THE LONG JOURNEY
TO FREEDOM Ilmars Birznieks |
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KAY APOR PULLED HER SHABBY OVERCOAT TIGHTLY AROUND HER.
Although it was early spring, the weather in eastern Russia was freezing. Sitting hunched in a corner by a window on an unheated train, she tried to keep warm, but it was useless. The relentless cold, her constant companion since her arrival in Siberia, was still with her.
Somber, hollow-faced men, women and children standing in the aisles, sleeping on the floors, or sitting bundled together on the wooden seats, crowded the passenger car. The sour smell of sweat-soiled clothes and bad breath pervaded the air, but Kay didn't mind. In labor camp, she learned how to tolerate almost anything.
Kay glanced at the other passengers, wondering how many of them shared her fate and were among the fortunate few leaving Siberia alive. She wanted to ask but she didn't dare. An informer might be among them. He could report her for asking questions, and the police would take her off the train. Kay knew it had happened to others many times before, and she wasn't going to take that risk, not now, not ever. Asking questions about her missing husband had cost her three years of hard labor, three cold and half-starving years in a hellhole near Tomsk.
It could have been even longer, ten years, but the Soviet authorities suddenly reduced her punishment. Why, she didn't know. She believed her influential grandfather, a former senior senator from Louisiana, made it happen. Her grandfather and parents had opposed her going to communist Hungary to search for Jan, but she had gone anyway by joining a tourist group traveling to Budapest. After arriving, instead of sightseeing with the Americans, she slipped away to find some news about Jan. That had been her undoing.
At the College of Creative Arts, Jan's alma mater, the AVH, state security, arrested Kay. Claiming she was an imperialist agent, it handed her over to the Soviet authorities, KGB. After two months of intimidating interrogations, they sent her to Moscow's massive Boutirky prison. Kept in solitary confinement, pending trial, she existed on black bread and watery cabbage soup. A month later the people's court of the Soviet Union found her guilty of espionage and sentenced her to ten years at hard labor.
Oh, how I wish I had listened to my parents, she thought. But I was young, naïve about politics, and in love.
With only a loaf of black bread to eat for a week, the nagging hunger she had suffered at the labor camp was still with her too. She almost broke into bitter laughter thinking about it.
In the camp, the cold and the constant hunger complemented each other perfectly. The two were nearly alike, each persistent in its own destructive way, sapping Kay's strength, dragging her down like a crushing burden until there was no more life left. Kay felt like an empty shell. At that moment death appeared the only salvation. Yet, as if by some miracle, she managed to survive. In her heart there was still some hope left, and she struggled on each godforsaken day, praying for that precious hour of deliverance.
Outside the window, the passing scenery changed rapidly. The mountainous wilderness of the Urals, the little villages of the Tatars, and the endless pine forests of the Volga River disappeared. Signs of industrialized civilization were everywhere: massive apartment buildings, trucks, tractors, buses, cars, and bustling people. From the sudden stirring and excitement of the passengers, Kay realized the train was nearing a city.
In the main train station of Moscow, Kay, for the first time since she left Tomsk, got something warm to eat. Although it was only potato soup with bits of bacon and onion, it tasted indescribably good. Savoring every spoonful, she licked shamelessly the last drop from her bowl. She could have eaten more, but she had only a few rubles--a pittance she saved from selling wild strawberries to a few of the friendlier guards at the camp. She still had a long way to go.
In Moscow, Kay boarded another train for Warsaw. Her seat was no longer by the window, but she didn't care. She was happy the car had heat, and, from the aisle seat during the day, she would see enough of the passing villages, towns, and changing landscapes from two windows. As the train raced through the night, the caressing thought of freedom, the rhythmic swaying of the heated car and the monotonous clicking of the wheels against the rails lulled her into a deep but restless sleep. Kay did not wake until the next morning, as the train left Minsk.
She looked around anxiously, adjusted her scarf, and pulled her coat below her knees. Different kinds of people sat in the rows now. They were not in the car when the train left Moscow. None of them had the somber, hollow-faced look of the previous passengers. They smiled, they chatted with each other, and most of them wore winter coats with fur collars instead of quilted tunics or felt jackets. In addition, they all had something to eat! Watching them munch on sausages, smoked bacon, boiled eggs, cheese, and fresh black bread made Kay's head spin. The everlasting deep gnawing hunger in the pit of her stomach became almost unbearable. She felt faint.
