Wildflowers of Terezin by Robert Elmer

obvious grief. They didn't shout "Nej!" or accuse the doctor of being somehow mistaken. Now they just stood in the corner, holding each other up. Perhaps they had already known what would happen when they brought their son in.
    And now Hanne genuinely wished she had not followed the doctor here to see this horrible, heavy sadness that filled the room, though it was not the first time and would most certainly not be the last.
    "He was only sixteen," sobbed the mother. "He was going to take his exams this year. He was such a good boy."
     

     
    Now the mother looked up and her tortured gaze locked on Hanne. And for the longest moment neither could pull away, as the full weight of pain nearly brought Hanne to her knees.
    "If you'll follow me, please." Now the doctor had regained a measure of his professional composure, as Hanne would have expected. "We'll have some paperwork for you to fill out."
    The father nodded numbly, as if giving in to the maelstrom from which none of them could escape. The mother had returned to her helpless sobbing but still held to her husband.And so the bereaved parents followed Dr. Kielsgaard past Hanne without another word, for they had also died and this paperwork was their unavoidable duty as members of the otherworld.
    I should never have answered the phone last night, thought Hanne, her tired mind retreating into its protective bunker of "what if." I should have shut the door, locked it, and not opened for anyone. Not for Dr. Kielsgaard. Not for Aron. Not for the Nazis. I should have hidden myself in the closet.
    If she could just lock the door and keep it locked until this was all over, she reasoned, perhaps she could better survive the nightmare that had darkened København streets for the past several months. And in her twisted state of fatigue, such a silly proposition almost seemed to make sense. Hide. She glanced up at the clock once more, trying to remember if seven thirty-five was morning or evening. She still clutched her clipboard with the notes of how this brave young man's life had ended, and when.
    Time of death, seven twenty-five. Cause of death, murder.
    She set the clipboard on the nearest counter, dropped the pencil, and walked away.
     

     
    Steffen leaned back in his comfortable leather chair and tidied his sermon notes again on his wide oak office desk, next to his open Bible. Still the words stuck in his throat as he rehearsed them from his notes.
    "Were there not ten that were healed?" he read aloud, raising a hand to the bandage on his side, still good and sore but now well-hidden beneath his cleaned and pressed shirt. The scars on his chin and on the back of his hand, hopefully no one would notice. "Where are the other nine?"
    He'd given the same sermon two years ago, according to the every-other-year church reading calendar and with the calm precision and orderliness that defined his world.
    For the most part.
    Perhaps he just needed a little more rest, especially after all the excitement with the bicycle incident and his short stay at Bispebjerg Hospital. So he rested his chin in his hands, listening to the quiet ticking of the gold mantle clock on the corner of his desk, and tried to shake the persistent image of that nurse, Hanne.
    She was just doing her job, he told himself. I'm sure she's equally as pleasant to all her patients. That's what she's called on to do, just as I'm called on to deliver this sermon.
    Yes, if he could. He caught himself smiling and still unable to forget her face, her voice, or the touch of her hand as she took his pulse.
    "Your heart rate seems a little high, again," she had told him. If only she'd known why. He actually tried to forget about the dark-eyed nurse as he stared out his office window at the elms that lined Stefansgade. A motorcycle roared past with a German soldier in a sidecar. Why were they always so loud, and always in such a hurry? This time Steffen granted himself a private frown for the way the war had strained and pushed