She Could No Longer Stand After Her Own Side Broke Her Legs, So German Women Prisoners Formed a Human Stretcher, Hauled Her to the Wire, and Forced U.S. Medics to Confront Rules, Guilt, and the Meaning of “Enemy” in a Broken Europe

By the time they realized Anna couldn’t walk anymore, the morning work whistle had already blown.

“Aufstehen! Out! Kitchen detail, yard detail, laundry!” the interpreter bellowed down the barrack, voice cracking like a whip. “Move, move! Schnell!”

Bunks creaked and blankets flew back. The women of Barrack Seven swung their legs out into the cold air, toes searching for worn boots under straw mattresses. The November light leaked thinly through the high, dirty windows, casting everything in a gray that made faces look hollow.

“Lotte,” Klara muttered, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “She’s not up.”

Lotte, already lacing her boots, glanced toward the corner bunk.

Anna lay on her back, eyes open, lips pressed together. Her hair—regrown in a soft fuzz after that awful summer of shaving—clung damply to her forehead. Her blanket was pulled up to her waist, leaving her feet uncovered.

They were swollen.

Lotte’s stomach dropped.

“Anna,” she said, crossing the aisle. “We have to go. The kitchen—”

Anna’s gaze flicked to her, then away.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

The yard outside reverberated with the thump of formation. A guard’s shout cut through the air.

“Barrack Seven!” the interpreter roared from the doorway. “You deaf? Out!”

“Get up,” Greta snapped from the next bunk, already standing, pulling her coat on with sharp, economical movements. “If we’re late again, they’ll cut rations. For all of us.”

“I can’t,” Anna repeated, voice shaking now. “My legs… they won’t.”

Lotte yanked the blanket aside properly.

Even in the gray light, the damage was obvious.

Black-and-yellow bruises bloomed around both ankles. Faint lines, darkening now, wrapped around her calves in regular bands, like rings of a cruel bracelet. Her feet were puffy, pale and tense, the skin shiny where it stretched over bone.

“What in—” Klara began, then bit off the rest.

She knew.

They all knew.

Lotte’s hands hovered over Anna’s shins, not quite touching.

“When did this happen?” she asked softly.

Anna looked at the ceiling.

“At the transit camp,” she said. “Before they sent us here. The last… ‘interrogation.’”

Greta’s jaw hardened.

“Their interrogation,” she said. “Our own.”

Anna’s mouth twitched.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Our own.”

Memories flickered behind her eyes: a bare room, a lamp too bright, questions hurled like stones, and then the pain in her legs when she had refused to recite the lines placed in front of her.

You saw civilians running. You saw them looting. You saw them sabotage the defense.

She had said no.

They had answered with boots and sticks and carefully measured blows.

They hadn’t broken the bones. That would have been untidy. They had just damaged everything around them.

“The Americans think she got hurt on a march,” Greta said bitterly. “They don’t want to see the bruises under their paperwork.”

Lotte swallowed hard.

“If she doesn’t move,” she said, “the circulation will get worse. There could be… thrombosis. Infections.”

“What do you want her to do, dance?” Greta shot back. “She can’t even stand.”

“OUT!” the interpreter shouted again. “Barrack Seven, last warning!”

Lotte straightened.

“If we don’t take her to the infirmary now,” she said, “she won’t go at all. And then she may never walk again. Or worse.”

“And if we do,” Greta said, “we risk them saying, ‘She came to us this way. Not our problem.’”

“They’ve already said that,” Klara muttered. “Every time we show up with something that looks… like it happened before.”

Lotte shook her head.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m not letting this slide because someone’s conscience might get uncomfortable. We take her.”

“Take me?” Anna echoed. “Where? I can’t… my legs…”

“We’ll carry you,” Lotte said.

Greta’s eyes flashed.

“How?” she demanded. “We’re not oxen.”

“No,” Lotte said. “We’re women with arms. Four of us can make a stretcher.”

Klara nodded slowly.

“One under each shoulder, one under the knees,” she said. “Trade off when our backs give out.”

Greta opened her mouth to argue, then closed it.

“You will not be able to work after,” she said instead. “They will punish you.”

“Then they can add it to their impressive list,” Lotte replied. “Move.”

