Summary: Did you ever wonder what Luka did when he went to Bosnia with
Médecins sans frontiers? Read and find out. He meets an old friend of ours,
too.
Rating: PG-13
Spoiler: This is completely spoiler-free! Last relevant episode is
A/N: Just few things you might wanna know:
I don't live in the US and haven't seen season 9 yet.
English isn't my first language. Go easy on me but feel free to point out any mistake! I'm also looking for a beta-reader so if you wanna step in just let me know!
I'm no doctor and I have no medical knowledge whatsoever. I tried to put a little medicine in this, though, so forgive my many mistakes.
Green parrots
By Elisa
As soon as the plane landed and he stepped out on the mobile stairs he felt it.
The air just smelled different. Even if he was in Serbia it smelled just like home.
Luka breathed in deeply, enjoying the fresh, familiar air. He then walked down the stairs.
When he got out of the arrivals entrance he immediately spotted a tanned, well-built man who held a sign that read " Dr. Luka Kovac". He approached him quickly and held out his hand,
"Hi, I'm Luka Kovac" he said as the man squeezed his hand. He had a firm yet gentle grip.
"Nice to meet you Dr. Kovac, I'm Muris" he replied in a thick, Serb accented English.
"Please, call me Luka." Luka said, smiling.
"You don't have any other luggage, Luka?" Muris said pointing to his bag.
"No, I travel light."
"Come on, let's go to the jeep. Everyone's waiting for you at the hospital."
As they drove out of the city they remained silent. Luka was too busy looking at the desolate surroundings for chitchat. They were driving along 'the snipers' road', as people in Sarajevo called it. They had to take it to go to the hospital, the same place where their victims were brought, most of the time to no avail.
Sarajevo looked like a ghost city, even ten years after the war.
Most of the buildings were still damaged, a good number nothing more than a bunch of debris and ruins. There were sign of reconstruction, but it seemed that the process was going on extremely slowly, as if the city was coming out of some kind of lethargy.
"There's no money to rebuild" Muris said, reading his passenger's mind. "Europe, the UN, everyone has forgotten about us. Indifference has won."
"It's pretty much the same in Croatia."
They had just passed a small village a few miles out of Sarajevo, the hospital was about two hundred miles from the city, on the border between Serbia and Bosnia, when Muris's cell phone rang.
He pulled off at the side of the road because there was no other way to hear what they were saying at the other end of the phone.
Muris told Luka, with gestures, that about twenty people were arrived at the hospital and there were more to come: a bomb had gone off in a market in the city.
Luka's heart raced. They immediately got into the jeep again, thinking that two more hands are like a heaven gift on such occasions, even if they both knew that the hospital staff would do everything in their power anyway.
While they were driving towards the hospital Muris's phone rang again. It was Melita, his wife. She was in Belgrade. The news was just being broadcasted there, in a confusing and incorrect way as usual, and it had scared the hell out of Melita once more. Muris reassured her about him and the others. But 'others' didn't mean 'our people' and so many 'others' 's lives were already gone.
They drove the rest of the journey with dark thoughts in their mind, without saying a single word: sometime you don't need to talk to understand or understand each other.
Luka wondered if Muris had any relative among the injured or the victims of the explosion.
Right in front of the hospital, the newest building Luka had seen, they understood the situation was critical. Cars and handcarts crowded the road and they could hardly see the gates behind the hundreds of people who had gathered there, waiting to get inside.
About ten gurneys, some still bloodied, were outside of the ER, pools and stains of blood everywhere, on the gowns of two men who stood there. In the lab there were some UN soldiers who wanted to donate their blood. The ER was empty, meaning that the triage was already done and the Ors were already working.
In the ER Luka saw a bunch of clothes and shoes, all covered in blood. A gowned nurse updated them: fifty-three patient had already been divided between three wards: physical therapy, recovery and the chapel. In physical therapy about twenty injured people lay on gurneys, IVs attached to their arms, moaning, scared and in pain.
In another ward a man about Luka's age was unconscious with a deep penetrating head wound. Other two men with third degree burns on most of their bodies were being treated.
"Can I help out?" Luka asked.
"Sure" a nurse, probably French, told him "We've got to move all this people out of the ICU to make room for the critically injured that are about to come out of the OR."
In that very moment a blonde woman, wearing surgical scrubs and a cap came out of the OR.
"Ok, let's move to the next one, people!"
She sounded definitely American. She turned around and noticed Luka.
"Hi! I'm Dr. Abby Keaton, pediatric surgeon. You are."
"Luka Kovac, emergency physician."
"We were waiting for you, Luka. Sorry if I don't shake your hand but I'm pleased to meet you all the same." Abby said waving here bloodied, gloved hands.
"An ER doc, uh? You must know how to hold a scalpel, then. Good, because I need some help with a leg amputation."
"I'll do my best, but I'm afraid my surgical skills aren't that good, Dr. Keaton." Luka said apologetically.
"Come on, scrub in, Luka! Don't worry, I'll talk you through it and please call me Abby, we're all on a first name basis here."
As they scrubbed before the operation they talked a little.
"So, where are you from, Luka?" Abby asked.
"Croatia, but I've lived in Chicago for a few years now."
"Chicago? I worked there for a while myself, at Cook County General."
"County? The world is real small, you know, I work at County ER."
"Yeah? You must know Peter Benton and Carter too; he must be a fine surgeon by now."
"Dr. Benton moved out of Chicago some time ago. Carter is still there, he is an ER doc too, though."
"An ER doc?"
"Yeah, he switched specialties halfway his internship, or so I heard. I wasn't at County yet."
"How is he doing? Is he married, with kids maybe?"
"No, he's still one of the most eligible bachelors of Chicago. But we're not very close, I'm afraid. What about you, Abby?"
"Well, I'm not married either but I do have a son, JT, he's almost six years old" she said, smiling at the thought of her little man. "And you Luka?"
"I lost my wife and children in the war."
"Oh, I'm so sorry."
"Don't worry, the pain is still there but you learn to live with it."
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It took them four hours to get the operation done.
"Uh, that was a tough one." Luka said as they threw away their gloves. Abby nodded.
"I think I saw some people needing stitches before, maybe I can do that." Luka added.
"Let the nurse does that, Luka. You've done a ten hours flight and worked for four hours. You deserve some rest and maybe something to eat if jet-lag hasn't gotten to your stomach."
"Nurses doing stitches?"
"Yeah, I think most of them can do a central line too. We're severely understaffed, Luka, so everyone has got to do pretty much everything."
"The Ors have been working for more than fifteen hours now and we have lost only tow patients so far. Good team work folks!" Abby said to a bunch of people who was gathering outside the OR.
"Let me introduce Dr. Luka Kovac to you all. He'll be staying with us for a month. He's an emergency physician from Chicago."
Luka waved friendly to the rest of the staff.
" Ok, Luka, this is Dr. Lasevic, he is a dermatologist but I think you'd appreciate his thoracotomies."
Lasevic smiled modestly " I was sick to death to be always doing sutures. My dermatological skills aren't much useful around here."
Abby smiled " Then we have Dr. Tiersnjic, a cardiologist. Over there, there is our soon-to-be-doctor, fourth year med school Michael Khöl, and last but not least Dr. Marion Renaud, our cardiovascular surgeon."
"So it is only gals in the OR" Luka said.
"No, Dr. Alonzo Gonzales and Dr. Gino La Valle are still operating, I think."
"And here it comes Maureen McCormack, the head nurse." Added Lasevic.
" Come on, Luka, let's go grab a bite before you fall asleep on me. I'm starving!" Abby told him.
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Jasna had eighteen years, maybe twenty.
She was a Croatian girl like many others, although she was very beautiful, with her curly hair, her round face with doll-like features, her silky skin, and her big, black eyes.
She was happy, walking back home. Who knows what the word genocide meant to her? What does a girl think of the slaughter that has killed many of her relatives, friends, of the habitant of her village?
What thoughts went through her head, that morning as she walked home? They were walking one behind the other, she, her brother, her mother, father and the rest of her family.
Almost on the top of the hill, the explosion. Free of them fell down, hit by a mine.
Her brother Janko was the first to arrive. He was about ten and had a piece of metal stuck in her brain. He's agitated, unconscious, and was brought to the OR right away.
