Tsura: A World War II Romance

Tsura stayed crouched at Luca’s bedside until morning light began to creep through the windows. Mihai disappeared again to go see if the hospital director had arrived yet. Tsura didn’t let go of Luca’s hand. Her knees ached and her back hurt, but she never moved. Luca woke occasionally, but only to speak gibberish. It tore at Tsura’s heart that he was never quite there with her. He was somewhere else, lost in the delirium of his mind. But maybe his soul recognized her even if his mind did not. She consoled herself with the thought as she sponged his fevered forehead.

  Mihai had asked the nurse earlier and learned the symptoms and stages of typhoid patients passed through as they recovered. Luca was somewhere between the second and third stage, each lasting around a week. He had a high fever and his abdomen was distended, paunched out in spite of his emaciation. He had rose spots across his chest and abdomen and delirium. Apparently they were in for another week of the same until, hopefully, his fever would finally break and he’d begin coming out of it. This third week was the most dangerous, though, and rife with potential complications.

  “Just another week, my soul, and then we’ll have you back,” Tsura whispered as Mihai walked over to them several hours later with a man in a suit and wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I’ll have the balance transferred this afternoon,” Mihai said. “In the meantime I expect him moved to one of your premiere suites.”

  “Yes, sir, Domnule Popescu,” said the pinched-face man. “We’ll have him moved directly. And can I just say that we here at Sfânta Ana Hospital greatly appreciate your generosity.”

  But Mihai was no longer paying attention to him. He came around to Tsura’s side. “Any change?”

  She shook her head and then rubbed her face with the sleeve of her shirt. She was so tired her eyes ached in their sockets. Mihai watched Luca for several beats and then looked back at her. “Did you sleep at all on the train?”

  She shook her head. “No, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t leave him.”

  Mihai put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “You’ll be no good to Luca if you drop from exhaustion. I’ve arranged a hotel room, it’s only two blocks from here—”

  Tsura shook her head violently. “I’m not leaving him.”

  Mihai sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He looked weary too. “I’ll arrange for an extra cot to be put up in Luca’s new room.”

  Tsura hovered while the orderlies moved Luca onto a stretcher. They’d pulled off his blanket and it was then that she saw the full horror of his skeletal body. She didn’t know a body could be so thin and still be alive. He couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds, maybe even less. She glanced up at Mihai and saw that his mouth was open, his face pale as he watched his friend carried down the corridor to the private room. Luca twitched on the cot and coughed violently, but didn’t wake up. At least his leg looked okay, there didn’t appear to be much chaffing from using the prosthetic, even in those horrible conditions.

  They finally arrived in a small white room that reeked of antiseptic but had two large windows that allowed the morning light in. Luca would like that. Tsura looked back at her brother as they transferred him from the stretcher to a low bed. She pulled over a stool and sat beside him, taking his hand again.

  Luca was quiet for a time, but then he became agitated again. His thin face contorted. “No! Don’t shoot them! They’re just little children, stop!” And then he screamed and sank back against the mattress. At first Tsura thought he’d fallen back asleep, but then his body started shaking. Twin streams of tears dropped from his eyes and his sobs seemed like too much for his wan body.

  Tsura leaned over him and cradled him to her chest. When she ran out of soothing words, she began to sing to him, a lullaby from their childhood. It calmed him and soon he was back asleep.

  “Alexandra,” Mihai said quietly from behind her. “Rest now.”

  But Tsura didn’t want to let Luca go. In the end, she pulled her cot right up next to Luca’s bed so she could keep holding his hand. She slept fitfully, waking whenever a nurse came in to check Luca’s temperature, give him more medicine, or try to get him to drink the sugar-saline water mix. The doctors here weren’t familiar with IVs but in spite of Luca’s delirium, they were getting fluids down him, so she wasn’t too worried. They had put him on a sulfa antibiotic, but the doctor was concerned because in addition to typhoid, he also diagnosed Luca with pneumonia.

  “But he’ll recover, yes?” Tsura asked. “Now that he’s getting treatment.”

  The doctor looked at Mihai instead of Tsura. “You should be prepared for all possibilities. We’ll do everything in our power to give him the best chance.”

  It wasn’t what Tsura wanted to hear, but she supposed this gagiu doctor didn’t know Luca like she did. He would fight to come back to her, she was certain of it.

