Page 98 of Light Up The Night
"You have done more than anyone could ask, Dr. Creswell." I have tried a dozen times to get her to call me Cadence, but she always seems to forget. "This is but a small gesture of our thanks to you." She guides me to the table, which has but one plate, one tarnished, bent-tined fork, and one butter knife. “Please sit. Enjoy."
I shake my head, fighting back tears. "But…ohhh, Duwana." I look at the others. "My friends. In my country, Thanksgiving is…it isn't really about the food. We are thankful for that, of course,but really, it is a day to be thankful for thepeoplein your life. For the good things you have, the good things you have experienced. It would not be a proper Thanksgiving if I did not share this bounty with my friends.”
They seem confused.
I set the place settings aside and take Duwana's hand on one side and another nurse’s on the other—slowly, the rest join hands in a circle around the table.
"There is precious little to be thankful for, in times like these," I say. "But today, I am thankful for you all. I am touched beyond words at your gesture, which is just so thoughtful. It is my most fervent wish that you join me in this celebration. We are alive, this day. We have breath in our lungs. We are here. We are together. And that, indeed, is something to be thankful for." Duwana translates my words for the others who do not speak English well or at all.
We eat with our hands, and for a few blessed, wonderful minutes, there is feasting and laughter.
My heart is lightened. Sometimes, you just have to take a few minutes and simply be grateful that you are alive.
Sirens howl nearby. Engines roar and brakes squeal, and orderlies shout.
Duty calls.
DECEMBER 2nd
We are inundated with victims.The fighting has drawn closer by the day: the once-faint chatter and crump is no longer quite so faint.
My friends here at the hospital and the men hired to protect me have tried repeatedly to get me to leave while I can.
But how can I? When they need me the most, I leave to save my own skin? I think not.
Truck after truck full of dying soldiers and civilians arrive, one after the other. The hallways are nearly impassable. We have run out of the best pain medication and are now using old stockpiles of morphine. Old bedsheets are torn into strips to extend our rapidly dwindling stores of bandages.
I have not left the floor in seventy-two hours. There is no time to think, to breathe, to miss home or even Riley. There is only blood and death and the next patient.
An explosion shakesme out of a dead sleep, so close and so loud it rattles the windows and the bones inside me. I sit up, gasping. Another explosion rocks the floor under me, this one even closer.
A barrage of gunfire crackles like Fourth of July firecrackers—this, too, sounds like it is right outside the window. I creep to the window and peer out; I know not the time, but it is night and the shadows are long and the sky is lit by tracers and muzzle-flash and explosions.
It is here.
The war is here at my very doorstep.
For a moment, I am frozen in terror. I cannot breathe. The overwhelm I have suppressed and ignored and buried and refused to give into and fought as ferociously as I can for so many months now threatens to suffocate me.
The door to the closet-sized office which functions as a makeshift place to catch a few hours of sleep slams open. "Dr.Creswell!" Duwana hustles in,toubflowing around her. "Come! Come! Quickly!"
She shoves PPE at me—mask, glasses, gloves, gown. I don everything as we jog, and she next hands me a small paper cup sloshing with cold, strong black tea which I drink like a shot of alcohol.
I reach the triage floor—screams, moans, and curses rise like a miasma of agony. The floors are slick with blood, which the few, exhausted, overworked orderlies work frantically to sop up. I scan the scene, my brain clicking into work mode, and I begin snapping orders to Duwana, who passes them on to the others.
And then I recall nothing else as I am swept up in the chaos of lifesaving.
My eyes burn,feeling as if they are filled with gritty, hot sand. My feet ache and throb. My stomach gnarls and rumbles, empty. My hands hurt—both from so many hours of constant use and from the dryness that comes from wearing rubber gloves for so long.
The fighting is right outside. I still cannot help occasionally ducking when a particularly close explosion rocks the ground under my feet; more than once, a drop tile has shaken loose and fallen on my head. But better a drop tile than an HE shell, I suppose.
I cannot recall when this began. Two days? Three? I have passed beyond exhaustion and into a trance-like state. I have treated more patients than I can count. Enemy soldiers, friendly ones, women, children, old people. Gunshots, machete wounds, shrapnel, missing limbs, evisceration, crush wounds from collapsed buildings.
The fighting does not cease, night and day.
Where do all the bullets come from? Surely they must run out at some point?
It is an errant thought as I try to remember what I was doing.
