Jim - Seven.

Jim

            “The case, Pan Banhart.”

            “Sorry, what?” I was still unaccustomed to Dr. Kaminski’s thick accent and unsteady English

            “The case, proszę, I ask you fetch the case of wood.”

            “Oh!” I leapt up from my corner, ridiculously eager to make myself useful. “Right here!”

            Hersch had sent me to work with Pan Doktor Immanuel Kaminski, the very last physician in the ghetto, last week, and the man was already my hero. He was the bravest, toughest, smartest guy I’d ever even spoken to.

            I wasn’t really supposed to be doing any doctoring. Erich had smuggled us some gasoline in his pack, for explosives. It would be explosive enough on its own, if you lit it on fire, but the doctor wanted to put some aside in case Erich managed to get his hands on more chemicals. After a few days of sitting in the darkened war room with a rag over my mouth pouring the gas into different bottles and beakers, Dr. Kaminski liked me a lot and I was practically worshipping him, and he asked if I would like to join him on a house call.

            A house call in the ghetto, as you can imagine, was terrifying. For the first time since arriving in Piekło, I had to go out on the street in the middle of the day. I took a yellow star jacket from Hersch’s room, and I wrapped my face up in a scarf and hat, but I would be dead if a soldier stopped me or asked for identification. I had to walk half a block behind the doctor, so he wouldn’t be associated with me if I got caught. We passed three German soldiers on the way. I had never been surer I was going to die, and I wished I could recall even one damn prayer from my measly Lutheran knowledge.

            Dr. Kaminski, like literally everyone other person in the ghetto, handled life-threatening danger far better than I did. In fact, the guy didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. He told me he used to run his medical practice with his wife, the only female doctor in the area, but she had been taken in the first liquidation. Just before the invasion, they had had the good instinct to send his four sons to America to live with his sister. Now he didn’t care about anything except keeping the prisoners in the ghetto alive. But he wasn’t cold or angry, though, like you might expect. He was really amazingly friendly, and he actually seemed to enjoy having been saddled with a jumpy American he could barely communicate with. He taught me the first things I ever really learned about antibiotics, infections, and contagions.

            He walked through the ghetto with his head high, wearing his black, broad-brimmed hat. He nodded at the soldiers, and the kinder looking ones nodded back. On the street, everyone mostly left me alone. But the people who knew him, the starving, freezing people who huddled in doorways and alleys, hobbled out to walk by his side. He would speak to them for a moment, break off a piece of the bread in his pocket, and press it into their skeletal hands. I had never wanted to be exactly like another person so much in my entire life.

            After a walk that probably took two minutes but felt like an hours-long stroll in front of a firing squad, we arrived at a rundown townhouse. The place must have been meant to house one family before the war, but now had at least fifteen people living in it. I was amazed and even a little ashamed of how quickly I got desensitized to the conditions in the ghetto. Thin, sick, dying, grieving people, dirty, overcrowded homes, smelling more like death than I thought a place could smell. I stood around awkwardly while the family crowded around the doctor, speaking quietly in Polish. One of the three bedrooms had been quarantined off, and Dr. Kaminski said I could come in if I stayed in the corner and didn’t do anything unless he told me to.

            I stood in my corner, watching Dr. Kaminski stoop over a human-sized lump on a mattress on the floor. Someone had made damn sure the room was as dark as possible, with heavy curtains nailed up over the window. The doctor had a small light he used to look in mouths and ears, but that was all the light he needed to examine his patient, a practice that further convinced me he was some kind of magician.

            When he finally gave me an instruction, to go get the wooden case from his doctor’s bag, I was embarrassed that I made him repeat himself. I hadn’t expected him to need anything at all from me. I raced to the hall, where he had set down his black bag, and speedily retrieved the case, half running the five paces it took me to get back to the sickroom.

            “Bring here,” the doctor instructed, holding out his hand but not turning around. Nervously, I joined him beside the mattress, unsure of what awful disease I was even about to look at. For all my book learning, I had come into contact with very few real sick people, and none in a place like this. I’d purposely stayed away from clinics in the underground on the outside, too afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do.

