Post by Admin on Aug 22, 2020 11:37:08 GMT
Broken Glass, Blood, and Anguish: Beirut After the Blast
Seema Jilani
www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/08/18/broken-glass-blood-and-anguish-beirut-after-the-blast/
As I emerged from the car, the air was still whirring with debris. Everything was eerily silent. But it wasn’t. I just couldn’t hear anything. My ears were ringing.
The street scene in front of me, almost two blocks from my apartment and walking distance from the epicenter of the blast, was a silent horror film. Stunned people stumbled out of cafés, dogs dripping with blood cowered in corners, cars crumpled under chunks of concrete. A young girl approached me, dust layered in her eyelashes and hair.
“Can I use your phone to call home please?” she sobbed.
“Of course,” I spluttered. We couldn’t get through to anyone.
I looked up at her to check the number and realized she was missing an ear. My inner doctor took over and I did a quick trauma assessment. She also had a flesh wound to her right upper chest. She was bleeding but not profusely, and the bleeding was not pulsatile, so her arteries and large vessels had probably been spared. I reached out to use her scarf to apply pressure to the wound. Meanwhile, I finally connected to my husband on the phone.
“Iman is hurt. She needs you,” said Dion, breathing heavily. He is usually the calm one, the stoic one, the one I have to beg to show some emotion in an argument. The change in his voice would have been indistinguishable to anyone but me, but I started shaking when I heard it.
I turned back to the injured girl. Never in my medical career had I ever left a patient in need. I have been in war zones, from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq, but never with my four-year-old daughter. The reality of the situation was swimming into focus for me: choices had to be made. Even as I decided what I had to do, I knew I would be replaying this moment for years to come.
“I’m so, so sorry, but my daughter is hurt,” I said to the girl. “I will stabilize you, but I have to go to my daughter.”
I bolted as soon as I could, trying not to take in the unrelenting scenes of devastation: confused elderly people wandering into the street, bleeding from wounds, children howling in their mothers’ arms, shop owners cautiously creeping out of their stores with shards of glass still raining down on them. The glass everywhere crunched under my feet. I took the stairs up to our third-floor apartment, skipping over pools of blood dribbling down the stairs, sidestepping the woman holding her gashed and gaping head.
As I went, I yelled out—to no one in particular, and knowing that most of my neighbors do not speak English—“Is my daughter okay? Is my daughter okay?” I screamed it into the void like a prayer or a call, or even a threat, to the heavens.
As I raced to get to her, possible medical scenarios played out in my mind: my child with a traumatic brain injury, a seizure disorder, internal bleeding. The inner doctor is a cruel tormenter sometimes.
I pulled open the French doors to our apartment. It was unrecognizable. The coffee table I had lovingly painted was upside down, several feet from where it usually rested. There was our wedding album on the floor. Tossed in the corner, my little girl’s tricycle. Then, I saw the only thing that mattered: my daughter, hiding in the closet with my husband. She was naked, covered only in a towel.
It was unclear whether Dion even realized that he himself was bleeding, but I could see that he was.
“Mama!” she cried. Once again, my inner doctor took over to do an assessment: airway, breathing, circulation, exposure. Okay, she is speaking, which means she is breathing, so her airway and lungs are somewhat intact. She is alert and aware of her surroundings, she recognizes me, which tells me about her neurological status. I quickly took her pulse. I checked her body for wounds: oozing cuts and abrasions speckled her delicate body, fragments of glass embedded in her perfect baby skin.
I shifted my attention to her lower limbs where my husband was keeping pressure on her leg wounds—three gashes, deep enough to reveal bone. Her hand wound, so severe that I could see tendon and bone, was most frightening to me. I could not see the end of the wound, only a sanguinous tunnel of indeterminate length. For a moment, I was back in anatomy class studying a cadaver. I cannot panic in front of Iman. Time for my inner mama to take over central command.
“Iman, remember how we’ve been learning about weather? Did that feel like a hurricane or a tornado to you?” I said, as I whirled around with her in my arms, broken glass hissing under my shoes. She cracked a smile.
I called the Lebanese Red Cross and explained where we were, but there was too much chaos for them to get to us. From our balcony, where we used to sit with our coffee and watch Beirut’s busy fruit vendors, Dion saw ambulances down on the street.
