An excerpt from one of the three alternate history tales in the collection, So Long As We Still Live:
When the call came, Józefa Wojcik was expecting it. She’d rehearsed it in her mind a half-dozen times, which ended up helping not one damn bit.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. I’ll be there as soon –” she choked up for a second “soonasIcan.”
She hung up and hurried out into the bleak morning. The sky was a sheet of angry grey clouds, typical for this time of year.
“You’re listening to WVAR and now here’s the Top of the Morning News,” the woman on the radio declared in a far too eager voice. “In Washington, Congressional hearings continue for Supreme Court nominee –”
Józefa grunted, switched the radio off and drove down the dark streets in silence. After a few minutes, she pulled onto the highway. The only people other than her out at this hour were the snowplows. Józefa fell in behind one and then gritted her teeth and passed it, despite the slush and ice on the highway.
On and on went Federal 44, out of Orchard Park, past the new Buffalo Airport, past the sprawling Curtiss-Wright factory complex straddling the OP/West Seneca line, past the stadium, and finally into Lackawanna. She left the highway, passed a cemetery, a seminary, and a preschool, probably some kind of metaphor there, and then hung a right onto a side street. There was the hospital. OLV – Our Lady of Victory.
Every time she came there, every time she read the name, Józefa wondered if it hurt the local Poles – the ones born there, the ones who remembered. There was no victory for them, no miracle of Lepanto, no miracle of the Vistula, only defeat, exile and, one by one, death in foreign lands.
Józefa parked across the street and then jogged over to the big red-brick building.
The woman working the front desk recognized both Józefa and the look on her face. “Go on up, hon,” she said. “I’ll sign you in.”
Józefa murmured her thanks as she hurried to the elevator. She stabbed the button for the sixth floor and shifted from one foot to the other as the elevator slowly climbed up.
A soft chime pinged and each number flashed a little as the floors went by.
Józefa shut her eyes for a second. She remembered the time he’d seen her off to Camp Barlow for Basic Training, wondered how he felt, wondered
if he somehow hoped things would go wrong and she’d end up shooting Germans. Probably not. But...
Jesus, what’s wrong with me?
