After five days in the hospital, the girl still lay tucked in the fetal position on her side in bed. Her white room smelled of disinfectant over recently cleaned vomit. Her swollen head was bandaged whitely, so only the small delta of her bruised face showed. To Konrad, who was a priest, the bandages looked like a wimple and she looked like a beaten nun. He heard the familiar voice of his favorite author, “The misery of this single one pierces the marrow of my life.”

She moaned, but her eyes remained swollen shut. The nurse, who was seated on the other side of the bed, stood and lifted her wrist to feel her pulse. Konrad watched her face register the information as the nurse looked at a watch attached to the belt of her uniform.

“It’s well up beyond 60,” she said, nodding. “I must get the doctor.”

He could tell by her tone that it was good news. He leaned toward the bed after the nurse had left the private room, and he called the girl’s name.

Small slits appeared in her face; she strained to open her eyes.

“I am a priest,” he said.

“Am I dying?” she whispered.

We are all, he thought’ living is dying. By the time he shook off his self-absorption, she was again unconscious. Often now, he so thoroughly disliked himself. Better naturalist and astronomer than priest, he thought. The door opened and he expected to see the nurse return with the doctor.

Instead, in the doorway stood a stark figure in a black uniform marked with red and metal. He thought of the black Blister Beetle with its yellow and red markings, distant cousin to the more familiar firefly. The soldier introduced himself as Corporal Doerner, one of Chancellor Hitler’s personal guards.

The effect was something out of a silent movie comedy because the head snapping and the heel clicking were soundless. The priest knew the fatigue of his two‑day vigil was making him giddy, but there was something about these Nazis that made him feel like laughing. It reminded him of the feeling he had had as a child when guilty friends were punished by their parents in his presence. He stifled the anxious laughter in his throat.

Horst walked close to the bed, looked down at the girl and whispered a curse. Then, more audibly, he added, “This is the work of communists and their Jew money.”

“I believe it was a gang of brown‑shirts who attacked the girl,” the priest said.

“It is not a revolution of bourgeois shopkeepers the Stormtroopers are about.”

Konrad nodded. “Nevertheless.” Then he smiled.

Horst did not know if the priest was mocking him or not. He turned from him and stared down at the girl, who was curled up with her back to him.

“The important point is that she is better. The nurse only just left.”

“Yes?” The Nazi looked at her hopefully. It was the first time Konrad could see anything recognizable in the young man’s face. The door opened again, and this time the nurse did enter with an elderly doctor. Horst took several steps back to allow the doctor to examine the patient.

When the doctor touched her wrist, she groaned. The doctor nodded to the nurse, who smiled. Konrad saw the slits of Lisel’s eyes open again.

“What is it? What is it?” she began crying, first in a whisper, then in a strengthening voice that rose to a scream. “No!”

She pushed off the doctor’s hand and pushed with both her hands against the empty air. The exertion pained and exhausted her, and she fell back from the strain, whimpering.

The nurse leaned over her, to calm her and smooth her sheet and blanket. But her closeness seemed only to distress Lisel more.

“Gloves…in back …of drawer!” she cried.

She opened her eyes, trying to focus them. The doctor ordered a sedative; he had to repeat the order to the nurse, who was looking at Lisel oddly. Then the nurse seemed to shake herself and promptly left the room. The doctor looked about, at the priest, then at the soldier, then at the bureau Konrad stood near. On the bureau was a vase of many‑colored gladioli, a box of chocolates, and a blue dish of grapes. In the bottom drawer was a forgotten pair of gloves, left behind by a patient who had died in the doctor’s care six month’s earlier.

“Interesting case,” the doctor said.

“Herr Doctor‑‑ ” Horst began.

“Time,” the doctor interrupted with the familiar answer. “It will surely take time and bedrest.” He attempted to lean over Lisel again, now that she breathed regularly. He touched her swollen eyelid with a delicacy Konrad admired, and began to shine a pencil light into her eyes.

It was as if a trapped bird hid in the cave of her mind. She screamed again, this time at the doctor. “October, she’ll be dead!”