Forcing herself not to look at the food, she watched the passing scenery. Now it showed swampy woods, plowed fields, greenish meadows, and an occasional birch grove. Here and there the scars of the recent patriotic war remained: a burned-out barn or a farmhouse that wasn't yet rebuilt, a rusting hulk of a tank or a truck with a barely visible swastika or a red star not yet removed. Stretches of forest with broken, spruce, and uprooted oaks not yet cleared away marred the otherwise charming countryside. In several places, the trees had burned, and only the blackened stumps remained--grim reminders of the folly of war.
A small hand tugging at the sleeve of her coat caused Kay to turn her head from the window. A little girl wearing a pile jacket was standing in front of her. The hood on her head and the rubber boots on her feet made her look like a little dwarf.
"Are you sick?" the little girl asked, speaking in Polish. "My mommy says when your face is pale, you're sick."
Kay shook her head and tried to hide her face, hoping the little girl would leave, but she didn't. Standing close to Kay, she kept looking at her, as if expecting some response. When she didn't speak, the little girl tugged at her sleeve again.
"You don't speak Polish, do you? Are you German?"
Before Kay could shake her head again, a stout, young woman with a broad, freckled face and braided, honey-colored hair appeared in the aisle, wearing an embroidered, white blouse with a long, wraparound skirt; a sheepskin jacket slung over her shoulders. In her left hand she carried a picnic basket covered with a white linen towel.
"Ah, here you are. I've been looking for you all over the train. Shame on you, wandering around like that, bothering people," she berated the little girl in Polish.
"I'm sorry, lady. I hope my daughter didn't cause you no trouble," she immediately apologized in Russian.
"No, she didn't cause any trouble," Kay replied in a subdued voice.
"Good, come along now, Wanda. We must leave the lady alone," the woman demanded, stooping down and grabbing the little girl by the waist, but she wiggled free.
"Mommy, Mommy, the lady's face is pale. You always said..."
"Never mind what I said," the woman interrupted quickly. "Come along now or you'll miss your breakfast."
"Can the lady eat with us, Mommy? Can she, Mommy, can she, please?"
For a moment the woman didn't react. Somewhat embarrassed, she looked at Kay, as if to apologize again.
"The lady has her own breakfast. We can't bother her," she said to Wanda after some hesitation. This time she grabbed her firmly by the hand.
"But she don't have a basket. She don't have food," the little girl insisted, looking pleadingly at her mother and attempting to free her hand.
"All right, all right, behave yourself. If it matters that much to you, I'll ask the lady if she would like to eat breakfast with us." The woman released Wanda's hand and sat down on a vacant seat opposite Kay. Putting the basket in her lap, she leaned forward.
"I hope the lady don't mind me asking her to join us for breakfast," she invited in Russian with a distinctive Polish accent.
"No, I don't mind," Kay replied. Her answer was so instinctive and instantaneous, it shamed her, as the truth struck her.
Three years ago I wouldn't have accepted anything from a stranger. Before Jan disappeared, I was happily married and proud, but the labor camp has changed me. I'm no longer proud, and my marriage to Jan doesn't seem real anymore. He used to admire my sylphlike figure, and he loved to stroke my long, flowing dark hair. Now I no longer have a figure, only skin and bones. In place of my long hair, I have stubble, hair cut short to control the lice. Before I would often think of making love to Jan, now I can only think of what is in the woman's basket. Oh dear God, will I ever be myself again?
"Khorosho!" the woman exclaimed. Reaching under the towel in her basket, she produced a loaf of black bread and a butcher knife. After cutting three thick slabs from the loaf, she again reached under the towel and brought out a side of smoked bacon. Carefully cutting a thin slice, she put it on one of the slices and handed it to Kay.
"Have something to eat," she said cheerfully. "I hope you don't mind just bread and bacon. Butter is still hard to come by. We still don't have enough cows. The war took them all."
"No, no, I don't mind," Kay hastened to reply, holding the bread and bacon with both hands as if afraid someone would take it away. Its aroma was so overpowering, she was almost afraid she would faint before taking the first bite.
"Are you all right?" the woman asked, watching Kay closely. "Now that I have a good look at you, you do look mighty pale. Have you been sick? Are you going home from a hospital?"
