Nightfall Over Shanghai (29 page)

As usual, the rumble reminded Sunny of Father Diego's warning. But for the past two months, the American planes had passed overhead almost daily without posing any threat to the ghetto and, gradually, Sunny's sense of urgency about the aircraft had receded. However, as the low-pitched sounds grew louder, she dutifully changed Joey's diaper and packed a bottle of water for him, conscious of how stifling hot it would be inside the shelter.

Esther and Jakob had gone off to visit Simon, but Hannah was still in the loft. How the girl coped in the furnace-like heat up there was a mystery to Sunny. “Hannah, the planes,” she called to her. “We have to go.”

“You and Joey go ahead,” Hannah replied. “I have to change. I'll meet you there.”

“You will come soon?”

“In a few minutes. I promise.”

“All right. Don't dawdle, please.”

Sunny lifted Joey off the floor. He offered her one of his placid smiles and reached for her face, gently exploring her cheek with his fingers, as he liked to do. She felt the familiar stirrings in her
chest and kissed him on the forehead, wondering again how her world had ever existed without him in it.

Supporting Joey on her hip, she headed out the door. On the street, she had the odd sense of an approaching storm. Looking up, she noticed the dense formation of aircraft heading straight toward the city. She had never seen as many planes together or heard such a thundering. She assumed the Allies must have a major target in mind, and she silently wished them success in their mission.

As she made her way toward the shelter, she heard an unfamiliar whistling. Then she heard three booms somewhere behind her.
The transmitter!
she thought as the ground shifted beneath her feet and Joey cried out in surprise.

Sunny wheeled around and rushed back toward the flat, Joey in her arms. She burst through the door.

“Hannah, come!
Now.
” Hannah had already come down from the loft and was dashing, wide-eyed, toward her. Without another word, they raced out the door and down the block toward the shelter. Bombers and fighter planes filled the skies like a mass of hungry crows. Bombs were falling everywhere, the din deafening.

The shelter was already teeming with locals, but Sunny elbowed her way through a group of Chinese women and found a spot against the wall for the three of them. There must have been at least fifty people in the confined space, Sunny thought. It reeked of bodies and cooking oil, and the fear was palpable. Several children were whimpering; even a few adults were crying. One old Chinese woman was muttering hysterically over and over in Shanghainese, “Today we meet our ancestors.”

Sunny glanced over to Hannah who, despite being pale with fear, looked composed. “Where is Papa?” she asked.

“He was meeting Ernst at the hospital.”

“What if …”

“Don't even think it, Hannah. He promised me he would seek shelter at the first sign of the planes,” Sunny said, trying to convince herself as well as her stepdaughter.

Hannah lapsed into silence. Sunny rocked Joey back and forth while humming a Chinese lullaby in his ear. After a few minutes, she heard a voice tentatively calling, “Hannah? Are you here, Hannah?”

Hannah straightened, almost bumping her head on the low roof of the shelter. “Herschel, is that you?”

Herschel squeezed into view between the others. “What are you doing here?” Hannah demanded.

His face reddened. “I was not far away when the bombing began and …”

“You decided to check on Hannah,” Sunny said.

“Yes … no … I didn't know of any other shelters near me,” he stuttered.

Hannah squeezed his shoulder and smiled. “Thank you.”

The blasts intensified and the shelter shook with each new detonation. Sunny tucked Joey under one arm and cradled his head with the other. The woman beside her began to wail in distress. A few others yelled at her to shut up.

Three ear-splitting booms rocked the shelter in rapid succession. The force of the blasts propelled Hannah into Sunny. More cries and sobs filled the shelter, silenced only by the thunderous whoosh that came next. Sunny realized that one of the nearby apartment buildings must have collapsed, but she could not tell which one.

“There's a fire, Sunny!” Hannah said, her eyes filling with fear.

Smoke drifted into the shelter. Through the crack in the sandbags, Sunny saw flames.

“What if the shelter catches fire?” Hannah asked.

“It can't,” Herschel reassured her before turning to Sunny for confirmation. “Can it?”

“No.” Sunny shook her head confidently without actually knowing the answer.

More explosions shook the ground but, from the diminished volume of the blasts, Sunny could tell that the bombing had moved a few blocks away. The smoke, however, continued to thicken. The air tasted acrid. Sunny fanned the fumes away from Joey's face, concerned he could asphyxiate inside the poorly vented shelter. People began to cough. Several climbed out of the shelter. Sunny decided that she needed to get Joey into the open air too, despite the risk. “Stay here,” she instructed Hannah and Herschel. As she shouldered her way toward the steps, she heard Franz's frantic voice. “
Sunny? Hannah? Are you down there?
”

“Yes, here, Franz,” Sunny cried, overcome with relief.

Franz jumped down into the pit. He swallowed Sunny and Joey in a tight embrace. “Where's Hannah?” he demanded.

