Dar a voz a outros - part two of Baraa’s story

“I experienced the most difficult situation of my life last night. We received a 4 year old girl who was suffocating because she inhaled dust from the constant bombs that rain down on our city. Because of the overcrowding of patients in our hospital, by the time that it took me to go to the next room to get her oxygen and return, the baby girl was dead.

I can still hear the screams of her father. His screams filled the hospital as he was mourning the loss of his baby girl.

Besides trying to save the lives of our patients, the most difficult task assigned to the medical staff is delivering bad news to family members who have lost their loved ones.  

You leave the operating room and face families waiting to hear good news and you are the one who has to give them the worst news that anyone could possibly hear.

You become the messenger of death. You are the one telling a father that he has lost two of his daughters because we couldn’t rescue them.

You can hear the voices of those mourning getting louder and louder in the hospital. They can’t stand the shock.  Some of them lose their minds and start beating themselves, while others try to confirm what they have have heard by asking us over and over again, “Is it true? Answer me. Please tell me that my son didn’t die, please.”

They are so traumatized. Many of them blame us, cursing the doctors and every medical staff in sight.

There is not a moment in time when we don’t feel the overwhelming guilt of losing precious human life because of a lack of medical supplies, equipment, and time.  The guilt follows us every second of the day, along with with the voice of each person that has accused us of killing their beloved.

Sometimes I just stand helpless in front of my patients. I can’t give them basic necessities like heating, food, clean sheets or blankets, or even painkillers. And when my shifts comes, I visit my patients with nothing to console them with. They lay there, waiting for surgery, suffering from pain, hunger and cold and I suffer along with them.

Everyone here is devastated psychologically and physically. We have lost hope in everyone and everything. We would prefer if we all just died together, at the same time, with one big bomb. We die every moment that we face the death of our patients knowing that we can’t do anything to stop it.

If I got injured I wouldn’t want anyone to help me or treat me because being injured in this desperate situation is the worst thing that could happen to anyone.”