By December 21, the town of Bastogne was completely surrounded by the Germans with the 101st and much of the 20th trapped inside. The soldiers started joking, “They’ve got us surrounded, poor bastards. No matter where we shoot, we’re bound to hit one.” “Poor bastards” became a rallying cry in the days to come.
On December 22, a German commander sent a letter to General McAuliffe threatening annihilation if Bastogne was not surrendered, to which a terse “Nuts!” was the only answer he received. The soldiers were laughing about it, and Angelo puzzled about the response for all of ten minutes, then shook his head and laughed too, supposing it was simply slang he didn’t understand. He’d discovered he liked Americans and was proud to be one, if only by birth.
Reports of a massacre of almost one hundred American soldiers near the village of Malmedy—soldiers who had only a few days before found themselves surrendering to a Panzer Division—probably made it easy to refuse the Germans when they urged surrender. Angelo figured “Nuts” meant “You’re crazy.” That . . . or “Go to hell.” Either worked. With divisions biting at the German flanks and the 101st refusing to surrender, the battle in Bastogne had gone on for almost a week.
Angelo did his best to be another pair of hands and to aid the dying physically and spiritually. He had started to think that he might make a decent doctor if he lived to see the end of the war, if he found Eva, and if they ever made it home. If he couldn’t be a priest, he had to do something.
It was after dark on December 24, a Christmas Eve like no other in his memory, when an old woman came into the field station, asking for help for a village woman who had gone into labor.
Mario was in the middle of stitching a wound and Dr. Prior was stemming a hemorrhage. Mario looked around wildly for someone to assist the adamant woman. She was pulling at his arm, urging him, and chattering about pain and length of contractions and the baby being stuck.
“Angelo!” he called across the space. “There is a woman in labor not far from here. She needs help.”
“Why didn’t they evacuate with the rest of the city?” Angelo finished helping a wounded soldier sip some water and then moved toward Mario and the old woman.
“The mother was afraid of going into labor. Looks like she was right,” Mario answered. The old woman had backed up, away from the blood, and her eyes were weary and desperate.
“I will go with her. You can’t leave,” Angelo agreed, trying not to think about what he might find.
“If she can, have her get on her hands and knees, Angelo. If the baby is face-first but hasn’t entered the birth canal, sometimes this position will help it turn on its own.” The instructions had Angelo drawing up short and reconsidering.
“Mario, I can’t do this,” Angelo said softly. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the first thing about delivering babies, especially if the mother or child is in trouble.”
“I know. But go, see what can be done, and if you can, bring her here. We can better help everyone if they’re all in one place. Take the cart.”
The old woman kissed her rosary beads even as she walked and tugged, reminding Angelo of his nonna back in Florence. He pulled the cart to a house only three buildings from the aid station, and the woman picked her way up the icy steps. He followed her, treading just as carefully as she opened the front door and removed the scarf from her head, calling out to whomever was in the house.
“I’ve brought a priest,” she hollered in French. “He was the only one they could spare.”
She turned to Angelo, who kicked the snow from his mismatched footwear—a consequence of having a prosthetic leg with a permanent black boot—and shut the door behind him.
“She’s been trying to walk, thinking that would help. I don’t know what else to do. She’s so exhausted, and it’s been going on so long.” The old woman looked ashamed, as if she, being a woman, should be of more help.
Slow steps, measured as if there was pain with each footfall, sounded on the landing above them, and Angelo raised his eyes to the top of the stairs. The woman’s hands were pressed to her back, as if holding herself together, and her hair was a dark cloud of curling disarray around her thin shoulders, but Angelo’s eyes went immediately to her stomach, which was enormous and made even bigger by the size of the girl who wielded it. She wore a droopy pink sweater around her shoulders and a loose black frock that had seen too many washings but was obviously chosen to fit over her burgeoning belly. Her feet were slim and bare, despite the cold, and her toenails, miraculously, were as pink as her sweater. Angelo wondered for two seconds how she had accomplished such a feat before his eyes rose to her face, and his world teetered and turned upside down. The woman was staring down at him like he had risen from the dead, a modern-day Lazarus come to visit.
“Eva?” he gasped.
One hand left her back and stretched toward the wall, as if she felt them closing in. She didn’t question his presence but only stared as if she expected him to disappear as soon as she blinked, and her legs buckled dangerously.
