I nod, unable to say anything, and slip out the door, locking it behind me.
The hospital is a fifteen-minute walk from Layla’s house. It was a perk Hamza was looking forward to, seeing as he wouldn’t need to drive: a young doctor training at his neighborhood’s hospital. From the moment he was able to read, at three years old, Mama and Baba recognized that their son was a genius. He enrolled in school early, breezed through middle school and high school, and had his pick of universities. He chose the one in Homs to be close to our family. But I knew it was really so he’d be close to Layla and begin his life with her.
Now I’ve taken the job that was supposed to be his. One that’s way out of my field. Pharmacists prescribe medications—they don’t perform surgeries. I was supposed to graduate and be that. Or a researcher. I’m not a surgeon. I wasn’t made to cut into bodies, stitch wounds, and amputate limbs, but I made myself become that person.
The Homs surrounding me when I step out feels like something from the history books. The carnage in front of me has been seen in so many cities throughout the years. The same story but a different location. I’m sure the martyrs’ ghosts roam the abandoned homes and streets, their fingers running across the flags of the revolution painted on the walls. The living sit outside on plastic chairs, wrapped in coats and scarves. Today there are children playing with whatever they’ve been able to pull from the wreckage. An old woman yells at them to be careful of the carpets made from glass shards. When she sees my lab coat, she grins, a few teeth missing.
“Allah ma’ek!”May God be with you.
I smile shakily and nod.
The hospital isn’t immune to the dictatorship’s disease, and the outside walls, discolored in washed-out yellow and red, show it. The dirt underneath my old sneakers is marred with blood of the wounded carried in day after day.
The doors are nearly always open, and today is no different. It’s bustling as usual, the groans and cries of the wounded echoing over the walls.
Surgery equipment and medications are at an all-time low, and I can see the effect of it on the sunken faces lying on the beds all around me. Lately I’ve begun using saline and telling the patients it’s an anesthetic, hoping they believe it enough that it’ll work as a placebo. I remember the articles I read about placebos during my first year at university that mentioned their success. Back when I would be tucked in the corner of the steps outside the lecture building with my thermos full of zhoorat tea, going over the notes I’d made in class. I would lose a few hours immersed in my studying until Layla would appear at dusk and flick my nose to get my attention.
Despite all our lacking resources, our hospital fares far better under the Free Syrian Army’s jurisdiction than ones in the regions controlled by the military.
We’ve heard stories of those captured by the military. The patients in the hospitals are dying not from the injuries they sustained during the protests but from what is inflicted on them inside the hospital. While we suffer from the siege, injured demonstrators there are blindfolded and tortured, their ankles chained to the beds. Doctors and nurses sometimes join in.
Here in our hospital, the beds are stacked one beside the other, with families surrounding the patients, so I have to squeeze between them to ask the patient how they’re feeling. Dr. Ziad hurries toward me, carefully stepping through the countless bodies of patients draped across the floor; those are all alone in this world with no families. Not even a bed. His salt-and-pepper hair is disheveled, the wrinkles around his brown eyes more pronounced. He took the job as head surgeon after the last one died in a raid. Before that he was an endocrinology doctor with hours he set himself, slowly easing into retirement. When the unrest started, he immediately sent his entire family to Lebanon, and the hospital became his home. Just as I was forced to become a surgeon, so was he.
“Incoming. Reports of a bomb hitting Al-Ghouta. Twenty casualties. The seventeen injured are being brought here,” he says. As head surgeon, he’s connected to the Free Syrian Army, which supplies him with any information they get that could help us save more lives.
My heart expands for one second with relief. That’s on the opposite side of my neighborhood. A half-hour car ride. Layla is safe. And then it shrivels up. Bombs mean anything could come through these doors. Intestines out and looped inside themselves, burns, severed limbs…
I wait by the entrance with Dr. Ziad, who’s whispering verses of the Quran that talk about serenity and God’s mercy. It calms the cold sweat trickling down my neck. Any minute now, the doors will slam open.
Any minute.
Khawf appears beside the windows in front of me. His suit gleams despite the hospital’s broken light, and his hair is swept back, not one strand out of place. He’s grinning at me. Khawf loves the hospital. He knows that my fear of Layla’s becoming the next mangled body I bury will wither my resolve to stay. That eventually I’ll want to leave Syria.
We hear the screams before the doors open, giving us a split second to ready ourselves. But no matter how many times I see it, no amount of warning can prepare me for the sight of a human struggling for breath. This is not normal, and itneverwill be.
“Salama, get to the children first,” Dr. Ziad says sharply, already running toward the patients. “Nour, you make sure none of them bleed out. Mahmoud, don’t let them run out of bandages. Use the bedsheets if you must. Go!”
Five victims are transported on stretchers while the rest are carried by volunteers from the scene. There’s a huge crowd gathering around them, everyone screaming and shouting. Dr. Ziad continues yelling orders to the rest of the staff, and once again I’m grateful for his calm in the face of these atrocities. He’s the one who grounds us. The reason we’re able to save lives.
Khawf stands tall, watching the chaos unfold with a satisfied smile, and begins to hum a tune, one that ricochets over the din: “How Sweet Is Freedom,” the protestors’ anthem. But I don’t have time to tell him off. Death doesn’t wait for anyone.
For me, bandaging patients, trying to heal them, comes with more challenges than just keeping them alive. Sometimes they see me and demand an older, more experienced doctor. At first I used to flinch, try to stop my trembling, and stutter an explanation of how all the doctors are busy. That I’m just as capable. But now, if anybody tries to cost me precious seconds, I just tell themThis or death. That helps them reach their decision pretty quickly.
Working here has hardened and softened my heart in ways I never guessed it would.
As I’m bandaging my fifth patient, I spot someone looking frantic, carrying a little girl in his arms. He doesn’t look much older than I am. Late teens. The girl’s head has lolled to the side, and blood drips from her shirt onto the floor. My eyes follow the boy, watching the hospital’s flickering light bounce off his messy, tawny curls. He looks familiar. But before I can try and place him, Dr. Ziad calls me to help him with another patient. This survivor’s ulna is fractured, tearing through his arm. The sight of bone jutting from skin makes the acid in my stomach rise to my throat, burning. I swallow it down, feeling its descent as it melts my gastric mucosa instead. And I set to work on returning the bone to where it belongs.
While I rest after three back-to-back surgeries, I spot Am passing. I have to talk to him. Today. And I feel Khawf’s gaze drill into the back of my head, his threat echoing in my brain.
I will tear your world apart.
He’s adamant about my leaving Syria and would do anything to make that happen. In all the months I’ve known him, I’ve never understood his desperation. But today, a whisper echoes in my brain. A result of my conversation with Layla.
What’s the harm in asking? You’re only getting information. Just to know how much it costs. Do it for her.
“Am,” I blurt out, and he stops, turning toward me.
“Yes?” he says, surprised. He’s younger than he looks, but with everything going on, it’s no surprise that a man in his late thirties would begin to gray.
