“Call First Aid Lifeline!” I shouted to the neighbor as I kept working.
“They’re on their way,” he said. “But you gave them your Eilat address…”
I didn’t understand. I kept going, praying inside for someone above to save my beloved, to let her live.
“You can move aside, I’ve got a tube and ventilation equipment,” a voice suddenly said above me. I looked up and recognized him – a young doctor who had had graduated Medicine a year after me.
“I think I broke a few ribs,” I said.
“That means you did it right. Let us handle it.”
I stood back. He asked me to leave the room. He and the medic went in and closed the door. I walked into her workroom and turned on the light. Her political painting was still on the easel. I stared at it and broke down crying.
“Why, why did this happen to her?” I sobbed. Why was I left as her husband and not her doctor? Why? I blamed myself. Why?
I sat slumped on the bed, unable to stop the tears.
The neighbors stood at the doorway, stunned. I’m sure they noticed the dialysis machine beside me.
“I managed to get her pulse and breathing back,” I heard the doctor say. I had no idea how long had passed.
Suddenly I was flooded with flashbacks from my first on-call night in Eilat. For years, I had buried those images. Now they burst back onto the screen in my mind. I waved my hands as if to clear them, but couldn’t.
A crash of breaking glass from the room jolted me back. A bottle or instrument had fallen.
“Is she conscious?” I asked in fear.
“Not yet,” came the cautious reply.
“Can I try talking to her?”
“Try, but she’s not conscious.”
“Maybe we should hook her up to dialysis?”
“Are you with Pioneer Hospital?”
“Pioneer Hospital,” I answered.
“Then we’ll transfer her there. I’ll ask dispatch to prepare a dialysis machine.”
Lily was placed on a stretcher. Around three a.m., she was taken by ambulance to Pioneer Hospital. The siren wasn’t working, but there was no traffic. The silence was good. We both hated noise.
“What do you think happened?” I asked the doctor.
“Likely arrhythmia from electrolyte imbalance. Very common with dialysis patients.”
He was probably right. In my mind, I pictured potassium ions crowding around her heart muscle. I didn’t tell him about the phone call we’d gotten from Maya on the holiday eve. Nor that in just three hours, she was supposed to be on dialysis at Pioneer Hospital.
When we arrived, the head of the dialysis unit met us in the ER. I didn’t know who had called him. Maybe he insisted on being involved in emergencies with his patients, or maybe only in hers. Who knows.
“Wait outside the ER,” he told me.
I glanced at Lily. She lay completely still on the bed.
That was the last look.
Before leaving, I asked a nurse to call Eli, my brother, David, Max, Serge, and Saul – everyone I could think of.