  That day and the next passed in an exhausted haze. Tsura stayed with Luca the entire time, pressing damp cloths to his heated face, singing to him, telling him stories. Most of the time he slept, but occasionally he would wake up with fits of delirium, shouting that Tsura shouldn’t be here, that they would kill her if they found her here. Mihai had to hold him down until he quieted.

  Mihai simply sat at Luca’s other side, ever stoically upright in his chair. He rarely spoke but was a calming presence nonetheless. He left only at night to go sleep in the hotel, and only when Tsura had demanded it, losing her temper and asking if letting himself get exhausted and risking an epilepsy attack would help Luca in any way. He’d looked disgruntled, but had grabbed his coat and gone, returning early the next morning.

  Tsura herself changed the diaper they kept wrapped around Luca, disgusting work considering the nature of the stomach problems the typhoid gave him, but Tsura was glad to do it all the same. He was like a large broken child, and she bathed him and washed him with as much care and love as she would give to a baby.

  “Do you remember that time when we were children when you let me hunt hedgehogs with you?” Tsura asked after bathing him one morning, taking up her perch on the stool. His eyes were open, though Tsura didn’t know if he was really hearing her at all. Still, she imagined her voice must give comfort to him.

  “You were so much older than me and usually never wanted to let me play with you, but I begged you that time and you said fine. You said you’d take me this once, because every girl should know how to catch her dinner, not just how to cook it. So we went out into the forest together. It was a bright day, but dark in the forest. I was afraid. You said that I was five years old, far too old to be scared like a baby, even if I was a girl.

  “That made me so mad, so I was going to show you I wasn’t afraid. I kept telling myself I was with my big brother and you would always protect me. You taught me how to creep on the tips of my toes so I wouldn’t make noise as we walked. And when we finally found a small family of hedgehogs rooting around together, you taught me how to throw the cloth around them so I wouldn’t get poked with their quills.

  “But then I cried because I didn’t want to take the hedgehog mama and papa away from the babies. You gave a long sigh, but then let them out of your bag again. Remember how glad I was?” She pressed a wet cloth to his forehead. “And you said I shouldn’t be so soft-hearted, and where did I think the meat in the stew came from?”

  “And you said you didn’t care,” Luca’s voice rasped out, “but it wouldn’t be from that hedgehog family tonight.”

  “Luca!” Tsura dropped the cloth in her surprise, watching with a flooding sense of relief as Luca’s eyes focused on hers, really focused for the first time since they’d arrived.

  Mihai leapt up from his chair and came to kneel at Luca’s other side.

  Luca turned his head slowly and smiled. “My brother.”

  Mihai put a hand on Luca’s shoulder and nodded. “It’s good to see you again, my friend.” Mihai’s eyebrows dropped. “I tried to find you. I should have tried harder. I’m sorry. I’m…” he gulped hard. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,??
? Luca wheezed. “On the train north, a man stole my identity.” Luca took another wheezing breath. “Thought it better… to be gypsy,” another breath, “than a Jew. So instead of the Roma camp…I was sent to Jewish one.” He breathed hard and closed his eyes. “But I kept hold of my leg.” Tsura knew he must be referring to the prosthetic one. “Wouldn’t have made it without it. They’d march us. If you… couldn’t keep up, they’d shoot you. So I wouldn’t let anyone take it...” He breathed out heavily and she could tell how taxing the speech had been. “Not till the end. No more strength then.”

  “Shh,” Tsura said, putting her hand on his cheek. It was still warm. The fever wasn’t gone yet, but it was lower. “Rest now, don’t try to talk.”

  They stayed beside him as he drifted off to sleep. Tsura looked up at Mihai with tear-filled eyes and a blinding smile. “He’s going to make it,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the words. As much as she’d said it over and over to herself, she wasn’t sure she’d entirely believed it until now. “He’s going to survive this.”

  Mihai smiled back at her. A genuine full-toothed smile, maybe the first she’d ever seen from him. “Yes, he is,” he said, joy in his quiet words. Tsura put down the cloth she was holding and went around the bed, tugging Mihai to his feet.

  “Our brother is going to live!”

  He smiled as if he wasn’t sure whether to really believe it, but he took the hand she proffered. He slipped his other around her waist and hugged her hard, and then spun her once until she felt dizzy and let out a giddy, half delirious laugh. A passing nurse glared at them. Tsura let go of Mihai and went back to Luca’s bedside, but she still felt like laughing and singing. Luca was going to be all right. One day soon, this entire nightmare would be behind them. It was a miracle. It made her want to truly believe in God again, for real and not just as someone to beg for favors in prayer when she was afraid.