She grabbed her coat and scarf, wrapped them around herself in quick, practiced motions. Then she leaned over Anna.

“Arms around my neck,” she said. “Carefully.”

Anna hesitated.

“Lotte,” she whispered. “You… you’ll fall.”

“Probably,” Lotte said. “But I’ll do it later. Now, we carry.”

Klara stepped up on the other side.

“I’ll take the other arm,” she said.

Greta stared at them both for a moment, then muttered something under her breath and came to the foot of the bed.

“I’ll take her knees,” she said gruffly. “And no one tells me after that I don’t care.”

Anna’s hands shook as she looped them around Lotte’s neck and Klara’s. Greta slid her arms under Anna’s calves, careful not to press too hard on the bruised patches.

“On three,” Lotte said. “One… two… three.”

They lifted.

Anna let out a small, involuntary hiss of pain.

“Almost over,” Klara murmured. “Almost.”

They staggered, adjusting.

“She’s lighter than she looks,” Greta said. “That’s not a compliment.”

“Shut up and walk,” Lotte panted.

They shuffled toward the door, a strange, improvised stretcher of human limbs and determination.

The interpreter’s eyes went wide as they emerged onto the barrack steps.

“What is this?” he demanded. “Why are you…?”

“She can’t walk,” Lotte snapped. “We’re taking her to the infirmary.”

“The infirmary can come here,” he said. “You’re to be in formation now. Orders.”

“Your orders can stand in the mud for five minutes,” Greta said. “Her legs won’t.”

The young American guard at the door, Private Dixon, looked uncertain. His glance bounced between the women and the interpreter, whose armband marked him as someone who now spoke for the Americans instead of the Reich.

“We—uh—only have five minutes before roll call finishes,” Dixon said in halting German. “Captain Hayes, he… he don’t like… delays.”

“He’s welcome to come down and carry her himself,” Klara said.

Lotte powered forward.

“She needs treatment,” she told Dixon. “Now.”

Something in her tone cut through his hesitation.

He stepped aside.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll tell the sergeant.”

The interpreter started to protest.

“Dixon, you can’t just—” he began in English.

“You want to lift her yourself?” Dixon shot back. “Then be my guest. Otherwise, get out of the way.”

The interpreter stepped aside.

The yard seemed suddenly enormous.

Every step from the barrack to the infirmary hut stretched into a small eternity.

Women from other barracks, already in loose lines for roll call, turned their heads as the strange bundle passed.

“What happened?” someone whispered.

“They’re carrying Anna,” came the answer. “She can’t walk. They’re taking her to the doc.”

“Will they help?” another asked. “Or will they say, ‘She came like this’ and shrug?”

“Watch their faces,” Greta muttered through gritted teeth. “You can tell from their faces.”

As they approached the infirmary, Sergeant Tom Daley—now seconded to camp duty while his unit re-equipped—stepped out of the doorway.

He took in the scene in one quick sweep: three German women in ill-fitting coats, struggling under the awkward weight of a fourth, whose legs dangled, mottled with bruises.

“What in—” he began.

“She can’t walk,” Lotte said before he could finish. “Someone did… this.” She tilted her head toward Anna’s legs. “We need the doctor.”

Tom frowned.

“Did this happen here?” he asked.

“No,” Greta snapped. “Unless your clinic suddenly includes interrogation rooms with rubber hoses.”

Tom’s eyes flicked to Anna’s ankles, to the neat recesses in the bruises that did, indeed, look like old restraints.

He’d seen similar marks on Italian partisans, on Allied POWs liberated from German camps.

“Put her on the cot,” he said, stepping aside. “Move.”

Inside, the infirmary smelled of antiseptic, boiled linens, and fear.

Emily looked up from a stack of charts as they stumbled in.

“What—” she began.

“She can’t walk,” Lotte repeated. “Her legs… they were like this when she came from the transit camp. They’re worse now. Swollen. She can’t feel her toes.”

Emily’s jaw tightened.

“Get her on the bed,” she said.

They laid Anna down as gently as they could manage.

Her face was pale with pain now that the adrenaline of the march had worn off.

Emily pulled a blanket over her, then peeled it back from the calves.

The bruises spoke their own language.

“They did this to you?” Emily asked quietly, touching the edges of the worst patches with careful fingers. “Your… people?”

