Chapter 15: Back in Chania

Back in Chania, the doctor stood at the entrance of the hospital, looking out into the bustling crowd, the afternoon sun beating down on the open space around him.
In all of his years of medical service, he had never seen someone with so many wounds run away as he had seen Eleni do, and he waited there, baking in the Mediterranean sun for the hospital officials to return with her in their arms.
He himself would’ve gone after her, but he could not leave the hospital unattended.
Two hours had passed, and the sun was sinking out of sight when at last he saw them returning.
He turned away without waiting for them. She was not there. She had not been found.
His heart sank as he walked back for the eightieth time into the hospital.
He passed a man complaining about pain in his side, a woman in early labor pains and a little boy with a broken arm.
Nurses bustled about.
He saw and heard nothing as he passed down the long corridor Eleni had run through on her escape.
He had not seen it. He was with a patient who had been kicked in the head by a horse.
He had only learned of it as he heard all the yelling outside the room.
Yelling that would’ve awoken the dead.
For a moment he thought perhaps the Germans had somehow made it to Chania and were there to massacre everyone in the hospital.
A nurse stopped him, asking him a question about a woman in a room at the end of the corridor.
He moved on, his steps becoming heavier the closer he drew to the door.
He thought of his daughter, young, scared of the distant thunder of war, and the German planes. She had not seemed happy in what seemed like an eternity. But the war had only found them over the past three days.
As his hand rested on the door, he saw her clinging to her mother, tears coursing down her cheeks like the waterfall at Karanos.
He could only kiss her and murmur that everything would be ok. He had to say it, though in his heart he did not believe it himself. And the look that passed between him and his wife agreed.
And he felt that there were two versions of himself at that moment: the one that wanted to be at home with his wife and daughter and the son that lay in the grave behind their little countryside cottage, holding to his heart the only things he cared about. The other version needed to be here, among the sick, the maimed and the dying. Helping them, caring for them, loving them through their pain, or the close of their lives.
That’s why he had become a doctor. It was what he wanted from his earliest memory.
He pushed open the door and entered the room where Nikos lay.

No one knows exactly what was said over the next few minutes.
But a shout rang out that echoed down the corridor, making several of the nurses run to the room.
Inside, Nikos lay on the bed writhing in the doctor’s arms, yelling for Eleni, yelling against the Germans and calling for the mother who could come to him no more.

Nikos quickly became exhausted and sank back onto his pillow. He could see the King take Eleni’s satchel by accident, by the suddenness of the German attack. He said Eleni was his sister. He couldn’t let her go after the King alone.

The doctor stood over him sympathetically, muttering words the nurses did not hear.

Nikos looked surprisingly well after all. He had come out of the dog attack with only a few bites on the leg and a deep gash down his right arm.

He had not gone out of his head, and if the doctor was not scared that he would cause his injuries to break out into fresh bleeding, he would have let him go to Eleni long before, or at least move about.

It struck Nikos just then as absolutely futile that he and Eleni survived the German bombing, the escape, and the dogs, only to be separated because of the satchel.

If only he could know that she was safe.

He was too tired to move, though, and a nurse gave him something to help him sleep.

The door opened and a soldier entered.

“His Majesty, King George II, sends this with his regards to a patient named Eleni. He took it by mistake when the Germans attacked. I have traveled three hours back to you to give it to her.”

Nikos snatched it from his hand.

His eyes wide, he grabbed the doctor by the shirt and yelled in his face.

“Where is Eleni?”

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