something from me in return. Not gratitude or appreciation.
Something deeper. I can feel that she relies on me for her own sense of
purpose. For her reason for being. In taking care of me, she ĕnds the
reason why she was spared. My role is to be healthy enough to stay
alive yet helpless enough to need her. at is my reason for having
survived.
* * *By the end of June, my back still isn’t healed. ere is a constant
crunching, piercing feeling between my shoulder blades. And my chest
still hurts, even to breathe. en I break out in a fever. Klara takes me
to the hospital. She insists that I be given a private room, the very best
care. I worry about the expense, but she says she will just play more
concerts, she will ĕnd a way to cover it. When the doctor comes in to
examine me, I recognize him. He’s the older brother of my former
schoolmate. His name is Gaby. I remember that his sister called him
the Angel Gabriel. She is dead now, I learn. She died at Auschwitz. He
asks me if I ever saw her there. I wish I had a last image for him to
remember her by, and I consider lying, telling him a story in which I
witnessed her do something brave, speak of him lovingly. But I don’t
lie. I would rather face the unknown void of my father and Eric’s last
minutes than to be told something that, however comforting, isn’t
true. e Angel Gabriel gives me my ĕrst medical attention since
liberation. He diagnoses me with typhoid fever, pneumonia, pleurisy, a
broken back. He makes a removable cast for me that covers my whole
torso. I place it on the bed at night so that I can climb inside it, my
plaster shell.
Gaby’s visits become more than just physically therapeutic. He
doesn’t charge me for his medical care. We sit and reminisce. I can’t
grieve with my sisters, not explicitly. It’s too raw, too present. And to
grieve with them seems like a deĕlement of the miracle of our