“My joints ache a little, but that’s because I’ll be twenty-seven in a few months. Age is catching up to me,” she said with a teasing smile. She led the way to the stove, but she used the bunks for support. When I lifted her uniform, she snapped a Yiddish curse, yanked her skirt from my hands, and turned to me, her brow furrowed. “What was that for? Stop fussing and set up the game. I’m not sick.”

But I’d already seen what I’d been attempting to locate. The rash.

“Hania.” I let her name hang between us as I struggled to keep my voice calm for what came next. “You have typhus.”

She pressed her lips together and looked at me as if I’d been speaking complete nonsense. “We were vaccinated against typhus, remember?”

“That was a long time ago, and you—”

“Enough. I need rest, that’s all, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.” She held my gaze, but when she spoke again she softened her tone. “I’m not sick, shikse.”

Hania wasn’t denying the illness to keep me from worrying. She’d convinced herself she wasn’t sick. I saw it in the obstinate set of her glassy gaze, in the newfound fear present in her dark eyes, despite what she was telling me and herself. She wouldn’t relent, because to admit illness was to take one step closer to death. And she had children who needed her.

“You’re going to be fine, Bubbe, but you have typhus.” I wrapped my arm around her before she could protest. “You’re getting rest, and I’m getting help.”

Hania stumbled along beside me while I escorted her back to our bunk, but she carried on in multiple languages, and I caught a few stubborn mutters that emerged in Polish and German. “Impossible. I don’t have typhus. I didn’t survive this long just to die of typhus . . .”

Once she was settled beneath our blankets, I stepped outside. The frigid air stung like a slap to the face, but the bite of terror was far sharper. Not Hania. Please God, not Hania.

I pressed my back into the wall, sank into the shadows, and took a few slow breaths to keep my panic at bay, watching my breath form smoky puffs. After a moment, I began the arduous journey through the deep snow and ice. The hospital. I needed to get to the hospital.

When I reached the proper block, I hurried inside, shouting and ignoring the doctors and nurses telling me to be quiet. “Janina? Janina, where—?”

“I’m right here, Maria, now stop disturbing my patients.” The words came from a familiar red head, which remained bent as its owner administered medication to a semiconscious prisoner.