This is what I achieved today in writing the story. Please tell me if you like it or not--critique it, too, and I will add more and more as I finish. It's PG13 because of the terror it describes.
Prologue
He was from Hamas.
On March 17 he was wearing sunglasses. He stumbled into a falafel stand in Jerusalem, a bistro hectic with several hundred lunchtime customers. He was carrying a backpack in his right hand. He zigzagged through the tables and looked around the place. He reached inside his coat and pressed a button.
Hell broke all boundaries. The descriptions will not come from me, because I was not present—but I understood as much from the stories I have heard:
The ceiling dropped and the windows exploded—thousands of shards from that little man blew at the victims; the air inside the place soon became sharp and inconsistent, as little metal bullets punctured lungs, heads, legs, hearts, and everything in between. There was a blast of fire, a sudden crash, and a sluggish cannonade that came to a stop in milliseconds. In the end, seventeen bodies littered the floor.
Eighteen came out alive, and were hurried in ambulances to the nearest hospitals. Those in the most critical condition went first, while the rest came later. Only sixteen made it there alive.
Seven of them came to me.
1
Each one responded differently.
I talked to the old man first; I read to him the speech. I am Dr. Weisberg. Daniel Weisberg. I deal with trauma. Trauma is shock, sometimes emotional, sometimes physical. Trauma is described as being a tsunami, its epicenter being the heart, and the brutal waves are the wounds that scar us throughout our flesh, like arrows finding their targets in a swift current of air, and then there is the shock, the disfigurement. The ugliest scars are always where the heart is.
I can repair both kinds of trauma. Well, no, I can’t; but I can try to repair trauma—it’s not so hard building a barrier. Scars only fade with time, and even time leaves a little mark on the skin.
You are traumatized. You have already been processed and diagnosed, and the emergency room scene is over now. I am here to help you. I hope I will succeed. This is the first time I have had so many people to care for, to check, to enlighten. It will be harder for you, but overcoming hardships in these scenarios is difficult for me too…
This was my speech to every one of those seven unfortunate beings. The blood was already washed off, but the scars still didn’t heal. It was a few days after the bomb: nine people from those injured were sent to their homes, cured, the trauma still evident but almost forgotten. The people that lay alone in their hospital rooms, on their pale, crisp hospital sheets were the ones whose traumatic psychology still haunted them in their agitated sleep and consciousness throughout the hospitalization. Three had critical physical wounds; all of them had critical emotional cuts.
This was the moment that my speech branched, and I will repeat it word for word.
To those who had minor physical injuries, I said this:
Now you will have to handle the emotional turbulence that follows such a terrible act of terrorism. I know you are shocked, sad—angry even!—but I will let you go whenever you are ready. You are one of seven people who need my therapy. You are not alone.
I read this to the old man. At sixty-three, his skin was melted cheese and his hair was a hoary, unhealthy string that dotted his scarlet scalp. He was connected to an IV, dripping blood, and as I came to know he lost about twenty percent of his blood in the event. His name was Kobi. When I was finished, he nodded at least a hundred times and then fell silent. His lips rippled with spit when I asked him if he had any questions, anything to say. His knees trembled under the white blanket as he shook his head. I stood up, deflated at his unenthusiastic and asocial response, as he reached his hand for me to shake and grinned.
The second person was Kim. I had to translate everything to English for her, because she is a tourist from Philadelphia, US. She also was connected to an IV, but what dripped inside of it, I did not know. She seemed very defiant against the attack, and asked me to repeat myself several times. English is not my strongest language. Then she told me that she had just turned twenty-one the day before the attack, and she came here to celebrate and visit the country of her religion for the first time in her life. She seemed healthy, so I read to her the minor injury speech. I told her this is Israel in its most appalling times—this is not what it is normally. She should be proud of being Jewish, of following such a divine homeland. She agreed.
The third room was completely dark. A bronzed, fourteen year old boy slept in the bed. I seated myself in the chair next to the bed, and he stirred gently and raised his head in confusion. I explained who I was. When I turned on the light, I groaned as I saw that his entire left palm and fingers were trimmed. He moaned to me after noticing I was upset: “I didn’t deserve it.” Chumi would live. I heard it in his host of the room, and I deserved the best reception. Her crust was red with boils—it was obvious the fire had damaged her. But she was warm, compassionate, and as it seemed to me very sophisticated. She did not tell me anything about her life. I read to her the critical version of the speech.
