Page 92 of The Lost Husband

THIRTY-EIGHT

JANUARY 1945

Auschwitz, Oswiecim, Poland

“You’re still sick, aren’t you?” Elsa whispers, the poor girl stuck working alongside me.

If I open my mouth to respond, I’ll vomit… I try to nod my head, enough to answer her. Heat splashes me in the face. Not just heat, but a scorching boil of steam as I scoop up discarded clothing from in front of the cremation chamber and drop it into the half-loaded wagon. The smell of decay, ash, and flesh wreak havoc as it is on my empty stomach. But there’s something more going on inside of me than just hunger.

Fire spews out from the sides of the metal enclosure, and all I can do is stare into the dancing flame, wondering what that person’s last thought was before entering the gas chamber.

Another wagon rolls in, which tells me we’ve taken too long.

“We need to move,” Elsa says.

I dump the rest of the strewn clothing on top of the pile and lift one of the handles of the wagon as she lifts the other handle of the wagon too. My occupation was once listed as a seamstress, but not when I arrived at Auschwitz.

“It’s been weeks,” Elsa says as we push toward the exit created only for Germans soldiers to walk out of—except for slave laborers collecting clothing for the sewing block.

It has been weeks. My stomach burns and aches as if I’ve been beaten daily. Fortunately, I haven’t been. I’m not sure if my body is giving out from the hunger or something else is eating me from the inside. Today is the worst it’s been.

The walls of the laundry barrack blur around me as we make our way inside, heading for the growing pile of clothes.

A whistle blows from outside the building, the trill bouncing between my ears.

“What’s the use in having a roll call at this hour?” Elsa mutters. “They must not even know what time of day it is anymore.”

I step away from the wagon, only to catch myself on the rim of the wash bin. I try to push myself back up, but my knees buckle and my body collapses.

“Celina,” Elsa shouts in a whisper. She tries to pull me back up and bile violently spews from my throat.

“Get her out of here. Take her to the infirmary,” a deep gravelly sound of a block-elder’s voice shouting over me.

I can’t move myself. More bile expels, the motion pinning me to the ground as I lie in my own sick.

Someone grabs my ankles and someone else wrenches their hands beneath my arms, shuffling me out the door like a rag doll. My body sways, my organs sloshing around inside of my empty body as pain continues to ripple through me. The cold should feel good on my face now, but it stabs me like tiny ice picks all over my body.

The women carrying me exchange breathless complaints, words I can’t make out as the world spins around me, pulling me into a funnel of darkness.

* * *

When I wake, I’m surrounded by infirmary cots, each filled with another sick person. “Another case of dysentery,” someone dressed like a nurse grumbles.

“How long have you been sick?”

My eyes blink slowly as if fighting against the thick damp air in this building. “Two weeks, maybe,” I utter, unsure if that’s true anymore.

“Here’s a waste bucket,” the woman says, shoving it against the side of my legs.

The metal handle claps against the bucket, the ping piercing through my skull. My body jerks at the sound as if I’ve been struck by something. As if following a command, I reach toward it, my fingers unsteady and twitching. They don’t even look like my hands. All flesh and bone, so thin with green and purple veins contrasting the paleness. I pull my hand back, giving up on the bucket.

The putrid sour stench of sickness sticks like a fog, never thinning or drying up. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth like wool against wool. I try to turn my head away from where the smell is growing the strongest, but my neck is stiff, and suddenly very cold.

I shiver though the room is muggy from the number of people crammed into this space. A cold sweat in January isn’t right. Even beneath a wool blanket, the cold feels like knives scraping against my skin.

It isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this in the past few days. It’s a fever that comes and goes. One minute I’m shivering until my muscles ache, and the next my skin sears like it’s on fire. My clothes are damp and won’t dry and someone has removed my shoes, leaving my bare feet numb and detached.

I don’t remember grabbing the bucket, but it’s clenched between my shaking arms as liquid pelts against the metal repeatedly, my stomach twisting like a wet rag wrung out. When my stomach is empty—the rag is dry—I choke on air, trying to purge the oxygen from my body, so hard, spots flicker in front of my eyes. My throat is scorching from an acidic burn, and my ribs hurt every time I breathe.