An hour later Jasna arrived, wrapped in a blanket and many clothes soaked with blood. Michael Khöl was the first to tend to Jasna, in the hallway to the OR.
"Oh mein Got!" he exclaimed, while he cut off the burnt clothes to examine her injuries and turned his face, shaken by the urge to throw up.
"How long will it take?" he asked lurking inside the OR.
"Just twenty minutes" Marion replied. She and Abby were almost finished with Janko, he had a bad skull fracture, the piece of metal had damaged the brain, maybe it was irreparable. They didn't know Jasna was his sister.
Jasna is almost cut into two parts and is bleeding copiously. They gave her several liters of fluid intravenously to keep his BP to acceptable levels, then they prepped her up on a table next to Janko's.
Abby and Marion left Janko still under the effect of the anesthetic, there was barely the time to change gown and gloves.
Jasna had a bad wound to her arm, but the real disaster were her legs, smashed up to the knees by the mine, a shapeless mush of bits of muscles and clothes. They had to amputate her legs; Abby and Marion worked quickly they had to operate immediately.
Luka entered the OR too. He looked at the girl on the table. She looked a lot like his wife, Danijela. He stood speechless for a few seconds, then regained his composure.
"They have just brought other four injured people, there's the father of the girl too. If you're alright I'll call Alonzo and Gino and they'll start operate right away, or it'll get too dark."
Luka was right: there was no electricity in the hospital, all the zone south of Sarajevo was in the dark, working at night was almost impossible. They could use torches but it wasn't a great way to operate.
They finished the operations at ten in the night, and went in the wards to check on the patients they had operated on.
"How's the little kid?" asked Abby.
" He died an hour ago, he never wake up from the coma and the sister too, the one you amputated, is about to go." Luka spat out, unable to contain his rage. There was no reason why that girl had to die, it was just a matter of giving her at least some of the blood she had lost.
"We have no more blood." Maureen explained, defeated.
Luka caressed Jasna's cheek, tenderly. It was like losing Danijela all over again, not being able to do anything. She was having a hard time breathing and her BP was low, too low to measure it. Abby pushed a gurney next to her bed and climbed on it, rolling a sleeve of her shirt.
"I'm O-neg" she explained. Luka inserted a little tube in her vein and linked it to Jasna's. The blood flew quickly, after a while Abby said she was feeling like fainting and he suspended the transfusion.
Soon they found other three people from the staff whose blood group was O negative, which is the universal blood donor. A soldier arrived too and he lay on the gurney without taking off his weapons. It was a direct transfusion marathon. It worked, there were no allergic reaction.
Half an hour later Jasna started to improve, maybe it was just Luka's imagination or his hope. Come on baby, don't give up, he thought.
"She's gonna make it!" Maureen exclaimed.
Luka stayed at her side all night, while the surgeons continued to operate on the rest of her family. He couldn't sleep, he knew it, knowing that she was in that squalid room, in the dark.
At five in the morning. Luka and Abby had been sitting silently together next to Jasna's bed for two our, watching the still unconscious girl.
"She' urinating again!" Luka exclaimed. He had observed the tube connected to the Foley's catheter for long, holding it in his hand, waiting to see some drop of urine like a farmer asking for rain not to lose his crop. It was a good sign and it swept away some tiredness.
Later that morning Jasna wake up. Her condition was stable, the BP was back to normal, the elastic bandages that wrapped what was left of her legs were soaked with blood but it didn't worry the doctors much. The real problem was preventing any infections now.
Two days later Jasna was finally out of danger.
She ate, did all the exercise the doctors told her and was very cooperative. Luka acted as an interpreter for her as she didn't speak Serb or English.
She was beautiful again, with her sweet smile, she made her hair into many, small, pretty pigtails.
Luka went to visit her and found her sitting in her wheelchair, under a tree, with two friends. He approached them. They were singing happily.
" Want to sing with us? " Jasna asked him, giving him one of her wonderful smiles which reminded him of Danijela so much.
"I'm sorry, I'm completely tuneless." Luka refused politely, explaining them that he couldn't carry a tune even if it had handles. He sat down there for long, though, feeling at peace with the whole world for the first time in ages.
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The whole staff was sitting in the smoky pub, enjoying the happy atmosphere. It was still snowing, it was very cold, nine Celsius degrees below the zero, the road were empty and so was the hospital, for once. Everyone was stuck at home and so the doctors and nurses had some time to themselves.
Then, suddenly arrived Colin and Bradley, and then Bill, although everyone believed they were up north. They were mine-clearers.
Colin was some sort of a rock. He was English, a former soldier, an expert in mines and explosives, and one of the greatest beer drinker Luka had ever met. But only when he didn't have to work the following day, because in his job you can make a mistake only once, there's no second chance.
Luka and he had spent quite a few evenings talking about mines and mine- clearing, putting together the point of view of who knows well the causes and who works on the consequences. Once Luka asked him what he thought of in the very moment when he defused a mine.
" When you've got to deal with a Valmara 69, one of the most devastating mine Italians produce, you've got to lay next to it, your face is twenty centimeters from that thing, and the mine seems so bloody big. You insert some sort of hairpin in a three millimeters hole, from both the ends. You can't tremble in that moment, a tiny vibration and the mine goes off. Wanna know what I think every bloody time? I think: now it goes boom!"
Luka understood Colin. He understood why every time he drank a beer he took it next to his ear before and asked for silence. Then he listened to the double click of the can of beer opening, like the noise of a mine going off and exclaimed smiling "Music!" swallowing it down in one gulp.
That night they partied, they were a dozen of English and Scottish, a few Americans, many French, a couple of Italians. It's a group drink more than a dinner.
Colin began his show. He found a skirt and improvised a bagpipe with a pillow and two big, wooden spoons. He blew into the spoons with all the air of his lungs, pushed the pillow and walked in the room like Irish soldiers. It was quite a show.
Then he climbed on a table and continued his dance. Maybe it was a beer too many or the frenetic dance, but he lost his balance.
Colin did a terrible hoop in the air, landing on his head without dropping his bagpipe.
There were some seconds of an icy silence, Lasevic and Tiersnjic helped him, Luka approached him with fear. Colin was unconscious, his pupils so small and unresponsive. For ten minutes they checked his pulse, his BP and his resps, which were normal, and his reflexes, which were absent.
"Christ!" someone exclaimed "What are we going to do now?"
With much caution, they put Colin on a bed.
Luka was very worried, thinking about the possible solution in case they had to do an emergency operation. Did they have the equipment to drill a skull? Were they sterile? Did the respirator in the OR work? And many other questions he refused to ask himself.
After half an hour Colin muttered something. It was a good sign. They decided to take turns during the night, they were all tired.
Twenty minutes later a miracle happened.
Colin opened his eyes and whispered "I'm still alive, everything is all right. I can still drink another beer."
Luka burst out laughing, to release the tension and because he recognized the typical logical sequence of his big drinker friend Colin.
Everyone relaxed and went back to a room they used like some sort of lounge. But the miracle wasn't finished yet. Colin arrived, a bit wobbly but walking. He fumbled with the stereo.
They were speechless, Gino exclaimed " He's a zombie, that's not possible, he was in a coma an hour ago!"
Colin turned around and gestured to Abby with two fingers " Hey little one, come here" and a minute later the sound of the Eagles came out of the stereo and they danced a slow, romantic and wobbling Desperado. The party dragged on into the morning. People slept on the tables.
When they were finished Luka approached Abby.
"We should write to some medical journal to let them know that the Glasgow Coma Scale should be revised, shouldn't we?" Luka told her, smiling.
"Yeah, we really should." Abby said, smiling back.
Right then Abby's cell phone rang.
"Hi sweet pea!" she exclaimed, her face lit up "What are you doing still up, JT?" she asked, looking at her watch. It was almost nine in the morning, so it meant it was about eleven p.m. in the US.
" Oh, I miss you too JT" she said " Come on, you know I'll be back in three weeks. Are you being a good boy for Auntie Kate, aren't you?"
Luka smiled. She had to be speaking with her son.