Kay didn't answer. Her mouth was so full with bits of bread and bacon; she had a difficult time chewing.
"My mommy always says you shouldn't take big bites," the little girl recited, watching Kay's struggle with innocent amusement.
"Hush, child, it's not polite to say that. I want you to eat now. No more talking, or you'll get what's coming to you. Do you hear?" The woman reprimanded her daughter as she handed the little girl her breakfast. Embarrassed, Wanda turned her back to Kay and bit into her sandwich.
"I hope you don't mind my little girl, lady," the woman said, talking with her mouth full. "She always says things to people. I can't keep her quiet."
Kay shrugged. "Why should I mind? I didn't understand what she said. I only speak a few words of Polish." She had finished her sandwich and was eating the crumbs from her lap.
"Oh my goodness, you still must be hungry. I'll cut some more bread and bacon," the woman said, giving Kay a sympathetic look.
"No, thank you. You better not. If I eat more, I'm sure I'll get sick at my stomach. I'm not used to eating so much."
Chewing vigorously on the bread and bacon, the woman looked puzzled. "Didn't they feed you enough at the hospital?"
For a moment Kay didn't know what to say. She knew it was safer to let the woman believe she was returning from a hospital. Even though she was now far away from the camp, it was still not safe to talk about it. There still could be an informer around, ready to accuse her of spreading vicious revisionist propaganda. But the woman was so kind, her peasant face so gentle and caring, she felt like taking a chance in telling her the truth. She needed to regain some measure of human dignity, even if it meant taking a chance.
After looking carefully around the car, Kay leaned over to the woman. "I'm not coming home from the hospital. I'm returning from the labor camp in Siberia," she whispered, watching the woman's reaction anxiously.
"Oh dear, oh dear," the woman whispered back, crossing herself. She had stopped eating.
Her big, hazel eyes were suddenly full of compassion. "I heard about them camps. My cousin in Minsk spent seven years in one. They worked him to death, poor fellow. He had hardly any food or clothes. He came back with bones protruding everywhere from his skin. Oh dear, oh dear! Lady, you don't worry none. Once you get back to your family, everything will be all right. Is your home around here somewhere?"
Kay sighed with relief. The Polish peasant woman certainly didn't talk like or act like an informer, but then you can never be sure. Even the most naïve or innocent-looking people often work for the police.
"Is something wrong?" the woman asked when Kay hesitated to answer.
"No, no, nothing is wrong. I'm..."
"You're scared of me, ain't you? You have nothing to be scared about," the woman cut her off in a soft, soothing voice. "I'm only a poor farmer's wife, Lara Lazarcyk, from Wisznice. That's just a little place in Poland, close to the Russian border."
Kay hesitated again. For a poor farmer's wife, the woman was surprisingly observant. Isn't that a sign of a keen informer? She shuddered apprehensively. What if they arrest me again and send me back to the camp? My grandfather's influence would not help the second time. I most certainly would have to serve the full sentence, perhaps even longer. Work would be much harder. Instead of clearing the woods of dead trees and underbrush, I would have to cut stones in a quarry. No, I can't even think of living in that hell-hole for another day.
Another tug of her sleeve interrupted Kay's thoughts. The little girl had finished eating and faced her again with a sad look in her brown eyes.
"I hear my mommy say you scared of her. You don't be scared of my mommy. She nice. She loves me and my daddy, and we loves you," she tried to assure in broken Russian.
Kay took one look at her and burst out in tears, but for the first time in years, they were tears of relief rather than fear; whatever suspicion or doubts she had before were suddenly lost in looking at the face of an innocent child, little Wanda.
"You wonderful, wonderful little girl," she cried out in Russian, bending down from her seat and hugging the little girl, as if she were her own child. Her sudden outburst prompted a few curious stares from the other passengers, but she didn't care anymore who they were and what they thought. She felt safe as long as there were still people like little Wanda and her mother.
Kay's fears that the Soviet authorities might detain her at the last minute quickly disappeared as the train, after a two-hour customs delay in Brest, crossed the border into Poland in the late afternoon. The Russian border police were too busy searching for contraband to pay any attention to her. They checked her release papers from the camp, stamped her one-way ticket to Budapest, and asked to see her luggage. When she obediently untied a small bundle, showing a broken compact, a cracked comb, a molded piece of black bread, three rubles, and a tiny, faded passport picture of her husband, even the usually impassive border guards looked embarrassed as they waved her through.