Seema Jilani
www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/08/18/broken-glass-blood-and-anguish-beirut-after-the-blast/
As I emerged from the car, the air was still whirring with debris. Everything was eerily silent. But it wasn’t. I just couldn’t hear anything. My ears were ringing.
The street scene in front of me, almost two blocks from my apartment and walking distance from the epicenter of the blast, was a silent horror film. Stunned people stumbled out of cafés, dogs dripping with blood cowered in corners, cars crumpled under chunks of concrete. A young girl approached me, dust layered in her eyelashes and hair.
“Can I use your phone to call home please?” she sobbed.
“Of course,” I spluttered. We couldn’t get through to anyone.
I looked up at her to check the number and realized she was missing an ear. My inner doctor took over and I did a quick trauma assessment. She also had a flesh wound to her right upper chest. She was bleeding but not profusely, and the bleeding was not pulsatile, so her arteries and large vessels had probably been spared. I reached out to use her scarf to apply pressure to the wound. Meanwhile, I finally connected to my husband on the phone.
“Iman is hurt. She needs you,” said Dion, breathing heavily. He is usually the calm one, the stoic one, the one I have to beg to show some emotion in an argument. The change in his voice would have been indistinguishable to anyone but me, but I started shaking when I heard it.
I turned back to the injured girl. Never in my medical career had I ever left a patient in need. I have been in war zones, from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq, but never with my four-year-old daughter. The reality of the situation was swimming into focus for me: choices had to be made. Even as I decided what I had to do, I knew I would be replaying this moment for years to come.
“I’m so, so sorry, but my daughter is hurt,” I said to the girl. “I will stabilize you, but I have to go to my daughter.”
I bolted as soon as I could, trying not to take in the unrelenting scenes of devastation: confused elderly people wandering into the street, bleeding from wounds, children howling in their mothers’ arms, shop owners cautiously creeping out of their stores with shards of glass still raining down on them. The glass everywhere crunched under my feet. I took the stairs up to our third-floor apartment, skipping over pools of blood dribbling down the stairs, sidestepping the woman holding her gashed and gaping head.
As I went, I yelled out—to no one in particular, and knowing that most of my neighbors do not speak English—“Is my daughter okay? Is my daughter okay?” I screamed it into the void like a prayer or a call, or even a threat, to the heavens.
As I raced to get to her, possible medical scenarios played out in my mind: my child with a traumatic brain injury, a seizure disorder, internal bleeding. The inner doctor is a cruel tormenter sometimes.
I pulled open the French doors to our apartment. It was unrecognizable. The coffee table I had lovingly painted was upside down, several feet from where it usually rested. There was our wedding album on the floor. Tossed in the corner, my little girl’s tricycle. Then, I saw the only thing that mattered: my daughter, hiding in the closet with my husband. She was naked, covered only in a towel.
It was unclear whether Dion even realized that he himself was bleeding, but I could see that he was.
“Mama!” she cried. Once again, my inner doctor took over to do an assessment: airway, breathing, circulation, exposure. Okay, she is speaking, which means she is breathing, so her airway and lungs are somewhat intact. She is alert and aware of her surroundings, she recognizes me, which tells me about her neurological status. I quickly took her pulse. I checked her body for wounds: oozing cuts and abrasions speckled her delicate body, fragments of glass embedded in her perfect baby skin.
I shifted my attention to her lower limbs where my husband was keeping pressure on her leg wounds—three gashes, deep enough to reveal bone. Her hand wound, so severe that I could see tendon and bone, was most frightening to me. I could not see the end of the wound, only a sanguinous tunnel of indeterminate length. For a moment, I was back in anatomy class studying a cadaver. I cannot panic in front of Iman. Time for my inner mama to take over central command.
“Iman, remember how we’ve been learning about weather? Did that feel like a hurricane or a tornado to you?” I said, as I whirled around with her in my arms, broken glass hissing under my shoes. She cracked a smile.
I called the Lebanese Red Cross and explained where we were, but there was too much chaos for them to get to us. From our balcony, where we used to sit with our coffee and watch Beirut’s busy fruit vendors, Dion saw ambulances down on the street.