Georg hums a Viennese waltz as he dons rubber gloves and a white apron. He soaks cotton batting in alcohol and wipes an enameled tray, then repeats the process on a long steel gurney beneath a strong light. The sporadic firecrackers in the distance maintain an odd synchronicity with the Strauss tune that vibrates in his throat, and he smiles.

He imagines the crowds of revelers ninety kilometers away in Berlin, filling the streets in anticipation of welcoming the New Year. Georg has work to do. He does not know why his superiors have insisted that this procedure be performed this evening, but orders are orders. He will not join the festivities until well after midnight. Beyond doubt, some of his colleagues will still be celebrating in the officers' mess. They have promised to wait and raise a glass with him.

He pulls off the gloves and strolls toward the door at the end of the hall. A nurse looks up from her desk as he approaches and strokes her hair. He has seen this nurse before. She is pretty enough, in a bland blonde way.

"Good evening, Herr Doctor," she greets him with an arched eyebrow and a coy smile.

Georg finds her obvious flirtations offensive. He nods and keeps on walking, through the door and out into the crisp winter night.

He taps a cigarette against his case and lights it, looking at the clear sky. There is no moon, and the sky is black velvet behind the twinkling stars. Suddenly, viscerally, he is reminded of Anna's raven hair, the way it would fan out around her head on the pillow as she lay beneath him. How often he has thought of her these past three years! He wonders again if he has lost his one true love. Fruitless thoughts, unbidden, and once begun impossible to still.

But the law was the law, and there was nothing to be done about it. The last he knew, Anna had been taken away to a camp. Before he could look for her, he was conscripted and sent here. Georg sucks in huge drafts of frigid December air and crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. No use torturing himself once again with thoughts of Anna.

There is activity in the hall as he returns inside, and he can see them carrying a stretcher into the operating room he has just cleaned. They care little for sterile protocol here. The nurse is just coming around the corner of her desk. She smiles and hands him a sealed envelope. Georg frowns as he opens it. Outside, sirens are howling and firecrackers pop fiercely. The nurse beams up at him. "Happy New Year, Doctor! Just imagine — 1943!"

"Happy New Year," he mutters as he reads Sulfonamide Experiment No. 3, Ravensbrück. He swallows his disgust and strides into the operating room, where a thin woman with long black hair trembles, naked on the gurney.

Debi Orton is a writer and artist living on the banks of the Hudson River in rural upstate New York. Since she started writing seriously in 2001, her essays have been broadcast by the Albany, NY NPR affiliate WAMC, and her work has appeared in The Paumanok Review, Mindprints, The Independent Mind, Bulk Head, Kelvin, Gin Bender, the-phone-book.com, and flashquake. New work will appear in Agrippina, Computer Bits and Twilight Times. She participates in several online workshops, is a member of the Washington County Writers and Poets Association, and by day works as an IT manager in a small government agency.

New Year's Resolution for 2003: "Find more time for my own writing."

Copyright 2002 by Debi Orton

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