Anna swallowed.

“My… previous guards,” she said. “Before the Americans.”

“What did they want?” Emily asked.

“The same thing everyone wanted,” Anna replied, eyes closing. “A story they could live with.”

Emily exhaled sharply and reached for her stethoscope.

“Can you move your toes?” she asked.

Anna tried.

Her right foot twitched.

Her left did not.

“Can you feel this?” Emily asked, gently poking along the sole.

“A little,” Anna said. “Like through a sock. A thick one.”

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Swelling… likely compressing nerves,” she murmured. “Possible clots. We’ll need to elevate. Warm compresses. Gentle pressure. Massage if tolerated.”

She glanced at Lotte.

“You know the drill,” she said. “You’ll help.”

“Yes,” Lotte said immediately.

Tom hovered in the doorway, hand on the frame.

“Doc?” he asked. “They gonna be okay here while we do roll call?”

Emily shot him a look.

“You want me to take her out into the yard?” she said. “She can’t stand, let alone salute.”

Tom held up a hand.

“Not what I meant,” he said. “I meant… you need more hands?”

The women in the room turned to look at him.

“We have four already,” Greta said pointedly. “Plenty.”

“Sometimes we could use one more,” Emily said. “If you can follow instructions without arguing.”

Tom gave a half-smile.

“I’m married,” he said. “I’ve had practice.”

Greta snorted.

“Oh, so you do belong to someone,” she said. “That explains the tragic air.”

Emily ignored the comment.

“Lotte, Klara, Greta,” she said. “You stay. Help with compresses, repositioning. The rest of you, back to formation. I’ll talk to Captain Hayes about excusing you from work for today.”

The interpreter’s head appeared in the doorway.

“They were supposed to be in the kitchen,” he said. “We need bodies.”

“You have yours,” Greta said, without looking at him.

Emily glanced at Tom.

“Go tell Hayes,” she said. “If he has a problem with me keeping a woman with possible clots in her legs off potato peeling, he can come argue with me.”

Tom nodded.

“I’ll bring him,” he said. “Just what you need. More patients.”

---

The argument in Hayes’s office started quietly.

It did not stay that way.

“You cannot turn this infirmary into a rehabilitation clinic for everybody those bastards roughed up,” Hayes said, keeping his voice just low enough that it didn’t carry through the thin walls. “We have limited resources. Bandages. Medicine. Staff.”

Emily folded her arms.

“And we have a woman who can’t walk because she was beaten by a system we fought a war to stop,” she said. “She’s our responsibility now.”

Hayes ran a hand through his hair.

“We feed them,” he said. “We house them. We give them basic care. That’s the deal. But this—long-term physical therapy, special attention—this goes beyond what the manual—”

“The manual doesn’t mention everything we found when we opened their camps either,” Emily cut in. “We adjust.”

“Medically, fine,” Hayes said. “Do what you can. I’m not saying let her rot. I’m asking where the line is. We’ve got sick GIs in the town hospital who don’t get half the time you’re giving the enemy.”

“The manual doesn’t say we stop being human at the wire,” Emily replied. “Or that compassion is a finite resource we have to ration like gasoline.”

Hayes slammed his hand on the desk, then immediately looked regretful; the pen holder jumped, scattering pencils.

“This isn’t about compassion,” he said. “It’s about fairness. About optics. You know what some of my men say? ‘We came here to fight Nazis, and now the doc spends more time rubbing German legs than checking our rashes.’”

Emily’s jaw clenched.

“Then maybe you should remind them,” she said, “that if we start drawing lines like that—who deserves help, who doesn’t—we’re not much better than the folks who did this to her.”

Tom shifted uncomfortably in the corner.

He’d come to report, not to referee. But the conversation had moved into territory that made his ears burn.

“It’s not the same,” Hayes said sharply. “We didn’t put her in that room. We didn’t swing the sticks.”

“No,” Emily agreed. “We’re just the ones standing next to the bed now, deciding how much we care.”

Silence settled in the small office.

Hayes glared at the wall, then at the window, then at Tom, as if the sergeant might offer a distraction.

Tom scratched his cheek.

“For what it’s worth, sir,” he said cautiously, “the men are talking about her already. The camp grapevine works faster than the radio. Half of them think she got roughed up by us. Half think we’re all blind for not noticing.”