"I'm sorry I missed the match too. Wow! That's wonderful, you and Auntie Kate had a great idea! I'll watch the tape as soon as I get back. Now, be a good boy, and go to bed. No, don't wake your aunt, I'll say hello another time. Bye, I love you, sweet pea, bye."
She put away her cell phone and smiled to Luka.
"It was JT, my son. Called to tell me he missed me and that he won his soccer match."
Luka nodded, understandingly " It must be tough, doing this I mean, with a kid at home."
"Yeah, you bet it is" Abby nodded " But I never take assignments longer than a month. So I do a month at home and one with MSF. When I'm away JT stays with my big sister, Katie, so I'm sure he is in good hands."
"You said he's six, didn't you?"
" Yeah," Abby replied, taking a picture out of her wallet and handing it to Luka.
Luka rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing. The boy in the picture looked like a small version of John Carter. He was the spitting image of the young doctor.
Luka gasped and Abby laughed.
"He really took after his father, didn't he?"
"Are you telling me Carter is his father?"
"I was Peter's boss and he was supervising John. We had a relationship. I found out that I was pregnant on my first mission with MSF in Afghanistan. JT stands for John Truman. I named him after his father."
"And you didn't tell Carter?"
"Nope. He was just an intern back then. He was so young and I'm sure fatherhood wasn't in his plans. Besides it wasn't like we were serious about each other. It was just a fling for him and I wasn't looking for commitment, either."
"Don't you think he's got a right to know?"
"Yeah, maybe I'll tell him sooner or later. And I'd appreciate if you didn't tell him anything, either, it's my decision to make."
"Sure, don't worry about it, I'll respect your decision. Carter would make a great father, though."
"You really think so? I remember him much too young to be anyone's father."
"Hey, maybe I don't like the guy much, but I do have to give him some credit."
Abby nodded, staring into space thoughtfully.
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It was an old man, he was standing next to his seven-year-old grandchild in the ER.
The boy's name was Asmir and he had his face and hands, or what was left of them, covered with bandages. He was lying, motionless, his shirt black and burnt from the explosion. Someone had ripped off a sleeve and used it as a tourniquet, tied tightly to his arm to stop the hemorrhage.
"He was hit by a toy mine" said the nurse, taking a basin full of water and a sponge.
Luka couldn't believe it. It had to be some sort of propaganda, he thought watching the nurse washing the kid's chest, scrubbing energetically as if he was currying a horse.
Before sending the boy to the OR Luka removed the bandages to check the wounds: Asmir's right hand wasn't in its place anymore, replaced by a disgusting mush similar to burned cauliflower, three fingers of his left hand were completely squashed.
Luka thought he had picked up a grenade.
Three days later a similar case came in, another kid.
As soon as she got out of the OR Abby tossed to Luka a small plastic fragment, burnt and black from the explosion.
"Look," she told him, disgusted " this is a piece of a toy mine, they picked it up on the site of the explosion. In Afghanistan the elderly call them green parrots" and started tracing the shape of the mine in the air: ten centimeters, two wings, a small cylinder in the center.
It looked more like a butterfly to Luka, now he could place the piece into place, like a puzzle, it was the end of a wing.
They were toy mines, built to mutilate children, Luka found it hard to believe, even if, with the war, he thought he had seen pretty much everything. Russian mines, PFM-1. Their shape, with the two wings, helps them fly better. In other words they don't plummet to the ground when they're dropped from helicopters, they're like ad leaflets, they spread all around. They're built like this for a mere technical reason, military people say, it's not correct to define them as 'toy mines'.
"It never happened to me to operate on an adult hit by these monstrous things. No one over ten years, only little kids." Abby said, desolate.
These mines don't go off immediately, often they don't detonate if you step on them. It takes some time, they work with excessive pressure accumulation.
You've got to take one, handle it, push its wings. The kid who picks it up can bring it home, show it to friends, they can even play with it.
Then it will go off. And someone else will end up like Asmir.
Traumatic amputation of one or both hands, a burning blaze to the chest and, often, blindness too.
"I've seen too often children waking up after an operation without a leg or an arm," Abby continued " they're desperate for a while then, incredibly, they get over it. There's nothing more unbearable for them, though, than waking up in the dark."
The green parrots drag them into the dark forever.
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Triage is a French word, it means selection, choice.
When you are in war zones the situation is very different from what you find in Chicago, in many hospitals. A motor vehicle accident, and usually the patient finds two or three doctors in the ER, ready to treat him. If you happen to have an appendicitis you can easily find an eager surgeon with OR abstinence withdrawal, taking the patient's arrival like a blessing.
There in Bosnia, instead, there were so many injured people and so few doctors around. There often was a single surgeon, facing dozen of patients.
And they had to choose, to do the triage.
Who did they have to send to the OR first? And who did they have to condemn waiting, knowing all too well that he or she probably wouldn't make it, waiting for hours?
It's a damn hard choice. Doctors from all over the world often find themselves in similar situations when they have a heart for a transplant and so many possible candidates.
But there, they didn't choose reading a list of names or numbers on the computer, they faced so many suffering faces, people crying and imploring, looking directly in their eyes while they wrote a two on their arms, meaning in their code 'has got to wait'.
In war zones the 'first the most critical' rule doesn't apply. They couldn't afford spending time, energies and resources on someone who had a few chances to survive. Other people who maybe stood a better chance would die in the meantime.
So the rule was 'the best for the majority'.
"Come with me" Maureen told Luka "I need help with the triage, there are a hundred injured people in the backyard already."
There were a lot of soldiers among them, a most unusual occurrence; a bomb had gone off during some sort attack of an extremist military party of Serbs.
There was an extremely large number of children, most of them only babies. It turned out that the Serbs were holding hostage an entire kindergarten.
Luka felt a wave of rage sweep through him. His head was full of emotions and feelings, but there was no room for pity, even if it should always be in a doctor's mind.
It was hard to admit, but he couldn't care less for those injured warriors that had had the nerve to attack a building full of innocent little kids.
"I did the triage, Maureen" he told her as they walked through the moaning crowd " Children and women go first!"
"What?"
"You heard me, Maureen. If you're not ok with it call someone else to do the triage."
He thought about it long afterwards, about that choice that wasn't based on any medical ethics.
Women and children were just innocent victims while who does a war, instead, has got to know he risks a bullet in his stomach.
It took him some time to find the strength to admit it that it was just some sort of revenge, that from a doctor he had turned into an irremovable judge.
He got scared.
That choice had nothing to do with his job. He found some excuse, but the verdict was the same: how would they call it, complicity in murder and failure to assist?
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Alonzo tapped on Luka's shoulder. Luka looked up from the Croat newspaper he was reading. Alonzo gave him a phone.
"It's for you, Luka."
Luka brought the phone to his ear.
"Hey, this is Luka speaking."
"Hey, it's me, Abby, here."
"Abby! What a nice surprise! Why are you calling me? Is everything all right?"
Luka heard Abby sigh at the other end of the phone. "Come on, Luka, can't I call you just because I want to or there had to be some problem for me to do it?"
"Abby, don't hang up on me! I'm sorry, I wasn't just expecting you of all people to call, that's it."
"Yes, Luka, it's nice to hear you too." Abby sighed again.
"Don't pout, Abby!"
" You can't even see me, Luka, how can you know I'm pouting?"
"I just know you are."
"Whatever, Luka. I didn't call you to fight. I just wanted to know how you were doing."
Images of the kids hit by mines and people shot by machineguns danced in his head, the red color of blood obfuscating his sight. He sighed, trying to shrug off those images.
" Good, I mean, fine."
"Do you miss us and Chicago?"
"Not much, really."
"Wow, I'm so pleased to hear that, Luka."
"Hey, don't get me wrong. What I meant is that there's so much to do here that I don't even have the time to breathe, let alone getting homesick or missing someone. It's crazy here."
"I'm sure that's what you meant, Luka."
"Don't be mad at me. I'm glad you called me, you know."
"I bet you are even if one couldn't tell."
"Would you stop that, please?"
"What do you mean, stop?"
"I mean stop being bitchy at me. I don't know what I did to piss you off this time, considering that I'm thousands of miles away from Chicago. Anyway, whatever I did, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, keep saying you're sorry!"