Kay had no time to relax, for the Polish border guards were unexpectedly suspicious. Although they cleared her through customs, minutes later the Polish police arrested her and took her off the train. They didn't believe that the Soviet authorities had released her from a labor camp in Siberia. At the police station in Siedice, police officials questioned her for four unrelenting hours, like an escaped Russian prisoner.
When she kept repeating the same answers, "I was released from a labor camp near Tomsk. I'm on my way to Budapest," the officials finally gave up and threw her in jail.
Alone in a drab cell, although exhausted, she ate the pea soup and a slice of stale black bread offered her, curled up on a lumpy mattress, and tried to sleep, but it was to no avail. The fear Wanda and her mother had dispelled for a few hours returned. She was sure they would send her back to Siberia. She spent a frightful, sleepless night, shivering under a tattered blanket in damp, putrid air.
But morning brought a pleasant surprise. Instead of the police guards, an attractive but hard-faced woman, dressed in a blue business suit, appeared at her cell. She introduced herself as Maria Lissa, a Polish government official from Warsaw, and apologized in fluent Russian for the cruel treatment Kay had received, excusing it as an unfortunate mistake. She drove her in a black Volga sedan a few kilometers from Siedice to an old manor house that looked uninhabited from the outside, but once Kay was inside, she could immediately tell it was occupied, but perhaps only for special purposes.
After breakfast of white bread with butter and ham, a boiled egg, and real coffee, Kay, for the first time in years, took a hot bath with real soap. It felt so good, she could have soaked for hours, but Maria interrupted her after half an hour with olive-green underwear, shirt, sweater, pants, overcoat, and black boots. As Polish Army issue meant for men, they were a size too big, but Kay didn't mind. The clothes were new and clean and would keep her warm. That's all that mattered to her. She forgot how to look proper a long time ago.
As she dressed, Maria informed her that Moscow had changed her itinerary. She was going to East Berlin rather than Budapest. Kay's face instantly chagrined. "East Berlin? Why? My husband is Hungarian. From all I know, he might be waiting for me at the train station in Budapest. What am I going to do in East Berlin?"
Maria shrugged, showing no sympathy. "Orders are orders. I only obey them. I don't make them. My driver, Sergeant Pawel, will take you to the train station in Warsaw. After that, you will be on your own. Here are your new papers and a second-class ticket from Warsaw to East Berlin."
She nodded and followed Pawel to the car. During the short drive from Siedice to Warsaw, the poker-faced driver remained tight-lipped. Kay was trying to resolve why she suddenly had to go to East Berlin. The probable answer is my grandfather. He knew that after my release, I would want to go back to Budapest. He's trying to keep me out of the Hungarian communist hands. I can't blame him for that, after what happened to me. But I still want to find Jan, and I can't do it from the States. I tried it, and it led to nothing. The Hungarian government refused to cooperate, and all of my official inquiries met with dead silence.
She sighed and tried to watch the passing pastoral countryside but dozed off. Kay awakened when Pawel stopped the car at the back entrance of the train station. "You have an hour before your train leaves," he said with an authoritative voice. "Make sure you don't miss it."
"What do I do when I get to East Berlin?" she asked, getting out of the car.
Sergeant Pawel smirked. "I'm sure your friends will inform you. They know you are coming."
My friends? I don't have any friends in East Germany. Not knowing what to make of it, she nodded meekly as the sergeant sped away.
Inside the train station, Kay learned her train was running late. She had at least a two-hour wait. Instead of waiting in the station, she decided to walk a few blocks into the city. Strolling leisurely, she reached a large park. She briefly stopped to admire Chopin's monument that practically commanded the whole entrance to the park. Continuing on a gravel path, she reached a tree-bosomed lake. Near the water, she sat down in the grass and took off her boots. Stretching her legs, she raised her head to the sun. Its warmth basked her face. A soft, tingling glow spread throughout her body. Her thoughts traveled back to the year she and Jan first met.
