Chapter 14 #3
Yulya went into the severely ill ward first and gave it a cursory glance.
She didn’t want to disturb the men. Most of them were sedated and sleeping.
Several had lost limbs, one was quadriplegic.
She looked into the ward with the men who were recovering.
One was asleep, and the others looked at her with interest, and she smiled.
The sleeping man was in the last bed at the far end, and had a heavy beard.
She tiptoed to the bed and, half asleep, he opened one eye and thought he was dreaming.
He usually dreamt of her at night, not in the daytime.
He opened both eyes and looked at her and Yulya stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at him.
She was smiling as tears rolled down her cheeks.
She took two long strides toward him and he gripped her in his still powerful arms. His leg was heavily bandaged and he had scars on his head and forehead.
He held her so tight she could hardly breathe, as though he was afraid she would run away or disappear.
It was Symon. He was alive. She had found him. It was the happiest day of her life.
She sat down carefully next to him on the bed while he told her what he knew.
He had been buried under the rubble of their building for five days before they found him.
He had severe burns on one leg, and on his face and hands, and a head injury.
He had been in a coma for a month and when he regained consciousness, he remembered nothing, not even his name.
It had all come back to him in the last month, but the infirmary had no phone, and phone lines weren’t working by then anyway.
A doctor had come every day, and had saved his leg.
Symon had no way of contacting Yulya, but they were closing the infirmary the next day and moving him to one of the field hospitals, and he was going to ask the Red Cross to contact her then.
She was a day away from hearing from him, and she had found him first. The bomb that had exploded in their building was one specially treated to do extra damage to human flesh, and the doctors had been sure he would lose the leg, but he didn’t.
He didn’t die, and she had found him. It was a miracle that he had survived.
Yulya stayed with Symon until she had to meet her parents, and didn’t want to worry them by not showing up.
She promised to meet him at the field hospital the next day.
As soon as he could travel, she would take him home to Warsaw, and she would stay with him in Kyiv until then.
She understood her parents better now. She never wanted to be apart from him again.
He said he had dreamed of her night and day once his memory returned.
And she had never given up on finding him, although she was down to her last wisp of hope when she did.
He clung to her before she left, as though he was afraid she wasn’t real and he would lose her again, and she kissed him. They told her which field hospital they were sending him to the next day, and she promised to be there, and never to leave him again.
—
She told her parents as soon as she saw them, but they knew it from the look on her face.
She slept on the floor next to them again that night, and in the morning she was waiting at the field hospital for Symon as she had promised.
She had sent a text message to the children the night before and they were jubilant.
The doctors examined him at the field hospital, and said that his survival and recovery were remarkable.
They were seeing miracles every day, terrible burns and broken limbs that hadn’t been treated, shattered bodies and injuries that should have killed people but didn’t.
And other people who had been starved beyond human tolerance and yet had hung on to life with both hands, as Yulya’s parents had.
The doctors said that he could be moved in the next week or two. His wounds had healed, his leg was badly scarred but he was no longer in danger of losing it, and his head injury had healed remarkably. He had had a fractured skull from when the building fell and some of the cement had hit his head.
Yulya sat next to Symon, watching him sleep after they examined him, thinking about him and how much she loved him.
It would be a long time before Ukraine would be whole again.
Parts of the country were scarred irreparably, like Mariupol and other national treasures, just like the people who would be marked forever by what they’d been through.
But bruised, battered, bombed, burned, and starved, the Ukrainian people who had stayed were strong.
They were willing to pay a high price for freedom, to pay with their lives if necessary, for the benefit of their countrymen.
They had been cheated of their children, robbed of their youth and innocence, deprived of their parents and grandparents, lost their homes, and been torn from loved ones who had died.
But the luckiest among them had survived.
Courage had kept them alive, and love of their country and those they loved, like Petro and Oxana and Symon.
And in each of their hearts, standing amid the rubble, they had found the true meaning of love, the most precious gift of all.