"Listen Abby, because I really don't understand. What did crawl up your ass and died there?"
"Oh, I've seen you've learned your lesson well. You got it right this time. Forget about it, Luka!"
"No, now you've got some explaining to do!"
"You're really thick, Luka. You broke up with me and started dating again, then decided to fly to some godforsaken country to play hero and I still bother about trying to stay friends. I'm just so stupid. Never mind."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Luka asked, angrily. No answer came from the other end of the phone. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"I said to forget it, Luka. Besides Carter is coming for dinner and I really gotta go now."
"Yeah" Luka laughed bitterly "Go to Carter."
"What? What was that supposed to mean, Luka?"
"Nothing, but if this relationship is over it's not my fault."
"Sure, whatever, but I'm not the one who started dating again, a dumb, thief waitress for that matter."
"At least I didn't cheat on you when we were together."
"What?" Abby shouted into the receiver.
"Don't play dumb on me, Abby, you know what I'm talking about, Carter."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, why does this all have always to be about Carter?"
Luka snorted "You know perfectly well why."
"Oh, come on, please."
"Do you know what it feels like now?"
"Yes, I know! I was married with Richard, remember? This is enough, Luka. Look, I don't even know why I called you. Bad idea. So stupid of me, really."
Luka heard a click and the line went dead. He sighed and banged the phone on the table. Why everything had to be so damn complicated when it came to Abby?
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They decided to call it a day. They had worked late and now they were starving. Gino was making his fabulous Italian pasta and they couldn't wait to eat.
They weren't on call that night. Abby and Luka decided to go check on a patient, though.
In the ward the lights were off, as usual. Something caught their attention, though. The plastic bag that was wrapping the head was full of air and it was tied with an IV tube.
Luka reacted immediately, tore away the bag, untie the knot and called for help.
A torch at last.
It was a kid, he had his head and eyes bandaged, he was cyanotic and unconscious; an oxygen mask arrived and Luka revived him. He started breathing again and, after a few minutes, he came around.
Luka checked his chart: he had been operated three days before. Shelling injuries, a lot of splinters to his head, chest and face. One of his eyes was gone, the other possibly recoverable. 'Call the ophthalmologist' was written on the chart. One was coming over the following day. Then he was prescribed some antibiotics and some painkillers, either. That was all.
What a bunch of idiots they had been!
They had a kid with his eyes bandaged for three days and no one had thought of talking to him, explaining him that probably he could see again.
There was so much to do, that was true, more than thirty injured people were treated every day but thee were no excuses, it was their fault.
What was the boy thinking during those three days? He was alone, in the dark.
Maybe he thought about more dark days to come. He decided to die.
How did he manage to do it? How did a blind kid find a bag? It was one of the bags they used for people who had bad burns on their hands, so that they could move them freely with the burns protected from germs and bacteria. What about the IV tube he had used? He didn't have any IV.
The following day the ophthalmologist arrived. " The other eyes stands some chances" he said, although he didn't seem very sure about it. They decided to send him to another hospital for an eye operation, anyway. A nurse walked the kid to the ambulance.
He passed Luka by. He couldn't see him nor Luka could have been able to stand the kid's stare.
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Luka's stay was coming to an end. He watched the blue, starry Bosnian sky.
He would miss it there.
He was considering joining MSF permanently, he had never felt this useful before. Maybe that would help him make sense of his life, too. That was really helping people. It was a cosmopolitan company, too, so he didn't feel a stranger there.
Besides it wasn't like he had anything really important waiting for him in Chicago. A job and maybe a few friends, nothing more.
Médecins sans frontières seemed more and more appealing.
Abby Keaton joined him.
"It's really a wonderful night, uh? What are you thinking about?"
"Joining MSF or the international Red Cross permanently."
"What about your life in Chicago?"
"It's not like I have any real friends there."
"So you have no family, no girl, no friends, no roots. I wouldn't recommend you to join MSF permanently. Things get pretty crazy around here and they say you need something or, better yet, someone waiting for you to stay sane."
"I lived through a war so I don't think there's anything worse than that."
"You had your family back then, though."
"Yeah, so I guess I'll go back to Chicago, then. What about you? What are your plans?"
"I'm flying back to New York in two days. I'll spend a month with JT and then I'll fly back to Afghanistan with MSF. I don't tend to do much planning, I'm more of a live the moment girl."
"Always in the first row, uh?"
"Can't help it. It's who I am."
Then she dug in her pocket and took out an envelope. She gave it to Luka.
"Here, take it. Would you please give it to John?"
Luka watched the letter " So you finally decided to tell him about JT?"
Abby nodded. Then she opened her wallet and took out JT's picture. She then took back the envelope, opened it and put the picture inside.
"John will be shocked, won't he?"
"I'm sure he'll be pleased. He's basically a good guy."
"I sense some tension here. You don't like John much, do you?"
"You're right. We don't get along that well, actually."
"Why? I mean John's a good guy and so are you."
"For once he doesn't respect my authority. I'm an attending and even if Carter has been at County forever it doesn't mean he can ignore my orders. I'm his boss, whether he likes it or not!"
"I can't believe that's all what it is all about. There must be more to it."
"Ok, the main problem is Abby. She's a nurse I went out with. She's a good friend of Carter's, too, and when we dated she used to turn to him every time she had a problem. It drove me nuts!"
"I knew there was a woman involved, go on, Luka."
"There's nothing much else to say. We broke up. She called me today, by the way."
"And?"
"And we had this huge fight."
Abby frowned "Broken up but still fighting?"
The question perplexed Luka. Why were they fighting if they weren't going out anymore? Why were they yelling at each other if it was all over? Luka sighed "I don't know."
" Why did you fight?"
"I don't know that either. Carter I guess."
"So, are Abby and John going out now?"
"Nope. But I guess they will soon."
"Do you still love her?"
" I guess so. I really don't know. I'm confused right now. She is the first woman I have been with after Danijela, my wife. She's so complicated. She's so full of resentment and pain and wouldn't let me help her in any way. It's so frustrating. It was hard enough already without Carter messing things up."
"Basically you're telling me it's Carter and Abby's fault you two broke up."
"No, no, I guess I haven't been the easiest person to be with as well. At times I'm still so hang up on the past I wonder how Abby could put up with my crap. And I'm not that good at opening up, either. I have my fair share of issues myself."
"Doesn't sound like a healthy relationship, if you wanna know my opinion, Luka."
"You're probably right, Abby. I don't think Carter and Abby would make a good couple, either, though. They've got too much baggage."
"Baggage?"
"Yup. Abby's a recovering alcoholic and Carter was addicted to painkillers."
"What?"
"Carter and his med student were stabbed by a schizophrenic on Valentine's day, two years ago."
Abby gasped.
"She died while he suffered from a few critical injuries. Later on he suffered from a bad case of PSTD and got addicted to painkillers. Abby caught him shooting Fentanyl and he was sent to rehab. He's been clean ever since."
"I would have never imagined it."
"Time passes, things happen and people change."
"You want some advice, Luka? Take your time, think about what you want and if you're sure about it go tell her what you feel. Ask her another chance to make it right. I don't know about her, but I would listen to a man telling me that. I definitely would."
"Thanks. You want some advice too? Tell Carter personally. He needs you to tell him. I think he deserves it. You guys will need to work out visiting schedule and stuff like that."
"If he ever wants to see JT, that's it."
"He will, I'm sure."
"Ok, but you've got to talk to Abby."
"Can't promise anything." Luka said " Talk to Carter."
"Can't promise anything."
And they both looked at the beautiful, mysterious Bosnian sky.
Fine
A/N: What did you think of it? Please, please, pretty please, I beg you, give me some feedback. I live for it! Constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Since this is the most 'serious' fic I've ever written I'm more anxious than usual to know how you will respond.
Some other things you absolutely have to know.
Sadly, most of the terrible things I described in this story aren't fictional. I got the inspiration for this story while reading the book "Pappagalli Verdi" (which is the Italian for green parrots) by Gino Strada, a war surgeon who works for and is one of the founders of Emergency, an Italian humanitarian association for the treatment and rehabilitation of the war and mine victims. He's been working for over ten years in Afghanistan, Peru, Bosnia, Gibuti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kurdistan and Cambodia. If you wanna know more about Emergency visit the site http\\www.emergency.it .
