinking so well that I pulled the needle from her leg. She is sleeping now.”

  Sunny nodded with relief. “And Esther and the others?”

  “Essie is all right.” Franz held up his hands. “Another man died, but there was nothing to be done. We have had no new patients in the past three hours.”

  Sunny rubbed her eyes and then took a sip of the hot tea, realizing how parched her lips were. Franz grinned widely. “That was something this morning, Sunny. A miracle.”

  She took another sip. “You can thank my father.”

  “And I intend to. Every day of my life. But right now, I am thanking you.” His eyes misted over and his voice cracked. “Sunny, if I had lost Hannah, I don’t know what …”

  “But you won’t lose her, Franz.” She took another sip of tea.

  He stared at her for several moments. A fresh smile lit his face. “I love you, Sunny.”

  She shook her head. “Franz, it’s not the time to say such things. You are overwrought. You are confusing gratitude with—”

  He grasped her hand. “I am confusing nothing. If I live to be a hundred, I will never be able to thank you enough for saving Hannah’s life. But that does not change a thing.” He squeezed her hand tightly. “I have been in love with you for years. And I am tired of denying it to you and to myself.”

  Sunny gulped back the lump in her throat. She felt the tears welling. “And what about Lotte and Mrs. Reuben?”

  “I will tell Lotte the truth.” He shrugged. “As for Mrs. Reuben, her threats are meaningless now. We have just survived cholera, we can also survive Clara.”

  Sunny laughed as tears ran down her cheeks. “The time has come for me to be truthful with Wen-Cheng too.”

  Franz leaned farther forward and gently cupped a hand around her neck. He drew her head toward his and touched his lips to hers.

  Her heart pounded with elation. “I love you too, Franz.”

  VI

  CHAPTER 42

  JUNE 28, 1942, SHANGHAI

  Sunny swivelled from side to side to view her reflection in the full-length mirror. Her high-neck, bright red cheongsam, embroidered in silver and gold, clung smoothly to her slight curves without bunching or wrinkling. Self-conscious as she felt in the lavish gown, the touch of the silk enthralled her.

  Sunny glanced over to Jia-Li. With her hair tied back and pinned with a vibrant blossom, Jia-Li looked exquisite in her simple royal blue qipao. “Is this dress not too much for me, bao bèi?” Sunny asked. “You would suit it so much better.”

  “Nonsense!” Jia-Li cried. “I have never seen a more beautiful bride, xiao hè.”

  Sunny’s face heated and she giggled happily. She spun around on her toes. “This dress is the most generous gift I have ever received. I cannot thank you enough, Jia-Li.”

  “You can and you have.” Jia-Li wrapped her arms around Sunny and hugged her tightly. “I am so happy for you.”

  Sunny filled with affection for her friend. She was proud of her. Jia-Li had rebounded from the heartache of her broken engagement. She had not touched the opium pipe in over three months. She had even fallen for another man, a soft-spoken Russian poet with wild curly hair and understanding eyes.

  “I am so glad you are here with me,” Sunny whispered in her friend’
s ear. “It means everything. I only wish Father …”

  “Oh, xiao hè, your father—our father—is watching somewhere.” Jia-Li released Sunny and straightened her friend’s wedding dress. “Let’s get you out there before the good doctor thinks you have changed your mind.”

  Sunny smiled. “I just need a moment.”

  Jia-Li turned for the door. “I will go and see if everyone is seated.”

  Sunny stole another glimpse in the mirror. The dress was as perfect as the setting. Even though the Japanese had seized the Cathay Hotel, Simon had mysteriously managed to secure the use of the hotel’s tea room for the wedding service. He refused to tell Sunny what it cost him, insisting that it was his wedding present to the couple.

  Sunny held up her hand to view her gold band gleaming in the light. She was eager to move the ring from her left to right hand, which to Austrians, Franz had told her, signified a woman’s transition from engaged to wed. Three months earlier, he had proposed to her on the same bench in Public Garden where they had shared their first lunch. As thrilled as she was, she tried to decline the ring, arguing that they could not afford the expense. Franz explained that it had cost him nothing, since Esther had smuggled the ring—her grandmother’s wedding band—out of Vienna in her clothing. Sunny even tried to persuade Esther, who wore her mother’s band, to sell the ring to fund other essentials. But Esther would not hear of it. “We have so little, Sunny. You deserve something special to mark this occasion.”

  The guilt for having such an extravagant wedding and valuable ring still nagged Sunny. Hardship and deprivation in Shanghai were constant under the Japanese. Paid work was scarce. Rationing of everything—rice, water, coal, medicine and electricity—had become the rule after the conquerors had claimed most of the resources to feed their massive military machine. So many people, even among the once prosperous Shanghailanders, went hungry. Each morning, the city woke to record numbers of corpses piled on the sidewalks.

  “What’s done is done,” Sunny reassured her reflection. “It would be far worse not to relish every moment of this.”