The medical man drew back, glanced quickly around, and pocketed the pencil light.

Avoiding Konrad’s curious gaze, he spoke to her, “Calm yourself now, young lady. There is nothing more to fear.” There was a tremor in his voice, which he had tried to force down to its lowest, most professional register.

The nurse returned, but the doctor waved away the syringe she offered him on a tray. Instead, he demanded the patient’s chart, and receiving it, wrote for several moments. Then without another word, he left the room. The nurse looked down at the chart.

“What is it?” Horst said.

The nurse hesitated and looked at Konrad, who only tilted his head. Horst took a step toward the nurse, and she, along with Konrad, did not doubt the young officer would take the chart from her hands. Instead of relinquishing her medical authority, however, she gathered herself together and looked down at the chart, as if for the first time.

“Psychiatric,” she announced.

She nodded as if agreeing with the doctor’s determination; then she too left the room.

Horst and Konrad faced one another across the white bed. It felt to the priest that he could not leave the girl alone with this Nazi, although he felt distinctly that this was what was wanted. Then, surprisingly, the young officer knelt in the position of prayer, and this action so moved Konrad that he felt like placing a hand on the penitent’s short blond hair to bless him. Horst held still for some time, then rested his head against Lisel’s back that held strictly to the edge of the bed. At his touch, she moaned again, deeply.

“Sweetheart,” he echoed her moan.

The priest was drawn towards Lisel, and leaned toward her struggling face. He bent down so that his head was beside her lips to bear what she was whispering. To Horst, on the other side of the bed, it was no more than choking breathing. He was at the ready to spring and run for the doctor.

“Hummingbird,” she whispered again and again.

Colibri the word automatically translated in Konrad’s mind (Colibri?). He was about to stroke the suffering girl’s shoulder when he grasped the effect touch had on her. He stood again. Horst stood with him, assuming his rigid self‑control.

“She needs rest, the doctor said,” Horst ordered himself, snapping his head down and up at his own command. Acknowledging the priest briefly, he turned on his heel and left the room.

Konrad sat down on the chair by the window. He felt the warm sun through the glass like hands rubbing his tired shoulders. Automatically, he folded his hands and prayed inwardly, allowing himself the luxury of the thought that Albert would come once it was dark, and this night he might be able to go to bed and sleep, though sleep for months had been a stranger to him.

“Be with us now and in the hour of our death. Amen,” he prayed in silence.

“Be with us now and in the hour of our death. Amen,” her whispers echoed his thought exactly.

Some hours later, she opened her eyes and tried to focus in the dark. She could tell, she did not know how, that the nurse and priest were not in the room with her, but she was not alone. It was another night and the night presence was with her. She heard hospital sounds outside her door. She heard metal and wheels and quickly moving feet. She felt in her body for pain, but it was hiding in particular places now. It was no longer everywhere. Her head hurt the worst, but still not so bad as before. It did not pound with her pulse, and the terrible nausea was gone. Where she was raw and hot and sore she did not like to think about. Her eyes focused in the dark from the streetlight coming up into the window. Her hand fluttered to her head in confusion. She felt the stiff edges of bandages, searching. A man was standing by the window, looking up at the night.

“Father?” she, said.

The figure turned. “No. It is Herr Entrater. How are you feeling?”

“Herr Entrater?”

“Yes. Do you want anything?” Albert asked, uncomfortably.

“Where is my hair!” she cried. “They cut off my hair!”

“Ssh,” he soothed.

“I want to go home! Please!”

“All right now, you must try to go back to sleep, Lisel. You must rest yourself.”

Herr Entrater had a foolish high voice, but sweet, and he began to tell her a story as if she were a little girl.

“Once many, many years ago, seven sisters went walking, and one became lost in the forest. One of the seven brothers in the Big Dipper found her, and her beauty was such that he fell in love with her at once. . .”

As she listened to the story, she stopped crying. Then slowly she untucked her legs and stretched them out under the sheet and blanket. It was cool against her calves and bare feet. She let herself sink into the softening mattress, into the echo of the sound of his voice.