            Just looking at him, the boy didn’t look much worse than anyone else in the ghetto. I mean, he was extraordinarily thin, but that was so common I didn’t even really think twice about it. His lips were moving, but if he was really saying anything I sure couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t quite tell, but he looked maybe a little younger than me. I felt like a damn fool for not knowing immediately what was wrong with him. The doctor, with his superhero senses, knew that I was uncertain. “Look. His skin. His…” he patted his chest, unsure of the word, with one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off the vial of clear liquid that he was attaching to a syringe. Antibiotics.

            I pulled the covers down from the sick boy’s chin �" he was burning up but still covered in blankets �" and squinted through the darkness at his chest. Between his horrifyingly protruding ribs, there was a rash of red spots.

            “Typhus?” I asked, almost certain I was right but terrified I was wrong.

            Dr. Kaminski nodded at me. “Typhus.” He had a very old, lined face, but his hair was still jet-black. According to Hersch, he was a lot younger than he looked, only the ghetto had aged him about a hundred years. He had these kind, sad eyes that looked huge when he wore his glasses, gold wire spectacles with intricately woven earpieces that only could have come from Hersch’s parents’ shop. “Dur plamisty. That is the name of it here. Learn to know the typhus, Pan Banhart, and to cure. Many die. Many die.” He handed the light to me, and I held it for him while he administered the shot to the delirious boy’s arm. “Only this, can we do,” he continued as he returned the empty vile to its case. “End the light. Bearers of dur plamisty cannot have light.”

            We stood up together. At least part of what made Dr. Kaminski so awe-inspiring was his absurd height. I was six feet five inches last I checked �" I had kept growing even after Wellington’s �" and the doctor was the only person I had ever met who had more than two inches on me. “Antybiotyki. Antibiotics save many. But very little left from my practice.”

            Frankly, I was amazed they had any at all. Antibiotics were so new then, I only first heard of them just before I left for Wellington’s. The military on both sides had good access to the medication now, but I thought Dr. Kaminski was a wizard for having held onto enough to last him this long. “Erich, the German, he could get some. Uh, niemiec, niemiecki może.” I added in my laughably broken Polish, trying not to make him constantly dip into his English.

            Dr. Kaminski nodded his head as he ducked under the doorway. “Perhaps. The German brings much.” We went into the kitchen, where he consulted in Polish with an exhausted, worried looking woman. He gave her the rest of his bread and a sausage. Then he sprayed me, himself, and at least fourteen other people, with a chemical from a can in his bag. “Killer of lice,” he explained, as I pinched the bridge of my nose between my burning eyes. “That is how dur plamisty occurs.” He tugged at his beard, like he was searching for the little blood-sucking b******s. “Not to have sickness is of importance for a lekarz, a doctor like I and you, Pan Banhart.”

            I immediately regretted the incredulous “Bah!” the bounced out of my mouth. I buttoned my lips, but it was too late. Dr. Kaminski stopped with his hand on the doorknob, looking unamusedly down his spectacles at me. “Sorry, Pan Doktor, uh, sir,” I said with my eyes on the floor, trying to mimic the respectful way I’d seen Peter and Hersch talk to men more powerful than them. “Only, I haven’t helped anyone since I came here. Surely no one thinks I could be a doctor like you.” Honestly, working with Dr. Kaminski had given a real boost to my confidence. He at least gave me the chance to make myself useful, which was more than I could say for Peter or even Hersch usually. But there was no way on God’s frozen earth anyone in his right mind would consider me a valuable doctor like Dr. Kaminski.

            He stooped down to look me in the eye �" an action that was disturbing all by itself �" and put a hand on my shoulder. “You are. You are wise for your youth,” he said quietly. “In this place, if you have this,” he patted his black bag, “you have as much as I, and one day I give it over. Once the Niemcy say I am dead, it is so. Then my work will be your work.”

            This bible-sounding declaration struck me mute for a good ten seconds. I was terrified and inordinately proud all at the same time. Dr. Kaminski couldn’t die! He was a goddamn hero, for Christ’s sake! And then I was supposed to be the doctor? I’d never even given a shot! S**t, the only person to whom I’d ever given my medical attention had a claw for a hand now! At the same time, though, I felt myself beaming with pride in his faith in me. He clapped me on the shoulder and gave me an especially warm smile.

            “Doctor,” I started, but he was already halfway out the door. Out on the front step, he laid one hand on the doorframe and covered his face with the other. He muttered something quickly in what I could only assume was Hebrew. “Um, Doctor?” He swept his hand through the air over the doorframe, put his hat on, and turned back to me.

