Layla

Chapter 18

CIA Secret Base, Richmond, Virginia

March 31, 1962

(1:00 pm)

"You're improving faster than we expected," The nurse began as she looked over Layla's chart. "You're iron levels are already back into the normal range and your vitamin levels are getting closer to where we expect to see them." 

This second weekly meeting with the nurse assured Layla that she was at least somewhat approaching health. Unfortunately, like many survivors, she would never fully recover from what had happened to her. Starvation and its lasting effects, trauma and its never-ending nightmares, and of course the never-ending realization that her life was never going to be what it was supposed to have been. 

She was grateful for Erik and Pietro, knowing that without the horror that they had been through she would never have met Erik and therefore never had Pietro. But it still hurt knowing that perhaps they could have met under different circumstances. Perhaps everything that was meant to happen would have happened regardless of the Nazis. 

She shook her head. She needed to focus on the matter at hand, and that was getting herself back to a somewhat healthy state. She had dealt with all the countless health problems that had come with being a survivor of genocide, but they just seemed to get worse the older she got. 

"Will this keep happening?" Layla asked as she looked over the file that looked like mostly nonsense to her. "Will I just keep going back and forth between being sick and in recovery?"

She already knew the answer to it. She had been told countless times by medical professionals since she was first seen by that Polish doctor in 1945. She would never be truly healthy, always dealing with the repercussions of humanity's cruelty. Never gaining full knowledge of what life should have been like had none of what had happened to her and millions of others had happened. 

No, she was just meant to suffer. 

Her health had improved greatly after she had been placed with the Kowalcyk's, and even more so after she had returned to her home country, but the mental trauma remained. Did she still have the same frightful nightmares that had once haunted her early years? No, most nights she didn't even dream anymore. But still, the fear that it could happen to her again was there. 

That the CIA could go back to being like Shaw. That one moment they were letting them watch television as a group and the next they were being forced underwater until they released whatever information they wanted to know. 

"From what we know so far," The nurse began as she set down her chart. "Most Holocaust survivors have gone on to lead healthy lives. The psychological effects seem to be the majority of the ailments with survivors." 

Obviously. 

"Most women who survived have gone on to have healthy lives," The nurse continued. "Healthy pregnancies and healthy children. It's just we can't expect long-term starvation to have completely normal results. Your blood pressure is far too low and your vitamin levels will likely always be like this, but you can still have a healthy life and healthy children with the right nutrition and lifestyle." 

Layla nodded. Yes, with the right everything, everything could be all right. They had been telling her the same thing since 1945. Her pregnancy with Pietro had been smooth sailing relatively, minus the extreme fatigue and nausea she had felt at the beginning, Pietro had turned out to be a healthy baby. And now he was a healthy little boy with clear direction to becoming a healthy adult. 

Now she had to go about the rest of her time with the CIA and soon enough they'd have Shaw in prison for his crimes against humanity and she, Erik, and Pietro could go back to Frankfurt. Patience is a virtue, and it was becoming one of the seven that she was learning to accept more and more with each passing day.