Rating: PG-13
Spoiler: This is completely spoiler-free! Last relevant episode is
A/N: Just few things you might wanna know:
I don't live in the US and haven't seen season 9 yet.
English isn't my first language. Go easy on me but feel free to point out any mistake! I'm also looking for a beta-reader so if you wanna step in just let me know!
I'm no doctor and I have no medical knowledge whatsoever. I tried to put a little medicine in this, though, so forgive my many mistakes.
Green parrots
By Elisa
As soon as the plane landed and he stepped out on the mobile stairs he felt it.
The air just smelled different. Even if he was in Serbia it smelled just like home.
Luka breathed in deeply, enjoying the fresh, familiar air. He then walked down the stairs.
When he got out of the arrivals entrance he immediately spotted a tanned, well-built man who held a sign that read " Dr. Luka Kovac". He approached him quickly and held out his hand,
"Hi, I'm Luka Kovac" he said as the man squeezed his hand. He had a firm yet gentle grip.
"Nice to meet you Dr. Kovac, I'm Muris" he replied in a thick, Serb accented English.
"Please, call me Luka." Luka said, smiling.
"You don't have any other luggage, Luka?" Muris said pointing to his bag.
"No, I travel light."
"Come on, let's go to the jeep. Everyone's waiting for you at the hospital."
As they drove out of the city they remained silent. Luka was too busy looking at the desolate surroundings for chitchat. They were driving along 'the snipers' road', as people in Sarajevo called it. They had to take it to go to the hospital, the same place where their victims were brought, most of the time to no avail.
Sarajevo looked like a ghost city, even ten years after the war.
Most of the buildings were still damaged, a good number nothing more than a bunch of debris and ruins. There were sign of reconstruction, but it seemed that the process was going on extremely slowly, as if the city was coming out of some kind of lethargy.
"There's no money to rebuild" Muris said, reading his passenger's mind. "Europe, the UN, everyone has forgotten about us. Indifference has won."
"It's pretty much the same in Croatia."
They had just passed a small village a few miles out of Sarajevo, the hospital was about two hundred miles from the city, on the border between Serbia and Bosnia, when Muris's cell phone rang.
He pulled off at the side of the road because there was no other way to hear what they were saying at the other end of the phone.
Muris told Luka, with gestures, that about twenty people were arrived at the hospital and there were more to come: a bomb had gone off in a market in the city.
Luka's heart raced. They immediately got into the jeep again, thinking that two more hands are like a heaven gift on such occasions, even if they both knew that the hospital staff would do everything in their power anyway.
While they were driving towards the hospital Muris's phone rang again. It was Melita, his wife. She was in Belgrade. The news was just being broadcasted there, in a confusing and incorrect way as usual, and it had scared the hell out of Melita once more. Muris reassured her about him and the others. But 'others' didn't mean 'our people' and so many 'others' 's lives were already gone.
They drove the rest of the journey with dark thoughts in their mind, without saying a single word: sometime you don't need to talk to understand or understand each other.
Luka wondered if Muris had any relative among the injured or the victims of the explosion.
Right in front of the hospital, the newest building Luka had seen, they understood the situation was critical. Cars and handcarts crowded the road and they could hardly see the gates behind the hundreds of people who had gathered there, waiting to get inside.
About ten gurneys, some still bloodied, were outside of the ER, pools and stains of blood everywhere, on the gowns of two men who stood there. In the lab there were some UN soldiers who wanted to donate their blood. The ER was empty, meaning that the triage was already done and the Ors were already working.
In the ER Luka saw a bunch of clothes and shoes, all covered in blood. A gowned nurse updated them: fifty-three patient had already been divided between three wards: physical therapy, recovery and the chapel. In physical therapy about twenty injured people lay on gurneys, IVs attached to their arms, moaning, scared and in pain.
In another ward a man about Luka's age was unconscious with a deep penetrating head wound. Other two men with third degree burns on most of their bodies were being treated.
"Can I help out?" Luka asked.
"Sure" a nurse, probably French, told him "We've got to move all this people out of the ICU to make room for the critically injured that are about to come out of the OR."
In that very moment a blonde woman, wearing surgical scrubs and a cap came out of the OR.
"Ok, let's move to the next one, people!"
She sounded definitely American. She turned around and noticed Luka.
"Hi! I'm Dr. Abby Keaton, pediatric surgeon. You are."
"Luka Kovac, emergency physician."
"We were waiting for you, Luka. Sorry if I don't shake your hand but I'm pleased to meet you all the same." Abby said waving here bloodied, gloved hands.
"An ER doc, uh? You must know how to hold a scalpel, then. Good, because I need some help with a leg amputation."
"I'll do my best, but I'm afraid my surgical skills aren't that good, Dr. Keaton." Luka said apologetically.
"Come on, scrub in, Luka! Don't worry, I'll talk you through it and please call me Abby, we're all on a first name basis here."
As they scrubbed before the operation they talked a little.
"So, where are you from, Luka?" Abby asked.
"Croatia, but I've lived in Chicago for a few years now."
"Chicago? I worked there for a while myself, at Cook County General."
"County? The world is real small, you know, I work at County ER."
"Yeah? You must know Peter Benton and Carter too; he must be a fine surgeon by now."
"Dr. Benton moved out of Chicago some time ago. Carter is still there, he is an ER doc too, though."
"An ER doc?"
"Yeah, he switched specialties halfway his internship, or so I heard. I wasn't at County yet."
"How is he doing? Is he married, with kids maybe?"
"No, he's still one of the most eligible bachelors of Chicago. But we're not very close, I'm afraid. What about you, Abby?"
"Well, I'm not married either but I do have a son, JT, he's almost six years old" she said, smiling at the thought of her little man. "And you Luka?"
"I lost my wife and children in the war."
"Oh, I'm so sorry."
"Don't worry, the pain is still there but you learn to live with it."
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It took them four hours to get the operation done.
"Uh, that was a tough one." Luka said as they threw away their gloves. Abby nodded.
"I think I saw some people needing stitches before, maybe I can do that." Luka added.
"Let the nurse does that, Luka. You've done a ten hours flight and worked for four hours. You deserve some rest and maybe something to eat if jet-lag hasn't gotten to your stomach."
"Nurses doing stitches?"
"Yeah, I think most of them can do a central line too. We're severely understaffed, Luka, so everyone has got to do pretty much everything."
"The Ors have been working for more than fifteen hours now and we have lost only tow patients so far. Good team work folks!" Abby said to a bunch of people who was gathering outside the OR.
"Let me introduce Dr. Luka Kovac to you all. He'll be staying with us for a month. He's an emergency physician from Chicago."
Luka waved friendly to the rest of the staff.
" Ok, Luka, this is Dr. Lasevic, he is a dermatologist but I think you'd appreciate his thoracotomies."
Lasevic smiled modestly " I was sick to death to be always doing sutures. My dermatological skills aren't much useful around here."
Abby smiled " Then we have Dr. Tiersnjic, a cardiologist. Over there, there is our soon-to-be-doctor, fourth year med school Michael Khöl, and last but not least Dr. Marion Renaud, our cardiovascular surgeon."
"So it is only gals in the OR" Luka said.
"No, Dr. Alonzo Gonzales and Dr. Gino La Valle are still operating, I think."
"And here it comes Maureen McCormack, the head nurse." Added Lasevic.
" Come on, Luka, let's go grab a bite before you fall asleep on me. I'm starving!" Abby told him.
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Jasna had eighteen years, maybe twenty.
She was a Croatian girl like many others, although she was very beautiful, with her curly hair, her round face with doll-like features, her silky skin, and her big, black eyes.
She was happy, walking back home. Who knows what the word genocide meant to her? What does a girl think of the slaughter that has killed many of her relatives, friends, of the habitant of her village?
What thoughts went through her head, that morning as she walked home? They were walking one behind the other, she, her brother, her mother, father and the rest of her family.
Almost on the top of the hill, the explosion. Free of them fell down, hit by a mine.
Her brother Janko was the first to arrive. He was about ten and had a piece of metal stuck in her brain. He's agitated, unconscious, and was brought to the OR right away.