            “A lekarz has faith, Pan Banhart,” he said, as I followed him down the steps, prepared to soak up more of his wisdom. “It is not taught with medicine. But in a place like this, a doctor must have faith like a rabbi.” He kept walking next to me this time; after our uneventful first trip he must have decided I didn’t have to walk behind. “Do you know the Exodus?” I nodded. “‘I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you.’ These are the word of my God, Pan Banhart, the God of my ancestors in bondage, and of the doctor.” I was stunned into silence, this having added another level of qualification that I would never reach to become a doctor. “And the Kaddish, that which was prayed for Bartholomew, do you know it?” He seemed either unaware or uninterested in the fact that I wasn’t Jewish.

            “I’ve heard it prayed, Doctor, but I don’t speak any Hebrew.” I did, however, remember watching Rebecca pray. I’ll admit I hadn’t paid much attention to anything else.

            “A remarkable prayer. A prayer of mourning that has no words of death. Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya v'chayim aleinu v'al kol yis'ra'eil,” I glanced nervously around, pretty sure that the soldiers wouldn’t be pleased to hear any part of a Jewish prayer. “Please excuse, I have not put in English before. A prayer that begs peace and life upon Israel. We must ask this of God. It is God that gives life and takes life.”

            I was torn between my inclination to take his word as law, and the fact that what he was saying sounded ridiculous to me. “But we’re doctors! We can’t just leave people alone and expect God to heal people for us!”

            “And we do not,” he said, a little indignant, as we climbed the stairs to his house. The Germans let him and the other elders live relatively comfortably in a large house at the center of town, where they would have less cause to rebel and also they would all be in one spot if the soldiers came to take them out. “But to do healing for the sick is God’s work, not only our own. This is all we can do with life, Pan Banhart. We can only try to do what is God’s will.”

            I still wasn’t sure what to think. Dr. Kaminski obviously did massive amounts of good with his faith, but Hersch cared just as much about his people with no religious motivation at all. To me, religion seemed like a force that kept the doctor committed to his cause in this awful place. Whether it was real or not, it let him hold onto his sanity, which was something Hersch certainly could have used more of.

            “You say try,” I ventured as we crossed the threshold into the big house. The sound of coughing and a record player told me at least one of the other old leaders was in the parlor, and I tried to keep my voice down lest I offend a rabbi. “So, you don’t think you know what God’s will is?”

            Dr. Kaminski paused in the entryway, removing his hat wearily. “No, Banhart, I do not know. But I think in most times, logic and humanity inform us. You are learned; surely you know this,” I pulled my hat down over my burning ears. “For illustration, I do not think it is God’s will that we are imprisoned, and I believe he wills us to rebel and be free. I think it was God willed for my boys to escape this place, but do not think he desired of the soldiers to shoot my wife.”

            I promptly regretted having needled him for philosophical instruction. I fiddled with the buttons on my sleeve in an unsubtle attempt not to look at him. “I’m sorry, Pan Doktor.”

            The doctor gave me a sad smile that only made me feel about a thousand times worse. “The contrary,” he declared, “to tell you of this gives me much gladness. Now I have not my own boys to teach of medicine and God. But here is what I hope to teach for you. All people will believe God cares for what he himself cares for. Even wise men. So it is of importance to care for only the good, so you do good when you do God’s will. You, I think, care for reason, and for kindness. And so, too, your God cares for reason and kindness.” He took another look at me, shook his head and laughed. “Ah, but you are not religious, and that is well. But if it is not God, I do advise of you to find something that gives you life in this place.”

            Rebecca, I thought, and the doctor probably knew it too, from the way I talked about her while I filled bottles with him. “Thank you, Doctor Kaminski,” was all I could say. I had so few meaningful contributions to this conversation he might as well have been talking to himself.

            “Will you stay for some broth?” he asked, gesturing towards the kitchen. “I believe Pan Pasternak has boiled some.”

            I shook my head. “No, thank you, I have somewhere to be.” I had nowhere to be, but I wasn’t about to take his food. “But thank you, for…” being a goddamned superman, “… Letting me come today.”