It seems it was a long time ago, but it was only five years. I was sitting by the pond in Audubon Park, reading Tolstoy's War and Peace, when a man approached me. I didn't see who it was at first. I was too engrossed in the book. "What are you reading?" he asked. I looked up. Beside me stood a young man with the purest blue eyes I had ever seen. They stood out in such a contrast to his black hair that, for a few seconds, I couldn't help but stare at him. He was casually dressed with beige Bermuda shorts, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Over his right shoulder, he carried a bulging satchel. As he slowly lowered himself on the grass next to me, I showed him the book. We talked and that was it. We fell in love. A year later, over my parents' strong objections, I married Jan....
"Papers!" A husky voice in Polish startled Kay.
Jumping to her feet, Kay faced two stern-looking, uniformed men. Fumbling nervously in the inside pocket of her coat, she produced her Russian identity card.
"What are you doing in Lazienki Park?" The taller of the two policemen asked her in Russian as he read her name and nationality on the card. "You're American with a Russian identity card. Where's your passport...your visa?"
"I don't have them," she answered, nervously fingering the sleeve of her coat.
"You don't have them? How did you get into Poland? Do you realize you have entered illegally?" the shorter policeman said, looking at her suspiciously.
"I'm just passing through. I'm going to East Berlin on the afternoon train. I only took a little walk from the train station," she explained.
"Where are you coming from?" the taller policeman asked, giving Kay back her identity card.
"From Siberia...from a labor camp. They released me. I have proof."
Both policemen exchanged frowning glances.
Her hands shook uncontrollably as she untied her little bundle to show them her new release papers.
The taller policeman examined them carefully. Finally, after what seemed an unusually long time to Kay but probably lasted only a minute, the policeman handed the papers back to her.
"All right, everything is in order. But you're not permitted to leave the train station. Go back and wait for the train there. Lazienki Park is not a place for the likes of you," he admonished. "If you leave the station again, we'll arrest you and put you in jail. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Officer, I understand," she replied and hastily grabbed her little bundle and boots. As she started to run out of the park, she almost spilled the contents of the bundle.
"Dumb American broad," the shorter policeman blurted out to his partner in Polish, watching her run. Both of them laughed.
Kay boarded the train for East Berlin in the early evening. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, and hunger once again returned to accompany her. She had no Polish money and could only watch with envy the well-dressed passengers who were buying sandwiches from a vendor outside the train.
Jan and I frequently ate sandwiches for lunch and sometimes even for dinner just after we were married, she reflected to suppress her hunger. As a second-year medical student at Tulane Medical School, he seldom had time to eat a full meal, and my majors, German and Russia at Sophie Newcomb College, were very demanding. I had no time to cook. We never felt undernourished, and the money we saved we used to eat at a restaurant during holidays. One of those ham and cheese sandwiches Jan and I enjoyed would taste fantastic now.
"Poznan, the next stop," the conductor announced.
Distracted from her thoughts, Kay peered out the window, but she couldn't see much in the dark. Only lights in windows from houses near the tracks or the headlights from passing cars or trucks were visible now and then. When the train entered Poznan, streetlamps illuminated small sections of the city. Here and there in the faint light, she could still see the wounds of war. Chimneys of burned-out houses loomed like forlorn sentinels, and, in some places, remaining walls of destroyed apartment houses appeared like gray apparitions with holes for eyes where windows once stood.
But in other sections of the city, recovery was evident. Several lifting cranes, their jibs protruding like arms of monstrous giants hovered over buildings in various stages of construction.
When the train left Poznan, Kay fell asleep, but a short time later, the conductor awakened her to check her ticket. After he left, she tried to sleep again, but her thoughts returned to Jan, keeping her awake.
Why did he have to go back to Budapest? He knew most of the refugees who returned to Hungary never made it to their former homes. Considered traitors to their country, the communist authorities arrested them as soon as they crossed the border. But Jan was stubborn. "I was only thirteen when my mother and I fled to Germany to escape the Russians. They wouldn't consider me a traitor. At that age I hardly knew what a traitor meant," he said. "My father is gravely ill. I need to see him before he dies. I'll be all right...back in a week."
Kay yawned and mumbled, "A week turned into a year. Nothing...nothing...nothing."
Kay awakened when the train crossed the border into the German Democratic Republic. After her experience in Poland, she expected more harassment from the East German border guards, but it didn't happen. They checked her release papers and didn't even ask if she had any luggage.