An hour later Jasna arrived, wrapped in a blanket and many clothes soaked with blood. Michael Khöl was the first to tend to Jasna, in the hallway to the OR.
"Oh mein Got!" he exclaimed, while he cut off the burnt clothes to examine her injuries and turned his face, shaken by the urge to throw up.
"How long will it take?" he asked lurking inside the OR.
"Just twenty minutes" Marion replied. She and Abby were almost finished with Janko, he had a bad skull fracture, the piece of metal had damaged the brain, maybe it was irreparable. They didn't know Jasna was his sister.
Jasna is almost cut into two parts and is bleeding copiously. They gave her several liters of fluid intravenously to keep his BP to acceptable levels, then they prepped her up on a table next to Janko's.
Abby and Marion left Janko still under the effect of the anesthetic, there was barely the time to change gown and gloves.
Jasna had a bad wound to her arm, but the real disaster were her legs, smashed up to the knees by the mine, a shapeless mush of bits of muscles and clothes. They had to amputate her legs; Abby and Marion worked quickly they had to operate immediately.
Luka entered the OR too. He looked at the girl on the table. She looked a lot like his wife, Danijela. He stood speechless for a few seconds, then regained his composure.
"They have just brought other four injured people, there's the father of the girl too. If you're alright I'll call Alonzo and Gino and they'll start operate right away, or it'll get too dark."
Luka was right: there was no electricity in the hospital, all the zone south of Sarajevo was in the dark, working at night was almost impossible. They could use torches but it wasn't a great way to operate.
They finished the operations at ten in the night, and went in the wards to check on the patients they had operated on.
"How's the little kid?" asked Abby.
" He died an hour ago, he never wake up from the coma and the sister too, the one you amputated, is about to go." Luka spat out, unable to contain his rage. There was no reason why that girl had to die, it was just a matter of giving her at least some of the blood she had lost.
"We have no more blood." Maureen explained, defeated.
Luka caressed Jasna's cheek, tenderly. It was like losing Danijela all over again, not being able to do anything. She was having a hard time breathing and her BP was low, too low to measure it. Abby pushed a gurney next to her bed and climbed on it, rolling a sleeve of her shirt.
"I'm O-neg" she explained. Luka inserted a little tube in her vein and linked it to Jasna's. The blood flew quickly, after a while Abby said she was feeling like fainting and he suspended the transfusion.
Soon they found other three people from the staff whose blood group was O negative, which is the universal blood donor. A soldier arrived too and he lay on the gurney without taking off his weapons. It was a direct transfusion marathon. It worked, there were no allergic reaction.
Half an hour later Jasna started to improve, maybe it was just Luka's imagination or his hope. Come on baby, don't give up, he thought.
"She's gonna make it!" Maureen exclaimed.
Luka stayed at her side all night, while the surgeons continued to operate on the rest of her family. He couldn't sleep, he knew it, knowing that she was in that squalid room, in the dark.
At five in the morning. Luka and Abby had been sitting silently together next to Jasna's bed for two our, watching the still unconscious girl.
"She' urinating again!" Luka exclaimed. He had observed the tube connected to the Foley's catheter for long, holding it in his hand, waiting to see some drop of urine like a farmer asking for rain not to lose his crop. It was a good sign and it swept away some tiredness.
Later that morning Jasna wake up. Her condition was stable, the BP was back to normal, the elastic bandages that wrapped what was left of her legs were soaked with blood but it didn't worry the doctors much. The real problem was preventing any infections now.
Two days later Jasna was finally out of danger.
She ate, did all the exercise the doctors told her and was very cooperative. Luka acted as an interpreter for her as she didn't speak Serb or English.
She was beautiful again, with her sweet smile, she made her hair into many, small, pretty pigtails.
Luka went to visit her and found her sitting in her wheelchair, under a tree, with two friends. He approached them. They were singing happily.
" Want to sing with us? " Jasna asked him, giving him one of her wonderful smiles which reminded him of Danijela so much.
"I'm sorry, I'm completely tuneless." Luka refused politely, explaining them that he couldn't carry a tune even if it had handles. He sat down there for long, though, feeling at peace with the whole world for the first time in ages.
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The whole staff was sitting in the smoky pub, enjoying the happy atmosphere. It was still snowing, it was very cold, nine Celsius degrees below the zero, the road were empty and so was the hospital, for once. Everyone was stuck at home and so the doctors and nurses had some time to themselves.
Then, suddenly arrived Colin and Bradley, and then Bill, although everyone believed they were up north. They were mine-clearers.
Colin was some sort of a rock. He was English, a former soldier, an expert in mines and explosives, and one of the greatest beer drinker Luka had ever met. But only when he didn't have to work the following day, because in his job you can make a mistake only once, there's no second chance.
Luka and he had spent quite a few evenings talking about mines and mine- clearing, putting together the point of view of who knows well the causes and who works on the consequences. Once Luka asked him what he thought of in the very moment when he defused a mine.
" When you've got to deal with a Valmara 69, one of the most devastating mine Italians produce, you've got to lay next to it, your face is twenty centimeters from that thing, and the mine seems so bloody big. You insert some sort of hairpin in a three millimeters hole, from both the ends. You can't tremble in that moment, a tiny vibration and the mine goes off. Wanna know what I think every bloody time? I think: now it goes boom!"
Luka understood Colin. He understood why every time he drank a beer he took it next to his ear before and asked for silence. Then he listened to the double click of the can of beer opening, like the noise of a mine going off and exclaimed smiling "Music!" swallowing it down in one gulp.
That night they partied, they were a dozen of English and Scottish, a few Americans, many French, a couple of Italians. It's a group drink more than a dinner.
Colin began his show. He found a skirt and improvised a bagpipe with a pillow and two big, wooden spoons. He blew into the spoons with all the air of his lungs, pushed the pillow and walked in the room like Irish soldiers. It was quite a show.
Then he climbed on a table and continued his dance. Maybe it was a beer too many or the frenetic dance, but he lost his balance.
Colin did a terrible hoop in the air, landing on his head without dropping his bagpipe.
There were some seconds of an icy silence, Lasevic and Tiersnjic helped him, Luka approached him with fear. Colin was unconscious, his pupils so small and unresponsive. For ten minutes they checked his pulse, his BP and his resps, which were normal, and his reflexes, which were absent.
"Christ!" someone exclaimed "What are we going to do now?"
With much caution, they put Colin on a bed.
Luka was very worried, thinking about the possible solution in case they had to do an emergency operation. Did they have the equipment to drill a skull? Were they sterile? Did the respirator in the OR work? And many other questions he refused to ask himself.
After half an hour Colin muttered something. It was a good sign. They decided to take turns during the night, they were all tired.
Twenty minutes later a miracle happened.
Colin opened his eyes and whispered "I'm still alive, everything is all right. I can still drink another beer."
Luka burst out laughing, to release the tension and because he recognized the typical logical sequence of his big drinker friend Colin.
Everyone relaxed and went back to a room they used like some sort of lounge. But the miracle wasn't finished yet. Colin arrived, a bit wobbly but walking. He fumbled with the stereo.
They were speechless, Gino exclaimed " He's a zombie, that's not possible, he was in a coma an hour ago!"
Colin turned around and gestured to Abby with two fingers " Hey little one, come here" and a minute later the sound of the Eagles came out of the stereo and they danced a slow, romantic and wobbling Desperado. The party dragged on into the morning. People slept on the tables.
When they were finished Luka approached Abby.
"We should write to some medical journal to let them know that the Glasgow Coma Scale should be revised, shouldn't we?" Luka told her, smiling.
"Yeah, we really should." Abby said, smiling back.
Right then Abby's cell phone rang.
"Hi sweet pea!" she exclaimed, her face lit up "What are you doing still up, JT?" she asked, looking at her watch. It was almost nine in the morning, so it meant it was about eleven p.m. in the US.
" Oh, I miss you too JT" she said " Come on, you know I'll be back in three weeks. Are you being a good boy for Auntie Kate, aren't you?"
Luka smiled. She had to be speaking with her son.
"I'm sorry I missed the match too. Wow! That's wonderful, you and Auntie Kate had a great idea! I'll watch the tape as soon as I get back. Now, be a good boy, and go to bed. No, don't wake your aunt, I'll say hello another time. Bye, I love you, sweet pea, bye."