            He smiled, an unnervingly young smile on an old face. “Thank you for hearing the ramblings of an old man,” he said approvingly, scratching his beard. “If you excuse, I must see to the rabbi.” I should have figured he was responsible for keeping the thousand-year-old Rabbi Seidel alive. I half-nodded, half-bowed, and went back out the door.

            It was a freezing, blindingly sunny day outside. Even though it did absolutely nothing to warm me up, it felt good to walk in the sun. Already, I was getting more secure walking around outside. The solders couldn’t see past a yellow star, I realized now. I tried to walk like Dr. Kaminski, with my head high and my arms swinging, though I didn’t dare look the soldiers in the eye like he did.

            As I walked, I tried to pick through what the doctor had said. I wished I could think about God the way he did, but I just didn’t. It wasn’t part of who I was. Religious people confounded me. I guess I considered myself a Lutheran, but only because my parents were, and I had no idea what specific things I was supposed to believe. I liked what Dr. Kaminski said, though, about thinking God thinks what you think. It sure was true for me; I always figured God was a pretty reasonable, relaxed guy. Gabe, for example: he was sure religious, but he had to have decided that God didn’t care so much about him being a fairy.

            Lost in thought, I’d made it to Peter’s butcher shop without paying attention to where I was going. The tunnels were closed in a lot of places, and Peter’s shop had one of the only entrances that didn’t lead to a dead end. Honestly, the shop was in a pretty unfortunate spot, right next to the wall and a guard post. I knew Erich had watch there sometimes, but he wasn’t there now. I hadn’t been there a lot. Peter didn’t like me around, and I didn’t care to be around him either. I could hardly think about him and Rebecca without wanting to kick something.

            I couldn’t be mad at Rebecca. I couldn’t. She couldn’t have known I was ever coming for her. I wasn’t even bitter that I had made myself a goddamn monk for two years, not one girl! But even though Peter hadn’t even known of my existence when he was stealing my girl, even though he was there first, I wished I could knock his teeth in. It was a completely irrational feeling that I had definitely not shared with Rebecca. I hoped he wouldn’t be home. Gabe said he was hardly ever home. I kicked his dumb door on my way in.

            There was an old bell on the door that still rang when you walked in. Like I guessed, no Peter, though Gabe was home. He said Peter was back on the labor team, information that I would forget to thank him for later. Gabe stood on the stairs and chatted for a minute, cigarette between his fingers. It was good to talk to him. He was pretty happy with his work; he did all right in shooting practice and Peter was being civil to him. He had been weird lately, though. I had run into him the day after we had training with Erich, and he had a funny embarrassed look about him. And when Erich came in for his meeting with Hersch and Peter, he was sporting a bruise on his jaw that, as much as I wanted to take the credit, probably didn’t come from my lame punch. I really couldn’t leave those two alone together for two minutes.

            Only after I had crawled through the hole in Berezovsky’s floor and into the tunnel did I remember I had wanted to talk to Gabe about what Dr. Kaminski had said. Gabe definitely knew more about God than I did. He still wore that damn rosary everywhere, at least; I had seen it when we were boxing with Erich the other day. I’d seen him pray all the time back at Wellington’s, those long Catholic prayers where you have to touch all the beads before God will listen to you. Gabe was a steady guy, gentle even, who didn’t get so worked up all the time, and I always figured his being religious had something to do with that.

            But Gabe didn’t just have religion, I realized. You need something that gives you life, Dr. Kaminski had said, and there was something else that definitely gave him life. We had all seen how he lit up around Erich, as if the whole world got better just because some giant German b*****d walked into the room. I sure couldn’t explain it, but obviously just having Erich nearby was enough to keep Gabe going.

            Plus he could violin a house down. Damn, what was the world coming to when I was jealous of Gabe.

            Rebecca was what gave me life; I knew that. And I knew I could be like Gabe if I tried, content to hold off on being in love for a while. Obviously Rebecca was worth waiting for. But it was the injustice of the thing that drove me crazy. Why did I have to be scared of Peter throwing me out, when I really was starting to do some good for the Resistance? He loved his damn Resistance, and he wasn’t even with Rebecca anymore! The guy had too much power, if you ask me.

            I headed back to Hersch’s rooms, because I had nothing better to do. Not much underground activity ever happened during the day. Really, only Dr. Kaminski could do his job in the daylight. If Hersch were a human, he would have been sleeping that afternoon like everyone else, but as far as I could tell he stayed up all day and night. And because I’m the luckiest b*****d alive, I found Rebecca alone.

