“I can’t,” she says, but her voice falters, her justification failing. Sonja often sees defiance from rebels and occasionally from soldiers, but rarely from civilians.
“Today is Monday,” she says.Īkhmed glowers.
Sonja looks at the wall calendar, as if a date could make sense of the times. On Sunday the army came and took her mother.” “Her father was taken by the rebels on Saturday. Too many dying she cannot be expected to care for the living as well. Newly injured arrive each day, too many to care for. Most important, it tends to the injured regardless of ethnicity or military affiliation, making the hospital one of the few larger buildings left untargeted by either side in the war. The hospital receives humanitarian aid, has food and clean water. “My wife and I cannot care for her,” Akhmed says. He gestures to a small girl, no older than eight, standing beside him. The war has made the country’s cheeks and chins devout. Few have shaving cream, fewer have mirrors. For a moment she thinks he’s a religious man, then remembers that most men have grown their beards out. A short beard descends from Akhmed’s face. “My name is Akhmed.” He speaks Russian without an accent, but by now Sonja feels more comfortable conversing in Chechen. “He’s right out here.”Ī minute later in the hallway the man introduces himself. Sonja, still on the cot, rubs the weariness from her eyes. “A man is waiting here to see you,” a nurse says. Some days, roused by the shuffle of footsteps, the cries of family members, she stands and a body takes her place on the cot and she works on resuscitation, knowing she is awake because she could dream nothing like this. She sleeps there intentionally, in anticipation of the next critical patient. No reason to return, no need to wash her clothes. She returned home to wash her clothes a few days a month, but those days became fewer and fewer. After her sister, Natasha, died, Sonja began sleeping in the hospital.
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