Behavior Report 33

Dearest Love,

I awake to sunlight, disoriented, and look at my clock, the parquet floor, to determine the time. There are a few wooden slats before the Well-Fed Nurse arrives with my morning injection. I immediately begin thinking about ways to trick her. How could I use her indiscretion against her? She doesn’t bother to lift my sleeve to inject me, nor does she take any care when plunging the poison in. The last few times when I have been lucid, I’ve noted how she barely even looks where the needle goes. Could I stuff a pillow into my sleeve successfully enough for her not to notice? Is there something else I use to protect my arm?

Before I can land on any promising idea, I hear footsteps padding in the hallway. ‘It’s too early,’ I think and reexamine the sunlight on the floor. ‘Did I miscalculate?’ I quickly arrange myself into position, pulling the sheets to my chest a moment before the lock clicks and the door hinges squeal open. The Well-Fed Nurse doesn’t walk in. Instead, she just breathes heavily in the doorway.

Two other sets of footsteps appear in the hallway. One set is harsh, like the sharp clip clops of a horse trotting down a concrete avenue. The other is a muted shuffle that sounds like a carpenter shaving down a piece of wood. The sounds grow louder and louder until they reach their zenith next to the guttural breathing of the Well-Fed Nurse.

I peek through a small crack in my eyelids to hide my awareness. A man about the same age as me and an older woman stand on either side of the Well-Fed Nurse. The man wears a white lab coat over a black suit. He has a symmetrically square face with sharp right angles along his jaw and the bridge of his nose. His lips are thin and pulled tightly into a concentrated frown. I’m drawn into his eyes. They’re set deeper into his skull than most, which creates dark shadows underneath his eyebrows. I can feel an icy callousness reflected in his eyes.

The woman is tall and thin with a presence that demands my attention. Confidence pulls her shoulders back and her chin up like a propaganda poster. She wears a gray wool suit jacket with buttons secured up to her neck and a skirt that reaches to a spot just below her knees. Both are tailored to fit tightly to her thin frame. A matching industrious gray necktie is knotted snugly into the collar of a white blouse. Her face is stuck between a smile in her eyes and a frown on her mouth.

“This is the other American,” the older woman says with a strong German accent. She speaks sharply, as if her words are like knives purposefully cutting through the air to give their meaning as forcefully as possible. “This one gave my men a challenge. He’s strong, fit, and athletic.”

I focus on how she said, “The other American.” That confirms that Earl is somewhere locked up like me. I wonder if he is planning an escape as well.

The doctor steps to my bed and pulls the sheets from me. His strong hands crawl across my face, pulling me one way and then the other via a firm grip on my chin. He presses two fingers to my neck to check my heartbeat for a few moments and then examines my arms and legs. When he reaches my ankles, he removes the bed sheets entirely from me, touches the shackles, and lets out a small chuckle. “Expecting him to walk away?”

The doctor’s voice is jarring compared to the others in my room. He speaks smoothly with the words rolling off his tongue like only an American can do. He has no hints of a Kraut accent cutting into the ends of his words, nor does he have the pomp that the English add to their words. ‘The doctor is an American,’ I think. I want to jump up and ask him, “What are you doing here?”

“We take precautions,” the older woman says.

The doctor steps back, places his hands in his lab coat pockets, and turns toward the two women. “He’s too dehydrated. His heartbeat is too weak.”

“That hasn’t stopped you in the past.”

“Of course, but we’ve also not been successful with those tests either.”

‘Successful with what?’ I wonder.

“But none of them have had Aryan blood like this one,” the older woman says.

“Aryan blood or not, a subject that is too weak cannot withstand the strain. He needs to be fully hydrated and have plenty of energy or else we will fail again. Only the volunteers in peak physical condition have been successful. If we wish to transfer that success to our enemies, we need them to be in good health.”

The older woman lets out a long sigh and doesn’t say anything. The moments of silence give me time to consider the doctor’s use of the term “Enemies.” Who are his enemies?

The doctor continues, “I don’t say this to be a burden to your plans. I want this success just as much as you. This could mean important things for me too, but we must be mindful of our past experiments.”

‘Experiments?’ I shudder inside.

“How long?” The older woman says.

“How long for what?”

“How long before this man is healthy enough in your eyes?”

“If you stop administering morphine today, he’ll need several days just to become lucid.”

“That is too long,” the older woman says sharply.