Hayes’s head snapped toward him.

“And what do you think, Daley?” he asked. “You carried enough wounded in this war. Where’s your line?”

Tom hesitated.

“I think…” he said slowly, “that we can’t fix what her own side did. But we can decide not to walk past it. That counts for something.”

He shrugged.

“Most guys out there,” he went on, “they signed up to fight men with guns. They didn’t sign up to look at a woman who can’t stand because some officer wanted her to say the sky was green. They don’t know what to do with that. So they joke. Or they get cranky that Doc is spending time on ‘the enemy.’”

“And?” Hayes pressed.

“And when this is over,” Tom said, “they’re gonna have to live with whatever we did here. Or didn’t do. Ma’am’s right about one thing: if we start sayin’ ‘not our problem’ now, it’s gonna be a hard habit to break when we’re home.”

Hayes blew out a breath.

“You’re not making this easy,” he said.

“War wasn’t, either,” Tom replied.

Hayes let his shoulders drop.

“Fine,” he said. “She stays. Full treatment. Physical therapy. Whatever you can jury-rig in that hut. But I want you to keep me updated, Doc. If we hit a point where we’re pouring everything into someone with no chance—”

“You’ll tell me to stop,” Emily finished. “Yes. You’re the one with the ledger. I get it.”

Hayes grimaced.

“I hope we don’t get there,” he said.

“I hope you’re wrong about half the things you worry about,” Emily said.

---

Back in the infirmary, the atmosphere had shifted.

Lotte and Klara sat by Anna’s bed, carefully wrapping her calves with warm, damp cloths.

“Not too tight,” Emily had instructed. “We want to encourage blood flow, not block it.”

Greta paced near the foot of the bed, arms folded, eyes like flint.

“So,” she said, “they admit it. One of ours did this. Their doctor wants to help. Their captain wrings his hands over his ledger. And we… sit here rubbing her legs while the others peel potatoes.”

She snorted.

“Equality at last,” she added. “Just not the kind we imagined.”

Anna shifted, wincing.

“Maybe,” she said, “we should talk less about ‘them’ and ‘ours’ and more about… me.”

Greta blinked.

Anna’s mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.

“I am here, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to pretend this is some… case study in international relations. My legs hurt.”

Klara laughed despite herself.

“That’s our Anna,” she said. “Makes an essay out of everything, even torture.”

Anna’s expression sobered.

“Don’t call it that,” she whispered. “It makes it sound… big. Important. Like it was a strategy. It was just… men with sticks and a timer.”

Lotte wrapped the last bandage, tucking the end carefully under itself.

“Can you feel this?” she asked, pressing lightly on Anna’s ankle.

“A little,” Anna said. “Like someone touching me through wool.”

“It will come back,” Lotte murmured. “We’ll make it.”

“You always talk like the future is a fact,” Greta said.

Lotte looked up.

“If I didn’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t get out of bed.”

Emily entered, cheeks flushed from the argument.

“How’s the pain?” she asked Anna.

“Like… someone sat on my legs for a year and just got up,” Anna replied. “But I can feel the weight again. That’s… something.”

Emily nodded.

“We’ll start gentle movement tomorrow,” she said. “Just a little. Bend, straighten. Teach your nerves there’s still a route.”

Anna’s eyes shone with sudden tears.

“I don’t know if I’m more afraid of walking or not walking,” she said.

“That’s normal,” Emily replied. “Fear doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”

Greta shifted, arms still crossed.

“And what does the captain say?” she asked bluntly. “Will we be allowed to ‘use’ his medic’s time for this… project?”

Emily’s mouth thinned.

“He says she can stay,” she said. “For now. He’s worried about fairness. About the men seeing ‘special treatment.’”

“And you?” Lotte asked.

“I’m worried about clots,” Emily said. “And infection. And whether we can get enough protein into her to rebuild tissue. And a dozen other things that don’t fit neatly on a roster.”

She looked at Anna.

“But I am also…” she hesitated. “I am also angry that this happened. That someone looked at you and thought your legs were a fair price for a confession.”

Anna frowned.

“I didn’t confess,” she said.

“I know,” Emily replied. “That’s the part that scares them most.”

---

Over the next weeks, the infirmary hut became a strange classroom.