            Rebecca didn’t see me right away, over in the dark corner on the ancient sofa. I couldn’t quite tell what she was doing. There was a bag in her lap and some nondescript long piece of fabric in her hands. She was sitting in the same place where she had found me crying over my father’s letter, but Rebecca didn’t look nearly so pathetic as I must have. Mostly she just looked like she was thinking really hard, chewing on her thumbnail in a way I don’t think I had ever seen her do.

            “Come here, James.” I started, completely unaware that she had heard me come in.

            I obeyed immediately. She was honestly scaring me a little. “Everything alright?” I asked cautiously.

            Rebecca nodded but didn’t say anything else until I was sitting next to her. “Your bag came through today,” she said in the same unnerving flat tone, transferring the sack from her lap to mine. I still didn’t know right away why she was being so strange. My first reaction was to be excited for a new pair of my own pants. But before I could dig inside the bag, Rebecca also passed me the strip of fabric. Until then, I had actually forgotten I brought it with me

            “You carried it all the way here?”

            Rebecca’s scarf, the red scarf she had dropped on me in the bar. Before she was even Rebecca to me, when she was a girl in a blonde wig with a painted face who was too young to be taking her clothes off for a roomful of stupid drunk men. Of course I’d packed it.

            “It was all I had of you,” I admitted quietly, looking at the scarf and not her. “I didn’t even have a picture.” I rubbed the fabric between my fingers. The thing had been cheap to begin with, some imitation of silk, and after two years the deep red had started to fade out. I could remember lying in bed looking at the scarf, worrying that Rebecca would be like that if I ever found her again, faded and false, not what I remembered.

            No, I thought, looking from the scarf back into her blazing eyes, not like Rebecca at all. Skinny and unwashed, without makeup or dresses or high heels, Rebecca hadn’t faded at all. She was still fierce and fearless and so, so much stronger than me. She would never fade to me. I felt like a traitor for even worrying she would

            In retrospect, I realized I shouldn’t have moped about Rebecca’s declaration that we couldn’t do anything until we were out of the ghetto. In what world had Rebecca ever been the cautious one of the two of us? No, Rebecca had always been reckless and impulsive, from the moment I met her in her dressing room, and I loved her for it.

 

            There were hands on my face, the sound of the bag dropping to the floor, a weight on my lap, and Rebecca was kissing me. She’d thrown one leg over me, straddling my legs on her knees. I kissed her back without even thinking about it.

            “Are you sure…?” I managed to gasp over her mouth. I didn’t want to take advantage of one of her rare emotional outbursts. As much as I wanted to sleep with Rebecca, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sleep with her purely over a scarf.

            Rebecca was already making progress on my shirt buttons. “You don’t mind, do you?” She answered against my throat. To say I didn’t mind would have been the biggest understatement in history. Surely she could feel against her leg that I didn’t mind. “Everyone is out for the day. No one is coming back until night.”

            I glanced nervously back at the door, though Gabe had in fact confirmed that Peter at least wouldn’t be back. “Rebecca…”

            “James, I was wrong,” she said quietly, pressing her forehead against mine. “Please. I don’t want to wait.”

            She didn’t have to tell me twice. I reached for her, held her by the waist and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and ran her fingers through my hair in that way that made me shiver. I fumbled with her clothes; it was cold enough that she was wearing a lot of them, a coat over a sweater, long skirt and stockings. Rebecca shrugged off the jacket and let go of me long enough to allow me to pull her sweater over her head. With her half naked in front of me �" no brassiere, and her breasts had shrunken as much as the rest of her, though I’m sure not complaining �" I practically panicked. I hadn’t done this in two years, and I was all at once overeager and frozen with fear. Apparently Rebecca had no patience for my paralysis. She grabbed both my hands and pressed them to her chest. She undid my pants while I grasped clumsily at her breasts.

            Taking her shirt off had made Rebecca shiver, so I didn’t try to get her skirt off. I got my hands up under her skirt, hitched it up, found her underwear and pulled them down, as far as I could. It was a blind search, but I remembered how to touch her. Found the warm, wet patch below the hair between her legs. I explored with my fingers, finding the spot she had shown me once.

