Chapter 6 #3
Anton’s statistics with complicated surgeries were getting better odds than Sasha’s deliveries, and they each dealt with horrors every day that should never have happened and were directly related to the war.
Anton was trying to piece bodies back together that were beyond repair.
The bombs had been constructed in such a way as to enhance exponentially the damage they caused to humans, which was causing a mortality rate in surgery never seen before.
They were fighting losing battles against terrible odds night and day.
Sasha was still volunteering in the emergency and trauma units as much as possible.
She had done several surgeries with the pediatric surgeons, hoping to help save critically injured infants and children.
It was almost as depressing for the medical staff as it was for the relatives of the patients, particularly parents of young children.
Sasha couldn’t bear watching the infants and children die.
Many of them had been shelled mercilessly, or killed when the bombs exploded. The price of war was way too high.
By the time Sasha and Anton got together at night, they were both so exhausted they hardly had the energy to talk and they just lay side by side, with Anton’s arm around her, healing from the day’s heartbreaks that were commonplace now.
It was incredible to realize that six weeks earlier Ukraine had been a sane, normal country, with a happy thriving population and a sound economy.
Now it was a barren wasteland, with thirst and starvation not only commonplace but engineered by the enemy to increase the number of victims and torture them before they died.
The enemy had been declared war criminals but no one could enforce the rules or stop them.
They meted out punishment mercilessly with an iron hand.
Sasha longed to go for a walk and get some air, but with bombs dropping all night and missiles flying, it was too dangerous to go anywhere.
She and Anton still went to her apartment sometimes, but Anton was afraid the building would get bombed and they’d be trapped.
More often, they tucked into the broom closet she had appropriated as a bedroom in the hospital and locked the door.
They didn’t care where they were as long as they were together.
They hardly had the energy or the morale to make love anymore.
They saw too many tragedies in a day’s time to want to celebrate their union with abandon. They were just grateful to be together.
“You are the air I breathe,” Anton whispered to her one night. And he was her life’s blood.
She asked him casually one night about his wife. “Have you heard from Iryna?” she asked him. “Is she okay in Madrid? And your son?” He spoke more often about his son than his estranged wife.
“They’re both fine. I think she’s finding it very hard to suddenly have nothing, no home, no money, no fancy clothes.
She’s just like all the simplest people now.
I think it’s a shock. She rented a tiny apartment in our son’s building in Madrid, so they’ll each have some privacy.
Her dressing room in our apartment was ten times the size of the flat she’s living in, according to my son.
But they’re safe. My son wants to come here when the war is over to help rebuild.
He doesn’t want to abandon his mother alone in Spain now, and he needs to finish his internship,” he said proudly.
It touched Sasha that Anton loved his son so much.
He always looked proud when he spoke of him.
Sasha was eager to meet him, but that seemed light-years away.
Normalcy was out of reach. The war was their only reality, and happiness a distant dream.
Anton and Sasha only wore scrubs to work now, since they were in and out of operating rooms all day, drenched in blood like butchers.
Anton marveled at how gentle, patient, and good-natured Sasha was.
She was kind to the patients and her fellow physicians, and helped Anton to stay strong and keep going.
He had never been so tired in his life, and she seemed tireless and always willing to deal with one more case and push herself harder, no matter how tired she was.
She seemed to have unlimited energy, and when she had no gas left in her tank, she ran on fumes.
She was a good person to have in a crisis, in life or an operating room, and he had relied on her in several difficult surgeries they had done together.
They were running out of medicines, the generator was failing half the time, the electricity was erratic, the computers down much of the time, and they still managed to do what they had to do, no matter what it took, and saved as many lives as they could.
Every patient stolen from the jaws of death was a victory for all of them.
They were fighting their own war in the hospitals, and it was one which Anton and Sasha refused to lose.