“Here too. With Herschel. He came to find her.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God.” Franz closed his eyes and looked up. “And Esther and Jakob?”

“They went over to see Simon earlier.”

“Oh, thank God,” he repeated.

“What is it, Franz?”

“Our apartment—it's gone.”

***

The smoke cleared, but they were forced to huddle underground for another taut half hour before the explosions finally petered out and it was safe to leave the shelter.

Sunny's legs felt rubbery as she stared at the pile of rubble where, an hour before, her home had been. The sight was surreal. The buildings on either side of theirs stood undamaged, but their apartment must have taken a direct hit. Sunny thought, with sudden concern, of the quiet old Chinese couple who lived in the flat next door. She gagged at the thought of how close she and Hannah had come to being crushed under their own roof.

Franz draped an arm over her shoulder. “Unlike families, new apartments are not difficult to find.”

Sunny swallowed. “I suppose, yes.”

Franz pointed up the street. One dazed man stumbled along, clutching his lacerated head as blood dripped between his fingers. Another was tying his shirt around his own thigh in an effort to stop the bleeding below. “The victims,” he said. “They will need us at the hospital.”

“If there still is a hospital.”

“We must go find out.”

“And if the bombers come back?”

Franz glanced up at the sky. It was clear of everything besides a few puffs of cloud. “What could be left for them to bomb?”

Sunny nodded. “All right. But first let's check on Essie and Simon.”

“Yes, good idea.”

Hannah went off with Herschel to find his grandparents, promising to meet Franz and Sunny at the hospital in an hour—sooner if the bombers returned.

Franz carried Joey in his arms. As they walked the half mile to
Herr Lessner's flat, Sunny was surprised to see how random the bomb damage was. One block was entirely spared. On another, every building on one side of the street had partially or fully collapsed. People wandered up and down what was left of the sidewalk, calling out for loved ones. Others lay on the pavement. Some writhed and moaned from the pain of new injuries. Several were still and lifeless. Sunny hated the sense of helplessness, her inability to offer any measure of comfort to the victims. What good were all her training and experience when she couldn't assist in the time of greatest need?

Her nerves were raw as they reached the block where Simon was staying. The street had been hit hard, the building on the corner partially collapsed. Still holding Joey, Franz ran ahead. He stopped halfway down the street, his shoulders slumped and his chin falling to his chest.

Sunny raced to catch up to him. She gasped when she caught sight of the Lessners' building. Only half of it was standing, and the roof on the far side had caved in.

Franz handed Joey over to her and headed for the building. “Where are you going, Franz?” Sunny demanded.

“I have to go find Simon.”

“It's not safe,” she cried. “The rest of the roof could collapse at any moment.”

“I must, darling.”

Sunny heard a cry and recognized Esther's voice. She looked over her shoulder and saw her sister-in-law on the other side of the street. Clutching Jakob's hand, Esther dodged across the roadway, waving frantically and calling out in German for help.

“Essie!” Sunny shouted to her.

Spotting Sunny and Franz, Esther rushed toward them. “Simon is inside,” she cried. “We must get him out!”

Franz nodded hopelessly. “I will go see, Essie.”

“I will too,” Sunny said.

“No,” Franz said.

But Sunny didn't even respond. Instead, she passed Joey to Esther, who took him in her arms without looking down. “I begged him not to go back inside,” Esther mumbled, sounding stunned. “He insisted. He said he had to help Herr Lessner. Then the roof just …”

Sunny and Franz warily approached the entrance to the building. They listened intently, as much for the sound of the walls or the roof creaking as for signs of life.

“Simon?” Franz called. “Are you in there?”

Nothing.

“Simon? Can you hear me? Say something!”

After a moment, Sunny heard a muffled voice. She listened carefully and made out the words “I can't move.”

“I'm coming, Simon,” Franz called. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he added, “Wait here, Sunny,” then disappeared inside the building.

She was tempted to follow him, but she restrained herself for a tense minute or two until Franz called to her. “All right, I think it's safe.”

Sunny stepped into the Lessners' flat. The floor was strewn with broken dishes, overturned furniture and fallen pictures. Franz was next to a wall that had partially given way. “Where are you, Simon?” he called.

“Here,” Simon's voice was louder and came from the next room. “I can't move.”

Franz turned sideways and manoeuvered through a small opening in the damaged wall. “I'm coming, Simon.”

Sunny took a deep breath and followed her husband through the gap. On the other side, the ceiling had partially collapsed and she had to crouch to her knees. Heart pounding in her throat, Sunny felt claustrophobic, as if she had just crawled into a narrow cave. She navigated around chunks of roof and wall before she spotted Simon. He was lying on his back, his arms and chest free but covered from the waist down by a heavy oak chest of drawers.

Franz crawled over to him. His fingers darted to Simon's neck, feeling for the pulse.