She put away her cell phone and smiled to Luka.
"It was JT, my son. Called to tell me he missed me and that he won his soccer match."
Luka nodded, understandingly " It must be tough, doing this I mean, with a kid at home."
"Yeah, you bet it is" Abby nodded " But I never take assignments longer than a month. So I do a month at home and one with MSF. When I'm away JT stays with my big sister, Katie, so I'm sure he is in good hands."
"You said he's six, didn't you?"
" Yeah," Abby replied, taking a picture out of her wallet and handing it to Luka.
Luka rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing. The boy in the picture looked like a small version of John Carter. He was the spitting image of the young doctor.
Luka gasped and Abby laughed.
"He really took after his father, didn't he?"
"Are you telling me Carter is his father?"
"I was Peter's boss and he was supervising John. We had a relationship. I found out that I was pregnant on my first mission with MSF in Afghanistan. JT stands for John Truman. I named him after his father."
"And you didn't tell Carter?"
"Nope. He was just an intern back then. He was so young and I'm sure fatherhood wasn't in his plans. Besides it wasn't like we were serious about each other. It was just a fling for him and I wasn't looking for commitment, either."
"Don't you think he's got a right to know?"
"Yeah, maybe I'll tell him sooner or later. And I'd appreciate if you didn't tell him anything, either, it's my decision to make."
"Sure, don't worry about it, I'll respect your decision. Carter would make a great father, though."
"You really think so? I remember him much too young to be anyone's father."
"Hey, maybe I don't like the guy much, but I do have to give him some credit."
Abby nodded, staring into space thoughtfully.
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It was an old man, he was standing next to his seven-year-old grandchild in the ER.
The boy's name was Asmir and he had his face and hands, or what was left of them, covered with bandages. He was lying, motionless, his shirt black and burnt from the explosion. Someone had ripped off a sleeve and used it as a tourniquet, tied tightly to his arm to stop the hemorrhage.
"He was hit by a toy mine" said the nurse, taking a basin full of water and a sponge.
Luka couldn't believe it. It had to be some sort of propaganda, he thought watching the nurse washing the kid's chest, scrubbing energetically as if he was currying a horse.
Before sending the boy to the OR Luka removed the bandages to check the wounds: Asmir's right hand wasn't in its place anymore, replaced by a disgusting mush similar to burned cauliflower, three fingers of his left hand were completely squashed.
Luka thought he had picked up a grenade.
Three days later a similar case came in, another kid.
As soon as she got out of the OR Abby tossed to Luka a small plastic fragment, burnt and black from the explosion.
"Look," she told him, disgusted " this is a piece of a toy mine, they picked it up on the site of the explosion. In Afghanistan the elderly call them green parrots" and started tracing the shape of the mine in the air: ten centimeters, two wings, a small cylinder in the center.
It looked more like a butterfly to Luka, now he could place the piece into place, like a puzzle, it was the end of a wing.
They were toy mines, built to mutilate children, Luka found it hard to believe, even if, with the war, he thought he had seen pretty much everything. Russian mines, PFM-1. Their shape, with the two wings, helps them fly better. In other words they don't plummet to the ground when they're dropped from helicopters, they're like ad leaflets, they spread all around. They're built like this for a mere technical reason, military people say, it's not correct to define them as 'toy mines'.
"It never happened to me to operate on an adult hit by these monstrous things. No one over ten years, only little kids." Abby said, desolate.
These mines don't go off immediately, often they don't detonate if you step on them. It takes some time, they work with excessive pressure accumulation.
You've got to take one, handle it, push its wings. The kid who picks it up can bring it home, show it to friends, they can even play with it.
Then it will go off. And someone else will end up like Asmir.
Traumatic amputation of one or both hands, a burning blaze to the chest and, often, blindness too.
"I've seen too often children waking up after an operation without a leg or an arm," Abby continued " they're desperate for a while then, incredibly, they get over it. There's nothing more unbearable for them, though, than waking up in the dark."
The green parrots drag them into the dark forever.
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Triage is a French word, it means selection, choice.
When you are in war zones the situation is very different from what you find in Chicago, in many hospitals. A motor vehicle accident, and usually the patient finds two or three doctors in the ER, ready to treat him. If you happen to have an appendicitis you can easily find an eager surgeon with OR abstinence withdrawal, taking the patient's arrival like a blessing.
There in Bosnia, instead, there were so many injured people and so few doctors around. There often was a single surgeon, facing dozen of patients.
And they had to choose, to do the triage.
Who did they have to send to the OR first? And who did they have to condemn waiting, knowing all too well that he or she probably wouldn't make it, waiting for hours?
It's a damn hard choice. Doctors from all over the world often find themselves in similar situations when they have a heart for a transplant and so many possible candidates.
But there, they didn't choose reading a list of names or numbers on the computer, they faced so many suffering faces, people crying and imploring, looking directly in their eyes while they wrote a two on their arms, meaning in their code 'has got to wait'.
In war zones the 'first the most critical' rule doesn't apply. They couldn't afford spending time, energies and resources on someone who had a few chances to survive. Other people who maybe stood a better chance would die in the meantime.
So the rule was 'the best for the majority'.
"Come with me" Maureen told Luka "I need help with the triage, there are a hundred injured people in the backyard already."
There were a lot of soldiers among them, a most unusual occurrence; a bomb had gone off during some sort attack of an extremist military party of Serbs.
There was an extremely large number of children, most of them only babies. It turned out that the Serbs were holding hostage an entire kindergarten.
Luka felt a wave of rage sweep through him. His head was full of emotions and feelings, but there was no room for pity, even if it should always be in a doctor's mind.
It was hard to admit, but he couldn't care less for those injured warriors that had had the nerve to attack a building full of innocent little kids.
"I did the triage, Maureen" he told her as they walked through the moaning crowd " Children and women go first!"
"What?"
"You heard me, Maureen. If you're not ok with it call someone else to do the triage."
He thought about it long afterwards, about that choice that wasn't based on any medical ethics.
Women and children were just innocent victims while who does a war, instead, has got to know he risks a bullet in his stomach.
It took him some time to find the strength to admit it that it was just some sort of revenge, that from a doctor he had turned into an irremovable judge.
He got scared.
That choice had nothing to do with his job. He found some excuse, but the verdict was the same: how would they call it, complicity in murder and failure to assist?
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Alonzo tapped on Luka's shoulder. Luka looked up from the Croat newspaper he was reading. Alonzo gave him a phone.
"It's for you, Luka."
Luka brought the phone to his ear.
"Hey, this is Luka speaking."
"Hey, it's me, Abby, here."
"Abby! What a nice surprise! Why are you calling me? Is everything all right?"
Luka heard Abby sigh at the other end of the phone. "Come on, Luka, can't I call you just because I want to or there had to be some problem for me to do it?"
"Abby, don't hang up on me! I'm sorry, I wasn't just expecting you of all people to call, that's it."
"Yes, Luka, it's nice to hear you too." Abby sighed again.
"Don't pout, Abby!"
" You can't even see me, Luka, how can you know I'm pouting?"
"I just know you are."
"Whatever, Luka. I didn't call you to fight. I just wanted to know how you were doing."
Images of the kids hit by mines and people shot by machineguns danced in his head, the red color of blood obfuscating his sight. He sighed, trying to shrug off those images.
" Good, I mean, fine."
"Do you miss us and Chicago?"
"Not much, really."
"Wow, I'm so pleased to hear that, Luka."
"Hey, don't get me wrong. What I meant is that there's so much to do here that I don't even have the time to breathe, let alone getting homesick or missing someone. It's crazy here."
"I'm sure that's what you meant, Luka."
"Don't be mad at me. I'm glad you called me, you know."
"I bet you are even if one couldn't tell."
"Would you stop that, please?"
"What do you mean, stop?"
"I mean stop being bitchy at me. I don't know what I did to piss you off this time, considering that I'm thousands of miles away from Chicago. Anyway, whatever I did, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, keep saying you're sorry!"
"Listen Abby, because I really don't understand. What did crawl up your ass and died there?"
