Page 100 of The Lost Husband

My stomach tightens, a reminder of the pain I was in, and how scared I was to die. I thought I was imagining Noah by my side. An angel in waiting. A fever dream—just a day or two before I and the other sick prisoners were moved into the cellar of the infirmary. Then, a week later, when he saved me again—from the explosion, but that time, he was wearing a German uniform.

Noah’s breathing turns weak again as if air is leaving him too quickly.

“Noah,” I say, touching his arm gently, trying to bring him to the present moment. Or I need to bring myself present to thismoment. I don’t know. His body is rigid under my touch, like he’s bracing for some sort of impact.

“He pulled me—” Noah chokes out a breath. His feet kick through the bottom of the sheet. “Around the back… of the building…” His voice softens like it’s pinching each word. “He—he kept—” Noah swallows hard. “Throwing me against the wall.”

My chest feels like it’s caving in. Every word scrapes down my spine.

“My coat…” He grinds his jaw, his cheeks flexing into sunken wells. “Told me to take it off.” He goes still. “Demanded all my clothes.” He shakes his head and his eyes narrow like he’s staring at the guard again. “He removed his uniform and threw it at me.” He takes a breath to pause or remember. “Told me to get dressed.”

“I’m tossing the uniform into the corridor,” Elias whispers from behind me. “Out of his sight.” He does so quickly and returns to my side, then leans over Noah to get him to refocus on him. “You need to take a breath. Your body can’t handle this anger. You need to listen to me.”

Silence fills the room just long enough to hear the wheelbarrow groan, causing Noah to whip his head toward the window. “You don’t understand…” Noah shouts at Elias. “The SS is coming back. He said he’d know if I took it off. He’d come back for us both.”

Noah tries to sit up, a jarring contrast from his lethargy an hour ago. I don’t know whether to help him or stop him, but Elias knows. He presses his hands against Noah’s shoulders to keep him against the pillow.

“The SS are gone now—they’re gone,” Elias tells him.

“Do you hear me? He’s coming back. He’s going to kill her!” Noah growls. “My wife.”

Avi’s up on her feet, beside me, cupping her hand over her mouth.

Elias braces Noah down, steady and sure, like he’s done this before. Like he knows what panic does to a body. But I fear restraining him will only make the anger inside of him boil harder. I know this anger. I feel it inside of me whenever I close my eyes.

“Tobacco. He smelled like tobacco,” Noah says.

I stare at him, letting my eyes blur until he seems more familiar. My husband. I miss him. I miss him so much I don’t know if I can handle much more of this.

“He was missing a bottom tooth,” Noah continues.

I lean forward and touch his face again, willing my tears to stay away as I do. “Shh,” I hush.

“A stutter.” His voice tightens into a whine.

Noah’s eyes cinch, and tears form in the corners of his eyes. His face reddens again, as if he’s holding a breath. “He’s gone,” I say, stroking my thumb along his cheek.

His expression eases, the red fades back into a flush pink, his lips soften, and his body settles back into the mattress. I lower my head to his chest, needing to hear his heart beating.

It’s there. I hear it.

Elias and I remove our hands from him, neither of us looking at each other for common ground. This is what will separate us from anyone who wasn’t innocently imprisoned, now and for generations to come. People might never understand what we’ve seen, or experienced, the inhumanity, the things darker than an imagination will travel. What Noah was saying sounds like a bad dream. Just a bad dream. A rifle to a head as a barter for something else was a normal day in Auschwitz.

I want to forget it all. But I know that’s impossible.

“Did you still think the Soviets would save you?” Avi whispers.

Noah shakes his head. “I knew what they’d do to me in that uniform. It didn’t matter anymore.”

I was the trade-off.

“That guard knew you would take the fall for him. He knew the Soviets would kill whoever was standing in their way too, like they did to Christoph. German guards or not, they weren’t checking identification.”

Noah stills, his gaze drifts to the far wall, wide and full of questions. Then his brows soften, as if he’s realized something.

“Christoph…” Noah repeats, the name no more than a breath lodged in his throat.

Elias covers his mouth, realizing Noah might not have been clear on what happened to his best friend. I was afraid to ask. I was going to wait until he was better.