Real Life
The little girl was trapped between two large, and thick slabs of concrete and was caked in dust and soot. I saw her the moment just before the air strike landed. She was frollicking with a little red dress beside her mother, her blonde pigtails bounced back and forth. The girl couldn’t have been more than 6 years old. Her mom was wearing a plain black dress that draped her arms and legs. Their hands were interlocking lovingly, and tenderly before it all happened. Now, I saw the mother’s arm on the other side of the street with a black piece of fabric still draped over it. Her body was nowhere to be seen. There were only two things that could’ve happened to her; one, her body was directly hit by the bomb and she was already ripped to shreds. Two, the bomb blew her away with such force that she lost her arm and was flung many feet from the initial location. Either way she was riddled with pieces of jagged metal and was most likely gone. The only reason her daughter was alive was because she pushed her towards the neighboring building an instant before impact.
The girl’s legs were absolutely crushed. Two pillars from the adjacent building threw themselves on to her thighs. She was bleeding, bleeding profusely. The dust from the rubble mixed with the blood that was seeping out of her body. The blood that fell on her red dress had lost itself in it. That distinct red crimson color that I remember seeing in patients on the operating table was not there. Instead, the ash from the debri and small flakes of metal mixed with the blood that was running out from the poor little girl, and turned it to a dull and almost grey viscous substance. Many men nearby came to try and lift the piece of concrete off of her, but to no avail. It was just too large and too heavy to do so. Not even twenty strong men could have done it. Time was running out too. There was no time to wait for an excavator or an emergency response team. We also risked the chance of a double tap; where war planes would wait until a large number of people would gather around the site of the initial airstrike,to help people trapped in the rubble, and strike again. If nothing was going to be done then death was going to visit this girl very soon
My eyes turned to the little girl’s face. She had beautiful blue eyes and long blond eyelashes. The blonde pigtails that I remember bouncing around happily only seconds earlier were cinged off her scalp. She slowly rotated her neck and her eyes locked with mine. There were tears falling down her face but there was no wailing or weeping. Her lips never quivered and the tears rolling down her cheeks cleaned her face a tiny bit from the soot and dust that fell upon it. I didn’t see a wince of pain or hear a cry of help from the poor angel. This is what the face of shock and trauma looked like.
I couldn’t think anymore of what happened. I had one choice and that was to act. This is what all those years of preparation were for. To help people, to help children, who were indiscriminately targeted by Russia’s scorched earth policy.
The left side of her body was exposed. Her arm was free and I grabbed her hand, nurturing it between my two palms. Her tiny thumb gently grazed the side of my thumb.
“What’s your name?”
She was barely able to purse her lips together
“Nareen” she muttered softly
“You’re very brave Nareen, you’re going to be fine, I’m going to inspect your legs okay?”
She gave an ever so slight nod and that was when my hands took over
I knew there was screeching and screaming all around me. Many other men, women and children fell victim to the blast. Their shrieks of pain, and the howls of mothers and fathers looking for their children surrounded me. But in these brief moments everything felt silent. Nareen was in front of me, and all I could think about was her. Now that I saw her here, in this state, nothing else mattered.
There was a slight gap of concrete towards the end of her legs revealing her left kneecap. Through that opening I was able to inspect her right leg as well; It was completely torn off below the knee already. An impact of a shrapnel injury depends on two factors; the speed with which it hits the body, and the body part it strikes. Nareens right leg being torn off by the initial strike was actually a good thing- that meant we could free her from the column that laid on top of it. Her left leg however, was still being pinned down by the pillar; it needed to go. The only way to save Nareen, was to rid her of her left leg. She would have no chance to walk to school, walk to the sweet shop with her friends to eat ice cream, gallop through the field, challenge her peers to foot race, dance, twirl, tumble and fall, walk hand in hand with her husband on her wedding day, but she’ll have the chance to live.
The depressive respiration was too much. There was no way we could put nareen under anaesthetic without her whole body shutting down.
My medical supplies were brought to me by a team of paramedics. A nurse, clad in a blue gown, mask, and hat kneeled next to me and held on to Nareen’s forearm, monitoring her vitals and injecting her with a small amount of morphine. About four EMT’s held on to the top of the slab of concrete in order to stabilize it. Nareen still held on to my left hand as I searched through the bag of necessary supplies with my right.
“We’re going to have to perform surgery on you. Once we’re done we’re gonna pick you up and put you in the ambulance and the orthopedic surgeons back at the hospital will clean you’ll be fitted with a prosthetic. You’ll be running circles around me in no time, Nareen”
She nodded, unclasped my hand and grabbed on to the nurses.
I grabbed the scalpel with my index finger resting upon its head. I gently lay it on the skin of her thigh. The sharpness of the scalpel made its first trickle of blood upon contact. Nareen groaned. I used the scalpel to slice through the skin muscle and fat right above the knee. She was teary eyed and wailed out in pain. I glanced back at the nurse and saw that Nareen was clenching the nurses index and pointer finger with her fist. I switched over to the electric saw when I got to the bone. It was just two bones, each as thick as a broomstick. As I sawed each one, the vibration from the saw splattered droplets of blood all over my hands face and shirt. I had to cut as close to the concrete as possible in order to save as much of the limb as I could. Once I was finished with the bone I used the scalpel to finish the rest.
The Nurse scooped up nareen the instant I was done, and placed her in the ambulance. She passed out from the pain but she was breathing and alive. She was now a bilateral amputee and it would take time for her to adjust, but she was given the gift of life that was snatched away from many children here. She was lucky and with a few months of physical therapy, she’d be running circles around me in no time, just like I promised her.
Night began to fall on the way to the hospital. The Lonely trees and brush stood like decaying phantoms in the splatter of the ambulances headlights. Upon arrival the surgeons took Nareen quickly, steadily taking her from the back of the ambulance to the OR.
I found myself inside the waiting room sleeping on the hospital benches. It was late, and every cell in my body was plagued with tiredness and fatigue, but I wanted to see Narrens face clean of dust and soot. Her blood was still on my clothes, but it dried up now. I wanted to hold her hand and feel her thumb graze the back of mine. See her eyes free from tears and free from fear. I closed my eyes and imagined it in my head. That moment where I entered the OR and know that I did my part to save her. It filled my body with warmth as I lay on the cold hospital bench.
A doctor, unbeknownst, keeled down next to my face. It was dark and the waiting room had lost power so there were no lights. The only thing that made his presence known was when he shook me awake.
“Are you the doctor that performed Nareens amputation”
“Yes, I am”
He looked me in the eye and spoke
“I’m sorry, Nareen died on the operating table. She died from a fat embolism in her leg. There was nothing you could’ve done. ”
Go to Live updates From Syria page on Instagram to learn how you could help children affected by war.
https://instagram.com/liveupdatesfromsyria?igshid=1hlg1x7433mmx
By Anonymous
