Page 58 of Only You
‘You know, I always wanted to go to Paris, but I must say it’s probably just like here. Half destroyed with smoke everywhere. If I close my eyes, I could be on a holiday,’ she mused.
‘Not funny.’
‘I’m not even sure it still exists. Maybe all of Europe has finally burned down. Perhaps, all this will finally end…’ She trailed off shivering, but it was difficult to tell if it was the cool, night air or the blood leaking through her fingers.
They had never stood a chance.
It had been the end of a typical day for her, heading home with a large bag of laundry. The sky was already dark, and she was readying herself for a full night of washing. She was walking as quickly as she could, arms crossed, shoulders stiff and eyes on the cobblestones so as to not attract any attention from any men leering nearby. She heard some murmuring but ignored it; some people still treated Black people like a carnival attraction. It was only when everyone stopped, the crowd’s mumbling growing louder as they pointed towards the sky, that she realised something was out of the ordinary.
She looked up and froze as she spotted the cause for all the commotion. High above, lit up by a searchlight, was a German Zeppelin. It reminded her of a whale, massive, grey and silent as it slipped in and out of the clouds. She had heard of them from the papers but seeing one so close made her dumbstruck.
At least, until the bombs dropped.
The crowd erupted into chaos. People scattered every which way as the ground shook. The screams made her move, dropping the laundry bag as she tried to duck into an alleyway, when another load of bombs dropped. The blast sent her to her knees as the ground rumbled below her. Rocks and glass rained down and she cried out as a shard cut into her, burying itself into her side. She tried to stand but the pain was overwhelming. People started to step on her as they scrambled to get away. She was certain she was going to die in the middle of the street.
Then, a stranger pulled her up.
‘Are you okay?’ the man asked, propping her against the wall. She started to slide down, her knees weak. ‘Hey! Talk to me! What’s your name?’
‘S–Sarah,’ she answered, her throat dry.
‘I’m David,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to help get you out.’
And she, who was usually wary of new people, took his hand.
‘Focus on me,’ David yelled, and Sarah’s eyes shot open and she returned to the present as he roughly wrapped her abdomen. Under the grime and dirt, his expression was grim, maybe even concerned. That wasn’t a good sign. ‘Keep looking at me.’
‘To think the English conquered the world just for this…’ she said, futilely trying to push his hands away. He brushed them off as he tied a knot tight enough for her to wonder if that was how corsets felt.
‘Just hang on,’ David said. ‘It’ll be over soon.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘We’ll figure it out.’
‘No, we won’t,’ she argued tiredly.
‘Shut up. We arenotdying. I won’t let us.’
That Sarah could believe.
David’s determination was something she had never seen before. Between sewing her up across from a burning church and dragging her through the city for shelter, leading her out when the shelter started to flood, he had shown her a level of survival she could barely understand. The grit baffled her. Even as the bombs continued to shake the walls around them, he just kept moving on. At first, she respected it, trudging alongside him.
Now, hours later with her hastily sewn wound reopening from the constant moving, her head was pounding, the pain growing and she was tired of pretending to act hopeful. She’d had enough.
‘You should stop helping me,’ she said. ‘Get to a real shelter.’
‘We will. I just need to fix you first,’ David insisted.
‘Is that what you are? A fixer?’ she asked, groaning as she shifted, agitating her wound. ‘Why did you even help me?’
He looked at her incredulously, as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘You need it. Why not?’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So, you’re a hero.’
His eyes widened before he looked away, clearly uncomfortable with her description. She wondered if he did that a lot. He was comfortable showing his frustration in front of her, but from what she could see, every other emotion was off-limits. Meanwhile, she had only grown bolder as her despair did too.
She turned her gaze to the ceiling. ‘It won’t matter.’