“I'm still alive, Franz.” Simon sputtered a laugh. “I just can't move my legs.”

“Are you in much pain?” Franz asked.

“No. None.”

Franz nodded gravely. “We will get this off you.”

Franz pushed hard at the dresser, struggling to move it. Sunny crawled up beside him and shoved too. The dresser hardly budged. She was shocked by its weight. Finally, with both of them grunting and heaving, they were able to shift it aside. It fell free of Simon's legs with a loud clunk.

Sunny winced as she glimpsed Simon's right ankle, grotesquely twisted and obviously broken. “Simon, your foot,” she whispered.

Simon grabbed her by the wrist. “It doesn't hurt at all, Sunny,” he said, his voice fearful. Her stomach sank even before he added the words “I can't feel my legs.”

Although the refugee hospital had been spared from the bombs, nothing Franz had seen in his time at the front prepared him for the pandemonium that greeted them there. People were lined up out on the street, refugees and locals jostling for space and yelling for attention.

“My arm is broken,” one man cried.

“My grandmother has terrible pain in her chest,” shouted another.

Some of the wounded were too weak to stand and had to kneel or lie beside their relatives.

Franz tried to elbow his way through the crowd, but a few men angrily blocked his path. “I am a doctor here,” he shouted over the din. “I need to pass now.”

One of the two young Chinese men who had agreed to help carry Simon in—after Esther offered them her mother's watch—translated his words into Chinese. Finally, the reluctant crowd parted so that they could all snake their way into the hospital, carrying Simon on the blown-out door that passed for a stretcher.

The scene inside was even more chaotic. Injured people were everywhere, filling every stretcher and covering almost all of the
floor space. Berta and the other nurses were a blur of activity, darting from patient to patient, slapping on dressings and administering shots of painkiller. Two older doctors—one of them the psychiatrist, Dr. Freiberg—looked lost as they tended to wounds that neither had likely seen since their days in medical school.

“Berta,” Franz called to the head nurse, “we need to find a space for this man. Urgently.”

Berta turned to Franz with an incredulous expression, as though he had just asked her to find him the Holy Grail. She raised her shoulders and shook her head helplessly.

“Please, please, you must,” Esther begged. She was ghostly pale as she stood beside her husband's stretcher, gripping his hand fiercely.

“It's Simon, Berta. Simon Lehrer,” Franz added, aware that the New Yorker had found housing for Berta's family when they had first arrived in Shanghai.

“
Ja
, of course,” Berta said, spinning away. “I will find somewhere.”

Franz looked down at his friend. “How are you?”

“I'm okay.” Simon raised a thumb. “I am luckier than most, certainly luckier than Herr Lessner.”

No one had found Lessner's body in the rubble. It wasn't possible he had survived, and no one had time to take more than a cursory look. They were far too concerned with extracting Simon before the rest of the ceiling caved in on them. Franz had reset Simon's dislocated ankle and used the sleeve of his shirt to splint it to the other foot. Esther had commented on how stoic her husband had been, but Franz and Sunny just shared a look, acknowledging that Simon's lack of discomfort during what should have been an agonizing procedure was an ominous sign. Franz could see that Simon
too understood the gravity of his spinal injury, but he had remained upbeat during the journey to hospital, even joking that he needed to find a lighter chest of drawers for their new flat.

Berta waved them over to a bed she had freed up in the far corner of the room. Once Simon had been moved onto it, he looked up at Franz. “No offence, buddy, but I'd rather stare into my wife's beautiful eyes than yours. Go. Go help the others.”

Esther grabbed Franz's wrist with her free hand, her fingers trembling with worry. “His back, Franz,” she implored. “You must do something to fix it.”

Franz summoned the most encouraging look he could. “The fractures will heal on their own, Essie. Right now, what he needs is bed rest.”

“But his legs—he can't move them.”

“Time will tell, Essie.”

Franz reluctantly turned away and wove among the patients on the floor until he reached the nursing station. The surrounding moans, cries and wails formed a cacophony of suffering. Franz's hopelessness only deepened. Shouldering his way between staff members and haphazard stacks of supplies, Franz pulled Berta aside. There was no privacy, so they spoke in hushed tones, their faces almost touching. “How are our supplies holding up?” he asked.

Berta shook her head gravely. “We will run out of morphine soon. And we are very low on dressings and catgut.”

“And anesthetic?”

“We still have a full bottle of ether but …” She flapped a hand toward the masses of new patients. “We will never keep up.”

“The bombing has ended,” Franz pointed out.

“More people keep arriving.” Berta sighed. “Soon, we will have nothing left to offer.”

Franz knew she was right, but he mustered a brave face. “We can do only what we can do.”

She cleared her throat. “Dr. Adler, if we were to just focus on our own people, then perhaps …”

“Are you suggesting we turn away the Chinese?”

