Chapter 9 #3
There was thick smoke in the hallways, and a giant hole in the outside wall, and Sasha suddenly looked at Anton in panic.
“Oh my God, Anton, it’s the children’s ward,” and maternity was right next to it, and oncology a floor below.
They raced down the stairs together, and it looked like every member of the staff was running with a child in their arms. There was a fire at the far end of the hospital, and the whole children’s wing was a gaping open space in the building, with flames spreading quickly.
Sasha raced into the children’s surgical unit, and Anton ran in right behind her.
A fleet of nurses had grabbed children and were racing down the stairs to the shelter.
Sasha had two toddlers from surgical in her arms, and Anton was holding two babies.
Dozens of adults were combing the rooms of the children’s and maternity wards, pushing wheelchairs and incubators, helping women in labor, and holding infants and children in their arms. The staircase was crowded as they escaped, with firefighters urging them on.
There was the sound of a second explosion then from farther away.
It was barely controlled chaos in the stairway, as Sasha handed the two toddlers to a firefighter and ran back for more patients.
Anton did the same and ran after her but couldn’t see her in the smoke.
A second stairway was unblocked, and more children were taken off the floor.
There was a woman screaming in labor, about to deliver her baby as a nurse pushed her in a wheelchair, and a paramedic came to half carry the screaming woman down the stairs, shrieking in agony.
And then Anton caught a glimpse of Sasha carrying an oncology patient with his IV pole.
Within minutes, they got all the mothers and children down to the shelter, which was big enough to hold them all, just as the fire took over and filled the entire space they had just evacuated.
Minutes later and every mother and child on the floor would have been killed.
Anton made his way through the crowd when he caught a glimpse of Sasha again.
The shelter was big enough to hold eight hundred people, and there were about five hundred in the underground space, with first aid stations strategically placed and everything they needed to treat injured patients.
There was a whole medical world underground.
The nurses had already set up a delivery area at one end, with screens, so women giving birth would have some privacy.
Sasha had checked and there were five women in active labor, one having twins, and there would be more before the night was over.
There were signs on the roof painted in enormous white letters with the words “children” and “hospital” clearly written in Russian to prevent airstrikes, by international rules, which the Russians had clearly disregarded or had chosen as a target.
Sasha was so angry she could hardly speak when Anton found her. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“They could have killed all of them,” she said through her clenched teeth, her eyes filled with tears of rage.
“Thank God they didn’t,” he said, equally shaken.
It was a vicious act of war, targeting children, and babies who weren’t even born yet, and vulnerable mothers.
They had gotten everyone out, due to the incredible efficiency of the staff with the help of the firefighters.
They were battling to get the fire under control upstairs, but the entire floor would be unusable now.
The children would have to be moved to other hospitals when it was safe to do so, and some oncology and surgical patients.
And all the hospitals were understaffed and overcrowded.
The nurses and orderlies were doing a good job calming everyone down, as the fire raged on upstairs.
“I’ve got five women about to deliver,” Sasha said, looking worried and wide-awake.
The fantasies about a trip to Rome already forgotten.
That was part of another lifetime. “Do you want to give me a hand? I’ve only got one OB resident on duty, an accredited obstetrician, and a midwife.
There’s a woman having twins, I could use a hand with that.
That still leaves one woman unattended, maybe the midwife can do two. ”
Anton hesitated. “I haven’t delivered a baby since my rotation in med school. I don’t know how much help I’ll be.” He didn’t want to cause a bigger problem.
“We’ll do it together, you can help me with the twins.
” She smiled at him, and they hurried through the crowd to the makeshift maternity ward at the end of the shelter.
Two of the women were screaming in fear and pain when they got there.
Sasha had a quick word with the doctors and nurses on duty, and she said a kind word to each of the mothers.
The circumstances were such that they couldn’t administer pain medication or epidurals, and the women were just going to have to tough their way through it.
One of them was about to deliver any second, and the midwife had good control of the situation.
Sasha encouraged the resident, who looked almost as unnerved as the woman in labor, and she and Anton walked into the curtained-off cubicle where the woman was having twins.
Sasha was praying they didn’t have to do a C-section in these conditions.
The woman was crying, but not hysterical, just scared.
And like so many others, she was a recent widow.