“I can’t control how long it takes and I haven’t even mentioned what will happen with his body when you stop giving him the morphine.”

The older woman’s feet clip and clop to the bed. I can feel her shadow loom over me. She places her hand on my forehead like a mother checking her child for a fever. Her hand is ice cold. “We are scheduled to move out in a few days. I don’t want my men to go without knowing the results,” she says with disdain. “They are embarking on one of the most challenging missions ever in this war. Our success,” she pauses for a moment and then says in a methodical voice, “The success of the Third Reich depends on this. Your practice will go nowhere if the Third Reich fails.”

The doctor doesn’t respond. I keep my eyes closed with the two of them standing over me, but I want to see the unsaid words passing between the two. I want to get a glimpse of what the doctor may be thinking. I desperately want to know how the older woman is staring at him. Is she giving a look of death or is it more of pleading? Her voice suggests the former.

What are they planning to do with me? How does it affect the entire war?

I can only assume that the doctor is the Alter Man. That makes the most sense. He’s a man, for one, and while I don’t know Kraut, the term, “Alter,” must mean something like alternate.

Who is she? How does she fit into all of this? How does she know the plans of their army?

“Give him the water,” the doctor says, interrupting my thoughts. “That is your fast solution. The water will cleanse out the morphine and return his strength. It should also reduce or remove all the symptoms of withdrawal that typically take many weeks to work their way out of a patient’s system.” He steps away toward the door and stops. “I can’t promise you that he’ll be ready before your mobilization, but the water will help.”

The older woman’s heels clip clop to the doctor. “Thank you.”

I peek through my eyelids once again and see the doctor leave. The Well-Fed Nurse takes his position next to the older woman.

“Fullen zee ine bad vanna mindem vasser,” the older woman says. Her voice sounds more comfortable back in its native tongue. “Be decka zinen ganzen corper.”

“Goot,” The Well-Fed Nurse responds.

“Dann, zeets un yeeder shtoon nah him.”

“Yeeder shtoon da?” The Well-Fed Nurse’s eyebrows raise in shock.

“Ick will wissen van ever ride est,” the older woman says. “So bide err gesund ist.”

I wish I understood them, but the older woman leaves without saying anything that has any reference to something I can connect to that will help me. The Well-Fed Nurse remains in my room for a few moments, staring at me. The surprise in her eyebrows lowers to one of anger. She doesn’t bother to pull the sheets back over me nor does she do anything that could make me comfortable. Instead, she simply stares venomously for a moment and then leaves, locking the door behind her.

Silence reenters my room and begins arranging all the thoughts that collected in my head. When viewed as a whole, they are all a set of reactions like a line of dominos falling from a single push. The Well-Fed Nurse’s anger was created by the demand from the older woman. That demand came from the doctor’s recommendation to give me the water that will cleanse out the morphine, return my strength, and reduce the symptoms of withdrawal. And giving me the water is the first step toward the success of the Third Reich. That success is dependent on whatever experiment the doctor will do. My Love, I cannot fathom what can be done to me that would affect the Third Reich.

But before I can take my thoughts further, I hear the padding of the Well-Fed Nurse’s feet returning to my room. The door clicks and squeals and the nurse remains within the doorframe. Several other footsteps emerge, and I begin to wonder what is to happen next. What did the older woman tell the nurse to do? Two Kraut soldiers pass through the door and take positions at the head and foot of my bed. The one by my feet carries a small steel container, like a canteen, that he opens and removes a chisel like tool that is dripping wet. He hands the container to the Well-Fed Nurse and then presses the chisel against the brace around my left ankle. The edge slides through the thick steel like a warm knife to butter. Once he cuts through one side, he spins the shackle and cuts the opposite side. He repeats the process on my right ankle.

While that is all happening, the other soldier uncaringly removes the pillow from underneath my head and then untucks the bedsheet. The soldier by my feet pulls the sheet as well and they lift me up as if I were in a hammock. A few words leave their mouths that sound more like curses than directions to one another. The entire time, the Well-Fed Nurse looks on and moves out of the way to let the men do their work.

They carry me through the door and into the hallway where I haphazardly swing back and forth between their footsteps. Doors, just like mine, dot the walls in equally spaced segments and I wonder if Earl is locked away in one of them. I catch glimpses of richly carved oak pillars that are rooted into the floor and crawl up the wall where they expand and branch out into the ceiling. We pass eight or nine doors before the hall opens into a large communal room that features a grand piano in the center. An ornate golden chandelier, with hundreds of candles, hangs over the piano. Paintings of flush faced, overweight, royalty fill the empty spaces on the walls. At the very end of the room is a door where the soldiers take me.