            “James,” she inhaled my name and pressed her forehead to my shoulder. Finally, I was doing something right. She ran her hands down my arms and pushed forward with her hips.

            “How’s that?” I asked breathlessly. With my free hand, I ran my thumb over her small, dark n****e. “Feel good?” Rebecca nodded and answered by kissing me again. I was glad. It always felt good to make Rebecca feel good. I kept touching her like that for as long as I could manage.

            Rebecca, on top of me, was mostly in charge. “Ready?” she asked when I pulled my fingers away. And boy, was I ready. Rebecca pulled down my pants and boxers, not wasting any time now, and lowered herself onto my erection.

            I gasped about hard enough to break my lungs, definitely hard enough that I had to stop kissing her. How had I gone two and a half years without this? Rebecca braced her hands against the wall behind us and kept kissing me all over my face. I could touch every part of her, the nape of her neck and back of her knees and her thighs and her jutting hipbones. When I thrusted I could feel myself rocking her backwards, and I held onto her hips to steady her. I lowered my head to her chest and kissed her collarbone and her breasts. I could still reach the spot between her legs, and when I touched it she moaned and rocked her hips harder.

            I was so focused on her, for once I didn’t see my own finish coming. It hit me like a ton of bricks and robbed me of reason and words. Rebecca clasped her hand over mine, so I wouldn’t stop touching her even as my brain stopped working. A second later she shuddered hard and squeezed me hard with her thighs before dropping her head back to my shoulder. Neither of us could move for a long minute; the blood in my ears was pounding hard enough that I wondered if it would ever stop. Rebecca’s face was hot and sweaty against my chest, her chest heaving. After a minute, she looked up at me, red-faced and smiling infectiously. I kissed her, running my hands through her short, damp hair. I felt good enough to fly.

            “Good?” I asked, as if that wasn’t a foregone conclusion at that point. Rebecca laughed as she climbed off of me and sat down next to me on the couch. It wasn’t until I saw the wet stain on her skirt, now that logic had returned to my brain, that I realized I had made the same stupid mistake as last time. “Oh s**t,” I cursed, terror rapidly washing away my happiness, “s**t, Rebecca, should I not have…” Condoms, Jim, condoms! Jesus Christ if I thought getting her pregnant at Wellington’s would be bad, I never even considered the disaster of it happening here.

            As usual, Rebecca was one step ahead of me. The smile faded from her face and she pulled on her sweater. “It is not a problem. I stopped bleeding months ago. I…” her voice caught, but she collected herself and continued on like I hadn’t heard it. “I don’t know if I can, anymore.”

            For a few magical minutes, I had managed to forget where we were. Now, as a guilty mix of sadness and relief washed over me, I remembered. We were still here, in hell. Having sex with Rebecca would never make anything objectively better.

            On top of everything, the idea that Rebecca might not be able to have kids made me want to cry. I put my arm around her and she leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair, not sure of what else to say.

            Rebecca shrugged. “You did not know,” she said dismissively. We sat there in a loaded silence for a long time, with Rebecca absentmindedly running her fingers across my chest. Finally, without looking at me, she murmured, “you make me so happy, James. I never thought I would be this happy again.” She finally looked up at me with a little half smile in the corner of her mouth. “I love you so much.”

            I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips to her forehead. “I love you too,” I said, with my face in her hair. “You give me life.” Christ, had it really been today that I walked along with the doctor. It seemed like years ago. Rebecca sighed and we sat in another long, much more contented silence for a while.

            “Herschel will know this time,” she said abruptly. “He will recognize it now.” Of course she was right. You could never fool Hersch twice. You could barely fool Hersch once.

            But the prospect of Hersch finding out did not, surprisingly, fill me with dread. For once, I felt brave. “Let him know,” I said, in a tone that I hoped communicated my newfound fearlessness. Rebecca laughed quietly, indicating that she wasn’t so afraid of Hersch either. Neither of us said anything about Peter, but it went unspoken that keeping him in the dark was probably best for all involved.

            Rebecca was so quiet for so long then, I thought she must be thinking deep thoughts. But after a while her breath started to whistle and I realized she was sleeping, right there on my shoulder. I didn’t know how much sleep she usually got, or if she had anywhere to be, or when someone would come back to the room and find her sleeping next to me. I didn’t care. I let her sleep. And still no one came in. That, my friend, is what I call a miracle.