Her shoulders straightened. “This is a hospital for refugees. Today, we cannot even cope with the number of them who need our help. Surely those other people must have a hospital of their own somewhere, or perhaps—”

“Enough,” Franz snapped. “Remember Europe before the war? There were many—too many—who used to refer to us as ‘those other people.' That's how it begins.”

“Dr. Adler, you can hardly compare what I am saying to—”

“Of course not.” Franz softened his tone. He had known the nurse long enough to appreciate that she wasn't in the least malicious, and no more racist than most of the refugees. “But we will treat people on the basis of their need and urgency. We will do what we can. It's what we must do. Do you understand, Berta?”

Her face reddening, Berta looked down and mumbled, “I do, Herr Doktor. I am sorry.”

Franz stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled loud enough to draw the attention of the nearby staff members. “We will set up a station outside,” he shouted. “To triage victims. Only those who require surgery or absolutely immediate treatment will be brought inside. We'll tend to everyone else outside. We must ration the morphine and dressings. Only for those whose bleeding will not stop or …” He lowered his voice, embarrassed by his own words. “Or a single shot for those whose pain is beyond bearable.”

Several nurses nodded, thankful for the direction.

Just then, Sunny appeared on the other side of the ward. “The boys?” Franz demanded as soon as he reached her.

“Are with Hannah and Herschel.”

“Where?”

“At the synagogue,” Sunny said. “The street there was untouched by the bombs. It's safe there.”

Franz quickly updated her on the plan for triaging casualties and then asked, “Would you prefer to triage or to operate?”

“You perform the surgery, I will triage.” She smiled sadly. “After all, my Mandarin and Shanghainese are still slightly more proficient than yours.”

***

Franz didn't leave the operating room for the next twelve hours. He lost track of how many fractures he had reset and limbs he had amputated. He could only imagine the scores of casualties that Sunny must have turned away at the front door. He rationed every single item at his disposal, using the fewest possible number of stitches to close his incisions and applying dressings that were more appropriate for scrapes and bruises than for major surgery.

Just as he had expended their last inch of catgut, Sunny stepped into the operating room to announce that there were no more patients waiting for surgery. “Thank God,” Franz muttered, feeling exhaustion overcome him like a drug. “How is everyone holding up?”

“I am so proud of them,” she said. “The nurses were amazing. And Dr. Freiberg never slowed down. He just kept putting on
casts and stitching cuts.” She laughed. “From psychiatry to surgery at his age.”

“How many did we lose?”

Sunny's expression turned grim. “I didn't even count. Many were already dead by the time they got to us. Others, they never stood a chance.”

“No one died in the operating room,” Franz pointed out. “Only because of your skill in selecting appropriate patients.”

Sunny was impervious to his praise. “With more help and more supplies, we could have done so much more.”

“And yet, if we weren't here at all …”

She nodded but appeared unconvinced. “Yes, I suppose it could have been worse.”

“How is Simon doing?”

“I haven't had a chance to visit him,” Sunny said. “Essie left an hour or two ago to check on Jakob and Joey. She told me he was sleeping.”

“Let's go see him now.”

Simon's eyes were open when they reached his bedside. He viewed them with unbridled admiration. “I've had nothing to do but watch all day. I can't believe the work you all do. It's miraculous.”

Sunny squeezed his shoulder. “You built this hospital, Simon. Remember?”

“That was a thousand years ago. Besides, anyone can renovate an old building and call it a hospital. It takes what you two do to make it real.”

“How are you?” Franz asked.

“A little thirsty. Don't suppose you serve cold beer here, do you?” Simon forced a laugh. “There's no pain. I can't feel anything
from my waist down.” He looked from Franz to Sunny, then back to Franz. “I guess I'd better get used to that.”

Franz cleared his throat. “With spinal injuries, you can never tell in the first few days how much recovery one will make.”

Simon eyed him knowingly. “I'm more concerned about how Essie will take this.”

Sunny swallowed. “She's very strong, Simon.”

“My little Austrian ox.” Simon laughed wistfully. “I never expected to get out of this war unscathed, but I never guessed it would be my own countrymen who would collapse the roof in on me.”

“You must give it a little time,” Sunny encouraged.

“Believe me, I'll be the last one to give up on my legs.” The smile seeped from his lips. “But I don't regret it.”

“Regret what?” Sunny asked.

“Any of it. Leaving Ernst's place. Coming back to the ghetto. Even staying with Herr Lessner. I don't regret a single thing.”

Confused, Franz glanced over to Sunny. She seemed to understand better than he did what Simon was saying. “You were incredibly brave going back for Herr Lessner,” she said.

“I was just so tired of being a coward. Hiding when my family needed me most.” He locked eyes with Sunny. “If I had to choose again, I would still trade my legs for my dignity.”