They drop me into a large bathtub that doesn’t have any water. Pain stings my elbows and butt and before I can consider the depth of the pain, the sheet is pulled out from under me. Then, my pants are pulled off, followed by my shirt. I feel like a sack of potatoes, dropped, and manhandled into a bowl. Somehow, I keep my eyes closed the entire time. I hide any grimacing from the pain. Were they to begin tying me up to a pole for an execution, then I’d be fighting for my life. A bath on the other hand …

I hear the soldiers pick up steel buckets and then the squeak of a faucet turning on. The chill of the porcelain tub pulls the heat from my body. Footsteps bring a bucket to the tub and the soldier carelessly dumps ice cold water onto me. It feels like thousands of daggers cutting into my soul. I cannot help but react by lunging upward.

The soldier laughs.

The second soldier fills his bucket and does the same.

It’s a joke to them.

My bones feel as if they’ve frozen. Breathing seems impossible because the chill tightens my skin like cooling candle wax. More and more water is thrown on me and with each successive splash, I feel my body start to go numb, its reaction to the cold subdues. Slowly, but surely, the water rises about me until all that remains above the surface is my nose and lips.

The water’s icy grip grows less and less painful. From within the water, I can hear the muffled sounds of the soldiers continuing their task until the last splash is followed by the clunk of the two steel buckets and footsteps leaving. Silence enters the room. The chill prevents me from moving. I feel only my heartbeat in the absolute stillness. It’s faint. Several moments pass between each beat. I decide to count in between. I get to four on the first few tries, then five, then six. The number keeps growing between each heartbeat until I come to a point when I keep counting with no interruption.

My body slides fully into the water. I have no power to push myself back up to the surface. My Love, I think of you and Junior to help motivate me to search for some power to bring me back to life.

But no amount of motivation or memories can raise me.

The cold is too strong.

I continue to fall further and further down, beyond the bottom of the bathtub and into an underworld filled with apparitions that resemble Lieutenant Talbott and George and Walt and Bob and the rest of the boys. Their heads are lowered in disappointment. None of them make eye contact with me. I continue to fall beyond their ghostly presence and come to a massive cave, one I have never seen before. Its walls are illuminated by glowing plants. Stalagmites draw up from the cave floor like teeth growing from rocky gums. Each tip sharpens into knife points. I continue to fall with no ability to slow myself. One sharp point stands in the direct path to my heart.

My Love, I can’t move. I can’t swim. I can’t flap my arms like wings or do anything to change my fall. When I’m ten feet away from the tip, I hear laughing. The chuckles start out softly and growth louder as I draw closer to stone. Somehow, I know the voice without seeing the person. The laughter sounds like it is spoken through gravel, course and sharp. An image of the individual develops in my mind. Blonde hair. Broad shoulders. Boots with markings.

The Unforgiveable Savage.

As soon as I see his face, the cave collapses. The stalagmite pierces my chest. My heart is run through. Yet, I feel nothing. Whether it is the chill or the acceptance, I feel no pain. I feel no pressure. I am simply run through.

I stop breathing.

My mind stays ever present and I wonder if that is true hell? Death with consciousness? Hell is knowing that you are dead and cannot do anything but stay in that moment. Laughter echoes all around. I desperately try to remember you, My Love, and Junior, and all the other people who are unknowingly dependent upon me to give them their last memory of their loved ones. But nothing comes.

Just when I am about to give up entirely, I feel something. A spark. A jolt. An electrical pulse that begins as the tiniest fragment of power. The energy grows as if someone were turning up the volume on a radio. Each pulse sends sparks to my arms and legs. My muscles twitch and stretch and retract. The immediate darkness from the cave transforms into a blinding white. Power grows within me. I can feel the energy collect and build like the exact moment before a stick of dynamite explodes. A fire grows and ignites something I haven’t felt in a long time.

Then, everything happens all at once.

I explode.

Breath returns to my lungs.

Warmth tingles my toes and fingers.

My heart beats once again.

I find myself standing up in the bathtub, dripping, water strewn about the floor.

I’m alive!

The water.

The water brought me back.