He would never recall how he traversed the stairs, or even if he did. He must have flown, because he found himself standing before her, the stairs at his back, Eva slumped against the wall, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Eva.” He said her name again, and then she was falling into his arms. For several breaths they stood with their arms locked around each other, and then Angelo was pulling away just enough to look at her again and make sure she was real. Her hands framed his face as her incredulous eyes traced his features. She kept saying his name, the word Angelo opening her lips and melding them more completely against his when he kissed her, first on the mouth and then everywhere else—cheeks, chin, nose, forehead—before seeking her lips once more.
“Eva!” A startled cry rose from the bottom of the stairs, making them pull apart briefly. The poor woman was clearly beside herself as she watched a stranger—a priest!—kissing her pregnant charge.
“This is my Angelo, Bettina,” Eva cried, laughing and weeping simultaneously, as she continued to touch his face in disbelief. “This is my Angelo.”
“Angelo? Le père du bébé?” Bettina gasped, and she immediately crossed herself again, his cleric’s collar obviously confusing her. Eva must not have shared everything. Then the woman’s shocked words penetrated Angelo’s euphoric disbelief.
“The child’s father?” he repeated, suddenly remembering why he’d been summoned in the first place. His hands fell to Eva’s swollen abdomen, and his eyes followed. Then he was looking at her again, at her beautiful, weary face and her tear-filled eyes.
“Yes. The child’s father,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his, and her breath caught and her hands clutched, and she was in his arms again as he held her through the pain of a labor he was wholly unprepared for.
“The contractions are deep and strong,” she panted. “I’ve been in labor since yesterday, and I don’t think it’s progressing like it should.”
“You need to get on your hands and knees,” he urged, walking back into the room she’d obviously vacated. A fire was roaring in the grate, and water and towels and a bed made up with clean sheets were at the ready. Clearly, Bettina had done all she knew to do. Angelo walked Eva to the bed and helped her ease into a crawling position on her hands and knees. Her arms and legs wobbled in fatigue. She seemed extremely weak, and he could see why Bettina had gone for help.
“I have to go get Mario. This may work, but you’re going to need a doctor,” he said urgently.
“Mario?” Her voice rose in amazement. “Mario is here too? How can this be? Where did you come from, Angelo? I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead.” The shock weakened her further, and her arms wobbled wildly.
“Shh. We have time for that. We have so much to talk about, but you need a doctor.”
“Don’t leave,” Eva entreated, her eyes pleading even as she attempted to reach out a hand and swayed dangerously. “Please, Angelo. Please stay with me.”
He felt it too, the foreboding sense that if they parted now, the fissure that had opened up and allowed them to step through time and distance and find one another, would close forever. He hesitated, knowing he needed Mario but unwilling to let Eva out of his sight.
“J’y retournerais,” Bettina volunteered from the doorway. The poor woman had just climbed to the top of the stairs. “I will go again.”
“Madame!” Angelo called after her. “Tell Dr. Sonnino I’ve found Eva. He will come.”
But Mario didn’t come. Bettina never returned either. Instead, the Luftwaffe parted the clearing December skies with screaming fire, and all at once the night was as bright as noon in July from the magnesium flares. Seconds later, a hellish shrieking pierced the air, and Angelo draped himself over Eva as the first bombs found their targets and the earth shook with their impact. The apartment trembled, but it hadn’t been hit. Angelo braced as the screaming, whirring, shrieking began again, signaling another bomb was hurtling toward them.
“I love you, Angelo,” Eva said in his ear, and he could only return the words, sheltering her the best he could as the world exploded around them. And still the building stood. Then the strafing began, a German bomber dropping low to pepper the area with machine-gun fire. The sound of shattering glass and strafing was punctuated by the screams and shouts of the survivors outside, and Eva and Angelo waited breathlessly, delivered from one trauma by the arrival of another.
“Angelo,” Eva panted. “It’s coming. The pain is different. There’s pressure now. The baby is coming.” He had braced Eva for as long as she could maintain the position on her hands and knees, and then eased her down to her side, letting her rest between rounds before agony twisted her up again.
She smiled as if he’d performed a miracle, and he closed his eyes in grateful relief before he helped her to sit, pulling her legs back into her chest. He didn’t know how he knew what to do, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he remembered a woman assisting his mother as she labored to bring his little sister into the world. His mother had won the battle but had lost her life. That would not happen now. He wouldn’t let it.