Every morning, after roll call, Lotte and Klara reported to the nurse’s station instead of the laundry or kitchen. Greta came when her work detail allowed, grumbling but never failing to show up.

Under Emily’s watchful eye, they learned exercises that sounded like children’s games: “heel slides,” “ankle circles,” “toe taps.”

Anna lay on the bed at first, lifting and lowering her feet in tiny increments, each movement a small act of stubborn will.

“Imagine you’re crushing grapes,” Klara said one day as Anna flexed her toes.

“I’ve never crushed grapes,” Anna replied. “We drank beer.”

“Imagine you’re crushing the face of that interrogator,” Greta suggested.

Anna’s lips twitched.

“That, I can picture,” she said, pressing harder.

Emily monitored her progress with small, grim satisfactions.

“Good,” she’d say. “Better dorsiflexion. Slightly more strength.”

Tom stopped by occasionally under the pretense of checking on supplies.

“How’s our… project?” he’d ask.

“Stubborn,” Emily would reply.

“Good,” he’d say. “Stubborn people outlive rules.”

Outside, the camp continued its routines. Men came and went. New batches of prisoners arrived, some with blank eyes, some with defiant stares.

Rumors about Anna’s legs rippled through the barracks.

“She can stand now,” someone whispered one evening.

“They say she walked three steps with a stick,” another said.

“They say the American doc cried,” a third added, less credibly.

The story shifted shape, but the core remained: a woman who no longer accepted “you can’t walk” as a sentence.

On the American side, the story moved too.

“Did you hear about the Kraut girl in the infirmary?” a GI asked in the mess tent. “The one the SS roughed up?”

“Yeah,” another said. “Doc’s got her doing physical training. Hope she don’t start issuing fitness reports on us.”

“You okay with that?” the first asked. “Spending that much time on… them?”

The second shrugged.

“I figure,” he said, “if the doc wants to fix what the bad guys broke, that’s her job. Mine was breaking their toys. I did that. Someone’s gotta clean up.”

“Maybe she’ll walk into their courtroom one day,” a third said. “Show them what their ‘interrogations’ did.”

“Maybe,” the second replied. “Maybe that’s why it matters.”

---

The first time Anna stood, really stood, everyone in the infirmary held their breath.

They had practiced the motions: swing legs over side of bed, plant feet, lean forward.

“Weight on your thighs, not your knees,” Emily reminded.

“Keep stomach tight,” Lotte added. “Like you’re bracing for a punch.”

“That’s a comforting image,” Anna said dryly.

Greta snorted.

“Just get up,” she said. “We’re getting old waiting.”

Anna took a breath.

She pushed down through her heels, feeling the muscles in her calves protest and then, astonishingly, obey.

Her legs trembled.

Her hands gripped the edge of the mattress so hard her knuckles whitened.

Slowly, awkwardly, she rose.

She wobbled.

Klara moved forward.

“Don’t touch me,” Anna said through clenched teeth. “Not yet. I want to know if I can do it.”

She straightened.

The world tilted.

She stayed up.

“Hey,” Klara whispered. “Look at you.”

Lotte felt tears pricking her eyes, unbidden.

“You’re standing,” she said.

Greta crossed her arms, but her voice was thick.

“About time,” she said.

Emily smiled, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Good,” she said. “Now… sit.”

Anna laughed, a short, breathless sound.

“That’s it?” she said. “You mean this whole war and all its speeches and you just wanted me to sit?”

“We build from there,” Emily said. “Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day, remember?”

Anna lowered herself back onto the bed, legs shaking.

She felt like she’d climbed a mountain.

That night, back in the barrack, the argument that had been simmering finally boiled over.

“You’re walking,” someone said. “Soon you’ll be back on work detail, like the rest of us.”

“Maybe,” Anna replied.

“Was it worth it?” another woman asked. “Letting the American doc fuss over you? Letting them see what our people did?”

Anna looked at her.

“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “Laying here until my legs waste away?”

“You could have kept it to yourself,” the woman said. “Our shame. Our… weakness.”

“Whose shame?” Greta cut in. “Hers? For being beaten? Or theirs? For doing it?”

The women around them stirred.

“Our men fought for us,” someone said hotly.

