Rising Sun, Falling Shadow Read Online Free PDF

painted with brown iodine in preparation for surgery, but her complexion better matched the white sheets draping her. She managed a quivering smile for him. “If it’s a girl, she must be “Ruth.” But if we have a boy, Simon and I both like the name “Jakob.” After your father, Franz.”
    â€œA good name, Essie.” The lump in his throat almost choked away his words.
    Jakob Adler had outlived his younger son, Esther’s first husband, Karl, by only a few weeks. Emphysema, not the Nazis, had taken his life, but it still troubled Franz that Jakob had survived long enough to witness his younger son’s lynching.
    Sunny stepped up to the operating table, across from Franz. Another nurse, Liese, stood at the head of the table, assuming the role of anaesthetist. She held a breathing mask and a bottle of ether that Simon had managed to secure through the black market just the day before he was interned.
    Franz leaned closer to his sister-in-law. “Are you ready, Essie?”
    â€œNot for any of it—not surgery, not motherhood or . . .” She uttered a small laugh. “But please do not let that stop you.”
    Franz looked over to Liese and nodded.
    â€œI am going to put you to sleep now, Frau Lehrer,” Liese said as she lowered the mask over Esther’s face and tilted the bottle, slowly dripping the ether.
    The sweet, acrid smell of the anaesthetic filled the room. After seven or eight drops had saturated the mask, Esther’s eyelids began to flutter, and soon her eyes closed altogether.
    Franz’s stomach flip-flopped as he realized again that, despite the routine nature of the procedure, so much would be beyond his control. He lifted a scalpel from the surgical tray, surprised by the steadiness of his hand as he lowered the blade to the skin below Esther’s navel. He poked the tip through, drawing blood, and waited for Esther’s reaction. She remained still and silent, so he dug the blade in deeper and sliced vertically downward until he reached the level of her pelvic bones.
    Sunny followed the blade with a sponge, dabbing away the blood. As soon as Franz pulled the scalpel back, she eased two retractors inside the long incision and spread the skin apart. Franz reached his gloved hand into the wound until he touched the firm bulge of Esther’s uterus, which tightened against his fingers in a sudden contraction. Once the spasm passed, he placed the scalpel against the womb and cut through the brownish-red muscle, being careful not to let the blade penetrate too deeply and nick the baby tucked inside. Once the scalpel pierced the uterus, dark blood gushed out through the incision, obscuring Franz’s view
    Sunny sponged up as much of the blood as she could, and Franz glimpsed a tiny hand and arm poking through the incision. He dropped his scalpel on the tray and slid his hands inside Esther’s uterus until they wrapped around the infant’s warm, slippery body. Franz resisted the urge to yank the baby free. Instead, he gingerly eased it out, while Sunny clamped off and then cut the umbilical cord.
    The tiny boy weighed no more than four pounds, but those details hardly registered with Franz. Covered in mucus and blood, the baby flopped limply in his hands. His skin was as blue as the Danube, and he neither moved nor breathed.
    Franz went cold. For the first time since Hannah’s birth, he froze inside the operating room.
    Berta plucked the child from his hands, then swaddled him in a towel and laid him on the pillow on top of the table that had been set up as a makeshift cradle.
    Franz held his own breath as he studied the baby’s chest, desperate to see a sign of respiration. But the boy remained absolutely still.
    â€œIs he?” Sunny asked slowly.
    Unwilling to meet her eyes, Franz just stared at the table.
    Berta applied her knuckles to the baby’s small chest, her fist covering its entire surface as she rubbed.