“What’s going on?”
“A Palestinian from East Jerusalem just stabbed two Haredim on Sultan Suleiman Street. One of them probably isn’t going to make it. The other one is in bad shape, too.”
“Another day, another attack.”
“It gets worse, I’m afraid. A passerby jumped on the Arab and tried to disarm him. When the police arrived, they saw two men fighting over a knife, so they shot them both.”
“How bad?”
“The hero got the worst of it. He’s going into trauma.”
“And the terrorist?”
“One shot, through and through. He’s all yours.”
Natalie hurried into the corridor in time to see the first patient being wheeled into the trauma center. He was wearing the dark suit, knee-length socks, and white shirt of an ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jew. The jacket was shredded and the white shirt was soaked with blood. His reddish-blond payess dangled from the edge of the gurney; his face was ashen. Natalie glimpsed him only briefly, a second or two, but her instincts told her that the man did not have long to live.
The next to arrive was a secular Israeli man, thirty-five or so, an oxygen mask over his face, a bullet in his chest, conscious, breathing, but just barely. He was followed a moment later by the second stabbing victim, a Haredi boy of fourteen or fifteen, with blood pouring from multiple wounds. Then, finally, came the cause of all the mayhem and bloodshed: the Palestinian from East Jerusalem who had awakened that morning and decided to kill two people because they were Israeli and Jewish. He was in his early twenties, Natalie reckoned, no more than twenty-five. He had a single bullet wound on the left side of his chest, between the base of the neck and the shoulder, and several cuts and abrasions to his face. Perhaps the hero had landed a blow or two while trying to disarm him. Or perhaps, thought Natalie, the police had given him a thrashing while taking him into custody. Four Israeli police officers, radios crackling, surrounded the gurney to which the Palestinian was handcuffed and strapped. There were also several men in plain clothes. Natalie suspected they were from Shabak, Israel’s internal security service.
One of the Shabak officers approached Natalie and introduced himself as Yoav. His hair was shorn close to the scalp; wraparound sunglasses concealed his eyes. He seemed disappointed that the patient was still among the living.
“We’ll need to stay while you work on him. He’s dangerous.”
“I can handle him.”
“Not this one. He wants to die.”
The ambulance attendants wheeled the young Palestinian down the corridor to the emergency room and with the help of the police officers moved him from the blood-soaked gurney to a clean treatment bed. The wounded man struggled briefly while the police officers secured his hands and feet to the aluminum railings with plastic flex cuffs. At Natalie’s request, the officers withdrew from the bay. The Shabak man insisted on remaining behind.
“You’re making him nervous,” Natalie objected. “I need him to be calm so I can properly clean out that wound.”
“Why should he be calm while the other three are fighting for their lives?”
“None of that matters in here, not now. I’ll call you if I need you.”
The Shabak man took a seat outside the bay. Natalie drew the curtain and, alone with the terrorist, examined the wound.
“What’s your name?” she asked him in Hebrew, a language that many Arab residents of East Jerusalem spoke well, especially if they had jobs in the west. The wounded Palestinian hesitated, then said his name was Hamid.
“Well, Hamid, this is your lucky day. An inch or two lower, and you’d probably be dead.”
“I want to be dead. I want to be a shahid.”
“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place for that.”
Natalie lifted a pair of angled bandage scissors from her instrument tray. The Palestinian struggled against the restraints in fear.
“What’s wrong?” asked Natalie. “You don’t like sharp objects?”
The Palestinian recoiled but said nothing.
Switching to Arabic, Natalie said soothingly, “Don’t worry, Hamid, I’m not going to hurt you.”
He seemed surprised. “You speak Arabic very well.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re one of us?”
Natalie smiled and carefully cut the bloody shirt from his body.
The initial report of the patient’s condition turned out to be incorrect. The wound was not through and through; the 9mm round was still lodged near the clavicle, which was fractured some eight centimeters from the breastbone. Natalie administered a local anesthetic, and when the drug had taken effect she went quickly to work. She flushed the wound with antibiotic and, using a pair of sterile tweezers, removed the bone fragments and several bits of imbedded fabric from Hamid’s shirt. Then she removed the 9mm round, misshapen from the impact with the clavicle but still in one piece. Hamid asked to keep the bullet as a memento of his attack. Frowning, Natalie dropped the round into a bag of medical waste, closed the wound with four neat sutures, and covered it with a protective bandage. The left arm needed to be immobilized to allow the clavicle to heal, which would require removing the plastic flex-cuff restraint. Natalie decided it could wait. If the restraints were removed, she reckoned, Hamid would struggle and in the process cause further injury to the bone and the surrounding tissue.
The patient remained in the emergency room, resting, recovering, for another hour. In that time, two of his victims succumbed to their wounds down the hallway in the trauma center—the older of the Haredim, and the secular Israeli who had been mistakenly shot. When the police came for their prisoner, there was anger on their faces. Normally, Natalie would have kept a gunshot patient in the hospital overnight for observation, but she agreed to allow the police and Shabak men to take custody of Hamid immediately. When the restraints were removed, she hung his left arm in a sling and secured it tightly to his body. Then, without a soothing word in Arabic, she sent him on his way.