“Our men fought for an idea,” Greta countered. “Sometimes that idea used our bodies as proof. Sometimes it broke them when we didn’t fit the script.”

“And now you stand here,” the woman continued, “and say the Americans are fixing what our men did? That we owe them something?”

“We owe them nothing,” Anna said quietly. “We owe them no gratitude. No loyalty. No forgiveness.”

She shifted, feeling the ache in her calves, the astonishing presence of strength.

“We owe ourselves,” she added. “The courtesy of not staying broken when someone offers us a brace.”

Silence.

Then Klara laughed.

“That’s our Anna,” she said. “Turns physical therapy into philosophy.”

Lotte smiled.

“She’s right, though,” she said. “We don’t get to pretend our injuries only count if the right people caused them. Pain is pain. Walking is walking.”

The woman who’d questioned them shook her head.

“I still don’t like that they see us like this,” she muttered.

“Like what?” Anna asked. “Human?”

---

Years after the camp gates were dismantled and the barracks repurposed or torn down, Anna would walk—slowly at first, then with growing confidence—through a rebuilt town with cracked but standing walls.

She would favor her left leg on rainy days.

She would sit on park benches and watch children run.

Sometimes, when a car backfired, she would flinch, the old memory of boots on bone surging up.

She would have arguments, too, with neighbors who said, “The Americans did nothing for us,” and others who said, “Our own people didn’t know.”

She would tell them the story of the day her friends turned themselves into a stretcher.

“They carried me to the wire,” she’d say. “And the Americans—some argued, some frowned, some didn’t want to see. But the doctor… she decided my legs were worth her time.”

“Do you forgive her?” someone would ask. “For sending that baby away that one time. For shaving heads. For choosing.”

“Forgiveness is a tricky word,” Anna would reply. “I know this: if she hadn’t been there with her stubbornness and her clippers and her letters and her exercises, more of us would have died, and fewer of us would have walked.”

“And the ones who hurt you?” another would ask.

Anna would look at her own calves, the faint, pale ghosts of bruises still visible if you knew where to look.

“I do not forgive them for what they did,” she’d say. “But I also do not let them own my story forever.”

She’d tap her cane—she’d always use one, even when she didn’t strictly need it, more habit than necessity.

“This,” she’d say, “is mine now. With a little help from women who refused to leave me on a bunk and a doctor who refused to write me off as ‘enemy.’”

---

On the other side of the ocean, in a hospital administration office cluttered with framed certificates and faded photographs, an older Emily Shaw would occasionally open a thin, worn folder.

Inside were letters.

Some were from former patients, thanking her for things she barely remembered doing. Some were from colleagues, reminiscing. One, carefully preserved despite the cheap paper, was from Germany.

Dear Dr. Carter, it began in neat German script.

You may not remember me. My name is Anna. I was the one whose legs you refused to give up on.

She would read it again, as she had done many times.

I still limp, Anna had written. But I do so on my own feet. I wanted you to know that when I walk to the grocery store, when I stand in line at the post office, when I climb the stairs to my flat, a small part of that is because once, in a place surrounded by wire, a woman with a foreign accent said, “We start with three steps.”

At the bottom of the page, in a postscript, Anna had added:

P.S. My friends say you were just doing your job. I say you made my job—living with what happened—possible.

Emily would fold the letter back into the folder and slide it away.

She had made mistakes, she knew. She had cut hair when she shouldn’t have, shouted when she could have listened, chosen for others when she might have had time to ask.

But she had also, stubbornly and imperfectly, tried to mend what others had broken.

And sometimes, across years and continents, the mending held.

---

War’s damage is rarely symmetric.

Sometimes the ones who suffer most are not the ones who held rifles or signed orders, but the ones whose legs were beneath those orders.

She can’t walk anymore, they whispered in that barrack.

So her friends carried her.

The U.S. medics rushed—some grudgingly, some angrily, some out of simple habit.

The arguments that followed—about duty and guilt, about fairness and favoritism, about who deserved care and who didn’t—were serious and tense, as such arguments must be.

In the end, what mattered most was that when a woman who had been tortured by her own side lay on a bed and tried to stand, there were hands—German and American alike—ready to catch her if she fell.

She did fall, sometimes.

But not always.

And that difference was a quiet victory in a war that had left very few loud ones.

THE END