To those in critical conditions, those who I feared I would never let go, those who were forecasted to demise, I said:
What you have suffered was petrifying! Horrible! The person who has done this to you will be punished. He hasn’t done much, believe me, you will be cured. But the simple thought of purposeful, deliberate mass murder of people with human thoughts and sentiments such as you, me, and the other six people who are also treated by me is simply unimaginable. He will certainly be remembered as a reprobate. I will help you.
There I sat, on a black chair—the color of a coffin—and looked them in the eye. I told them lies. I said they would live. But the truth was there: I will help each one of them, those who will die and those who will not. In the end, man always survives.
In the room next door to Dana’s was Natasha. She was consumed by the satin, which was as pale as her skin, and her red eyes were pouring with tears. She was visibly of Russian descent, as she confirmed to me in days to come. But the only times she opened her mouth were to let out a groan of throbbing, or of wretchedness, or of anything other that was known to humans as raw and excruciating. In the reports, I saw—she had lost over sixty percent of her blood. I left the room after saying my words, with an awful heaviness in the cavity of my abdomen.
I left the last critical room for last, and climbed upstairs to meet Avi, sitting upright in his bed eating a snack, watching TV. As it turned out, Avi was in the same platoon in the Israeli Armed Forces as my nephew, who fell in battle. He was very charming and talkative, and seemed to very much like the company of me. There was nothing wrong with him in the beginning, but then as I started my speech, he quivered and laughed in the somber places, until I could see the mattress under his bed wet with sweat. He was an emotional wreck of trauma. But he would survive,
Gradually, agonizingly, I descended the staircase to the last room. My heart beat. It was tragedy, all of it tragedy. I opened the door.
In the bed was a little girl, no older than nine or ten years old. Her face was hidden in the shadows of her pillow. She shuddered when I said “Hello.” I approached and sat next to her, watched as her little body, sunken in the cradle, stayed still with a powerful ache. Here is the conversation that followed my entering the room.
“How old are you?”
“Seven,” she sniffed.
“Seven! When was your birthday?”
“I don’t remember.”
“And…and what is your name, young lady?”
“Ra…Rakefet.”
“Rakefet, I will be your part-time doctor. I am Dr. Weisberg. Dr. Daniel Weisberg. I deal with trauma. Trauma is shock. It...” Slowly, she shifted. I paused. It was then when I abandoned all of my preparations and asked the little girl, “What are your parents’ names?”
“Yarin and Esti.”
“Yarin and Esti! Tsk! Such beautiful names! I wish my parents had such names! But yours is much better than theirs. Rakefet! You know what it means?” She nodded. “Well, of course you know what it means! It’s a flower. I only have one in my backyard. It’s a beautiful flower. My favorite! Pink and so very graceful.”
Then she turned her head and looked at me. Until that moment she has refused to meet my gaze, but now, at last, she looked at me. I don’t know if it was the look of contempt, disgust, or simply pure irritation in her eyes, but the cuts on her face malformed her into an unsightly creature that seemed to be fuming, even murderous in its fury. And it was a polished fury, one that was not climatic and abrupt but delicate and gradual, equipped for the punch line. It was the innocence of her eyebrows which made me understand. Her slim, moonlike eyebrows were curved in worry. I put my palm on her cheek, stood up, and left the room.
I did not know what would happen next, that the aftermath of such an event would bring forth more trauma than the event itself has caused; but I wanted to enrich my patients' lives with my own, and to enrich my life with theirs. They were my life, and I hoped to make myself theirs. I did not know if my work with them would be a success, or if they would all quietly and sadly fade with the trauma of the bombing.
But this I knew: I will help them. I will try. Some will live, some will die, but like a sunken ship, the water outside will trap the air in. I will try to let it out. That girl wasn't angry at me. It was a terrifying face, but I would come to understand it.
I did not know if my hopes would somehow be fulfilled, and so I destined the fate of each one prematurely.
She was the first on my list.