"Oh, I've seen you've learned your lesson well. You got it right this time. Forget about it, Luka!"
"No, now you've got some explaining to do!"
"You're really thick, Luka. You broke up with me and started dating again, then decided to fly to some godforsaken country to play hero and I still bother about trying to stay friends. I'm just so stupid. Never mind."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Luka asked, angrily. No answer came from the other end of the phone. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"I said to forget it, Luka. Besides Carter is coming for dinner and I really gotta go now."
"Yeah" Luka laughed bitterly "Go to Carter."
"What? What was that supposed to mean, Luka?"
"Nothing, but if this relationship is over it's not my fault."
"Sure, whatever, but I'm not the one who started dating again, a dumb, thief waitress for that matter."
"At least I didn't cheat on you when we were together."
"What?" Abby shouted into the receiver.
"Don't play dumb on me, Abby, you know what I'm talking about, Carter."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, why does this all have always to be about Carter?"
Luka snorted "You know perfectly well why."
"Oh, come on, please."
"Do you know what it feels like now?"
"Yes, I know! I was married with Richard, remember? This is enough, Luka. Look, I don't even know why I called you. Bad idea. So stupid of me, really."
Luka heard a click and the line went dead. He sighed and banged the phone on the table. Why everything had to be so damn complicated when it came to Abby?
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They decided to call it a day. They had worked late and now they were starving. Gino was making his fabulous Italian pasta and they couldn't wait to eat.
They weren't on call that night. Abby and Luka decided to go check on a patient, though.
In the ward the lights were off, as usual. Something caught their attention, though. The plastic bag that was wrapping the head was full of air and it was tied with an IV tube.
Luka reacted immediately, tore away the bag, untie the knot and called for help.
A torch at last.
It was a kid, he had his head and eyes bandaged, he was cyanotic and unconscious; an oxygen mask arrived and Luka revived him. He started breathing again and, after a few minutes, he came around.
Luka checked his chart: he had been operated three days before. Shelling injuries, a lot of splinters to his head, chest and face. One of his eyes was gone, the other possibly recoverable. 'Call the ophthalmologist' was written on the chart. One was coming over the following day. Then he was prescribed some antibiotics and some painkillers, either. That was all.
What a bunch of idiots they had been!
They had a kid with his eyes bandaged for three days and no one had thought of talking to him, explaining him that probably he could see again.
There was so much to do, that was true, more than thirty injured people were treated every day but thee were no excuses, it was their fault.
What was the boy thinking during those three days? He was alone, in the dark.
Maybe he thought about more dark days to come. He decided to die.
How did he manage to do it? How did a blind kid find a bag? It was one of the bags they used for people who had bad burns on their hands, so that they could move them freely with the burns protected from germs and bacteria. What about the IV tube he had used? He didn't have any IV.
The following day the ophthalmologist arrived. " The other eyes stands some chances" he said, although he didn't seem very sure about it. They decided to send him to another hospital for an eye operation, anyway. A nurse walked the kid to the ambulance.
He passed Luka by. He couldn't see him nor Luka could have been able to stand the kid's stare.
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Luka's stay was coming to an end. He watched the blue, starry Bosnian sky.
He would miss it there.
He was considering joining MSF permanently, he had never felt this useful before. Maybe that would help him make sense of his life, too. That was really helping people. It was a cosmopolitan company, too, so he didn't feel a stranger there.
Besides it wasn't like he had anything really important waiting for him in Chicago. A job and maybe a few friends, nothing more.
Médecins sans frontières seemed more and more appealing.
Abby Keaton joined him.
"It's really a wonderful night, uh? What are you thinking about?"
"Joining MSF or the international Red Cross permanently."
"What about your life in Chicago?"
"It's not like I have any real friends there."
"So you have no family, no girl, no friends, no roots. I wouldn't recommend you to join MSF permanently. Things get pretty crazy around here and they say you need something or, better yet, someone waiting for you to stay sane."
"I lived through a war so I don't think there's anything worse than that."
"You had your family back then, though."
"Yeah, so I guess I'll go back to Chicago, then. What about you? What are your plans?"
"I'm flying back to New York in two days. I'll spend a month with JT and then I'll fly back to Afghanistan with MSF. I don't tend to do much planning, I'm more of a live the moment girl."
"Always in the first row, uh?"
"Can't help it. It's who I am."
Then she dug in her pocket and took out an envelope. She gave it to Luka.
"Here, take it. Would you please give it to John?"
Luka watched the letter " So you finally decided to tell him about JT?"
Abby nodded. Then she opened her wallet and took out JT's picture. She then took back the envelope, opened it and put the picture inside.
"John will be shocked, won't he?"
"I'm sure he'll be pleased. He's basically a good guy."
"I sense some tension here. You don't like John much, do you?"
"You're right. We don't get along that well, actually."
"Why? I mean John's a good guy and so are you."
"For once he doesn't respect my authority. I'm an attending and even if Carter has been at County forever it doesn't mean he can ignore my orders. I'm his boss, whether he likes it or not!"
"I can't believe that's all what it is all about. There must be more to it."
"Ok, the main problem is Abby. She's a nurse I went out with. She's a good friend of Carter's, too, and when we dated she used to turn to him every time she had a problem. It drove me nuts!"
"I knew there was a woman involved, go on, Luka."
"There's nothing much else to say. We broke up. She called me today, by the way."
"And?"
"And we had this huge fight."
Abby frowned "Broken up but still fighting?"
The question perplexed Luka. Why were they fighting if they weren't going out anymore? Why were they yelling at each other if it was all over? Luka sighed "I don't know."
" Why did you fight?"
"I don't know that either. Carter I guess."
"So, are Abby and John going out now?"
"Nope. But I guess they will soon."
"Do you still love her?"
" I guess so. I really don't know. I'm confused right now. She is the first woman I have been with after Danijela, my wife. She's so complicated. She's so full of resentment and pain and wouldn't let me help her in any way. It's so frustrating. It was hard enough already without Carter messing things up."
"Basically you're telling me it's Carter and Abby's fault you two broke up."
"No, no, I guess I haven't been the easiest person to be with as well. At times I'm still so hang up on the past I wonder how Abby could put up with my crap. And I'm not that good at opening up, either. I have my fair share of issues myself."
"Doesn't sound like a healthy relationship, if you wanna know my opinion, Luka."
"You're probably right, Abby. I don't think Carter and Abby would make a good couple, either, though. They've got too much baggage."
"Baggage?"
"Yup. Abby's a recovering alcoholic and Carter was addicted to painkillers."
"What?"
"Carter and his med student were stabbed by a schizophrenic on Valentine's day, two years ago."
Abby gasped.
"She died while he suffered from a few critical injuries. Later on he suffered from a bad case of PSTD and got addicted to painkillers. Abby caught him shooting Fentanyl and he was sent to rehab. He's been clean ever since."
"I would have never imagined it."
"Time passes, things happen and people change."
"You want some advice, Luka? Take your time, think about what you want and if you're sure about it go tell her what you feel. Ask her another chance to make it right. I don't know about her, but I would listen to a man telling me that. I definitely would."
"Thanks. You want some advice too? Tell Carter personally. He needs you to tell him. I think he deserves it. You guys will need to work out visiting schedule and stuff like that."
"If he ever wants to see JT, that's it."
"He will, I'm sure."
"Ok, but you've got to talk to Abby."
"Can't promise anything." Luka said " Talk to Carter."
"Can't promise anything."
And they both looked at the beautiful, mysterious Bosnian sky.
Fine
A/N: What did you think of it? Please, please, pretty please, I beg you, give me some feedback. I live for it! Constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Since this is the most 'serious' fic I've ever written I'm more anxious than usual to know how you will respond.
Some other things you absolutely have to know.
Sadly, most of the terrible things I described in this story aren't fictional. I got the inspiration for this story while reading the book "Pappagalli Verdi" (which is the Italian for green parrots) by Gino Strada, a war surgeon who works for and is one of the founders of Emergency, an Italian humanitarian association for the treatment and rehabilitation of the war and mine victims. He's been working for over ten years in Afghanistan, Peru, Bosnia, Gibuti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kurdistan and Cambodia. If you wanna know more about Emergency visit the site http\\www.emergency.it .