But she had hardly put her papers away and settled in her seat by the window to watch the passing landscapes when the train came to a jolting stop. Startled, Kay peered out the window. Other passenger were looking too, craning their necks to see what was happening.
"HVA," an elderly man muttered in German, drawing on his pipe.
Kay turned her head to the center aisle and saw two young men dressed in civilian clothes with open trench coats slowly passing through the standing passengers. Their heads moved almost rhythmically from left to right and right to left; their eyes briefly but intently inspected every man and woman. The car fell unusually silent.
One of the young men stared at Kay. She could feel his eyes boring into her, but she didn't dare meet his cold look. With her head bowed, she prayed not to panic. In a few seconds it was over. The young man moved on.
Only when HVA had left the car and the train moved again did casual talk with intermittent laughter return. Kay leaned over to the elderly man sitting on the seat across from her. "Was it the police?" she whispered in German.
"Police? Worse. State security. We was lucky. They left us alone. Last time I was on the train, they took two men and a woman with them," he whispered back.
"Did they arrest them?"
"What do you think?"
"Why?" She was now more curious than afraid.
"They probably said something against the State. It's been like that since the Hungarian uprising last year. HVA has been extra cautious."
"Hungarian uprising? What happened?" she asked with added interest.
The elderly man gave her a puzzled look. "You sure don't know much of what's going on, do you? Where have you been all this time?"
"Away...three years."
"Three years, eh? Well, all I can tell you, you better learn fast what's going on. It's for your own good," the old man advised as he got up sluggishly from his seat and reached for his suitcase on the luggage rack.
The train slowed down. A row of burned boxcars, an idle freight train, a maze of railroad tracks, dingy buildings among stacks of bricks, and piles of masonry rubble glided by the windows, but Kay didn't look or move. Even when the train pulled into the East Berlin train station minutes later, she didn't stir. What the elderly man said frightened her. Life will not be much easier in East Germany than in Siberia. Instead of ruthless Russian guards, I'll have to face the constant HVA threat. I might as well forget about Jan. All I can do now is just cherish his memory. Whatever hope I still had after my release from the camp to see him again has vanished.
Finally she rose from the seat, picked up her little bundle from the rack, and, with a heavy heart, almost unwillingly trudged to the door. Slowly stepping out of the car, she took a long look around. The platform was almost deserted. All the passengers from her train had disappeared. Only a couple of porters were still unloading the baggage car, and a solitary railroad worker was meticulously tapping the wheels of the locomotive. A short distance away, a man wearing a gray raincoat and trilby hat and a woman also clad in a gray raincoat stood beside a telephone booth, looking in her direction.
"State security," Kay mumbled to herself as she nervously began to walk toward the terminal. She tried to ignore them, but the man's voice in English compelled her to turn her face toward him.
"Mrs. Apor, Kay Apor, I'm from the American Embassy in Bonn, West Germany, sent to escort you to West Berlin. My name is Robert Collier," the man said with a smile on his friendly face. "But you can call me Bob."
"And I am Edda Moser, a nurse from the West German Red Cross to look after your immediate needs," the woman added with a slight German accent.
Kay stood, as if hypnotized. Could this really be true!
Bob moved close to Kay. "I have good news for you, Mrs. Apor. I know you've been waiting to hear it for a long time. Your husband, Jan Apor, is in West Berlin. He escaped through Austria after the Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution. He's waiting for you at Check Point Charley."
Kay still didn't move or react.
"Are you all right?" the nurse asked. She stepped closer to Kay, giving her a concerned look.
"Yes, yes, yes," she suddenly shouted and, with tears streaming down her hollow cheeks, embraced the surprised Bob.
Her hug was so sudden and exuberant that it almost knocked him off his feet. "Come now, Mrs. Apor, I understand how you must feel, but please save that bear hug for your husband. I'm sure he will appreciate it even more," he blushed.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it," Kay said, breaking her embrace and wiping her tears with the sleeve of her overcoat.
Bob responded with a broad smile. "Now that you're back, let's not stay here a minute longer. We have a car parked by the station. It shouldn't take us longer than twenty minutes to reach West Berlin."
"Before we go, do you need anything? Perhaps an aspirin? I can even give you a tranquilizer to calm your nerves," the nurse said.
Kay turned to face her. "Can I have a piece of bread?"
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