But all I remember is somehow finding myself standing in front of the emergency room’s doors. People were pressing me from behind. Yelling. Demanding to know if their loved ones were within. If their loved ones were alive. A nurse poked her head through the parted doors, looked at me, and demanded a name. “Harris-Gershon,” I screamed, watching her check a pad, scanning for mine to match another’s. She found it, the match, You win, and guided me through a corridor full of drawn curtains. Doctors were buzzing. Machines were wailing.
I arrived at the only curtain drawn back. Someone I didn’t know was sitting on a stretcher flanked by two nurses handling wires and blankets. The person was shaking, shaking and looking at me, trying to smile.
I understood before comprehending – my brain pointing out that vision could no longer be trusted: I don’t recognize her. And then: That’s her. That’s Jamie.
Suddenly, I realized that I must have been led to this spot by the nurse who checked for my name, the nurse who pointed and said, “There she is.” Or maybe she didn’t leave her post. Maybe I wandered around, confused. Maybe I found Jamie on my own, stopping before the only open curtain and knew when I shouldn’t have, knew it was her. But how could I have known? The face charred, bloated, the hair scorched, ends bristling, standing on end like an animated character electrocuted by a live wire, the jolt playful, humorous. OUCH. Ha, ha! Good one.
One of the nurses turned to me and said, “Tihiyeh yaffah” – She’ll be beautiful again.
“She’s beautiful right now,” I said, the words unleashed while trying to process what the fuck was happening, scanning her burned body, the room, trying to process where I was, what was going on, who this person shaking and bleeding before me might be, what all the lines running from her body carrying pink or green or clear fluids were doing, where they were going, thinking, She is not beautiful, thinking, This is not lightly injured, thinking, What the fuck is this?
A coldness began to emanate from deep within, a shutting down of my senses. I pressed auto-pilot and left the cabin, started drinking in the back of the plane as it hurtled forward.
Jamie looked at me. I don’t remember if she spoke. If she did, I wasn’t listening, hearing only the din of my racing thoughts, the hospital machines pulsing and pumping and vibrating. But I caught certain words: “metal” and “organs” and “emergency surgery.” And I did certain things: moved close; touched her hand; backed away startled when told not to touch her hand; stared at the white gauze covering her shaking arms and legs.
The nurses grabbed her bed without warning. She was moving. I followed. They wheeled her into a makeshift surgery station, beds stacked side-by-side, where a formless doctor approached from the depths of some unseen medical abyss. Jamie told him, “I’m not afraid,” told him, “I’ve lost my Hebrew,” told him, “Explain in English.” The doctor, now with a shaved head, clean looking, intelligent looking, said, “We have to open you up,” said, “We have to see where it is,” said, “We may have to keep an organ out of the body for months to let it heal,” said, “It’s normal.”
I nodded, not really hearing anything. Sure. Of course. Normal. An organ outside the body for months. Hanging out, still attached, resting on the nightstand or sleeping on the bed next to her, the doctor’s words meaning nothing as Jamie said, “I’m ready.”
I stood alongside her in pre-op among those dying and about to be saved, unsure to which category Jamie belonged. When they whisked her into surgery, I stood frozen, staring at those in the beds surrounding me, some of whom were receiving care. Two hospital-assigned social workers materialized, took me by the arms and led me away.
Carrying folders and clicking pens, they moved me into a room and, after sitting, asked in British accents, “Are you okay?” I responded robotically, smiling, leaning back and crossing my legs, assuring them that there was nothing needed – “Thank you for asking. So kind of you. Really.” They leaned forward. Elbows dug into their flexed thighs as they shrugged and said, “I guess we’re done for now,” then pleaded, “Please call when you need us.” A folder was pushed into my hand containing documents on trauma, on grief, on those inevitable obstacles waiting to be faced.
They rolled Jamie into emergency surgery and sliced her open, carving a line from her navel to just under her breastbone. Peeling back the skin, doctors probed with thin, cold rods, seeking the shrapnel lodged in her small intestine. A tiny camera was inserted. It tracked the nut’s path, documenting the organs hit, the organs missed.
I found the waiting room and sat alone. Teachers called to check on Jamie, and to ask if I knew the whereabouts of Marla or Ben. Neither could be found. There was suspicion, hope that Jamie had been with them – a hope that since Jamie had survived, those missing had as well and were anonymously receiving treatment somewhere, somehow.
And then the Rosh Yeshiva, our head rabbi at Pardes, walked into the waiting room. He sat down and, without a word, placed a Hebrew prayer book in my lap. Looking at its leather, beveled cover, he instructed that I open it and read some Psalms with him, Psalms traditionally read during moments of desperation. Psalms read during moments when people are injured, dying, or dead. Psalms asking God for strength, for help, for faith.
I laughed, not at him, but at myself. At the book. Horrified. Knowing, as others searched for our friends, that they were gone. Knowing that my heart had fled. Knowing I knew nothing of this world.
I took the book, opened it, and flipped to the back, finding the page he had landed upon. And then, while reading, it happened again – a soft, desperate chuckle – when I made a mistake, accidentally read responsively instead of echoing the line back to him. I messed up and grinned as a boxer does just before kissing the canvas, grinning at his opponent after being caught with a vicious right cross, trying to express with a show of teeth while wobbling, Didn’t hurt a bit.
Me:
Didn’t hurt a bit.
God:
I’m not your opponent.
Me:
Prove it.
We finished, and as the rabbi left, friends began arriving to offer support. Only, I don’t remember them being present in those first hours of waiting while Jamie’s abdomen was sliced open and peeled back. All I remember is laughing. Then the rabbi left. And then the nut.
Four hours after leaving Jamie with the intelligent-looking doctor who spoke of keeping an organ outside the body, they wheeled her out of surgery and into the intensive care unit (ICU). A man in scrubs – the same doctor? – approached holding a closed, clear plastic cylinder. A white label was stretched across the top. Holding it delicately, he reached out and handed it to me, as though I had ordered smoked salmon or hummus.
“Sometimes people want these things,” he explained. “It was found in the small intestine.”
He talked about the cutting. The re-connecting. The parts they tossed. He talked of those organs the nut had passed on its way, skimming, so close, just missing everything before resting in the soft, expendable tissue that if stretched taut would reach twenty feet. He talked of the burns – second and third degree – covering her legs and hands and back. He talked of a long recovery, talked and talked and then left, pointing to the ICU on his way to cut open someone else, and said, “She’s in there.”
I stared at the thing. It was so light, the container, the sides of which were streaked with an opaque film. Is that blood? Pieces of intestines? Bodily fluids? I held it aloft, to the light, and then shook it, feeling something solid tumble. Feeling dead weight. The lid peeled off easily, revealing a small, contorted piece of metal. An object whose purpose was to secure things. An object which had unfastened more than it knew.
With the doctor gone, I stared at the nut. It was all so absurd – as though a tragicomedy was playing out in which I had somehow secured a supporting role:
Doctor:
Here you go.
Me:
What’s this?
Doctor:
Just a little something you might like, you know, to have, so
mething to hold when you look back on these times we shared.
Me:
You’ve got to be kidding.
Doctor:
No, really. Sometimes people want these things.
Me:
Why on earth would anyone want this?
Doctor:
Oh, come on. You know you’ve wanted this all along, a tragedy, to know whether or not you’re strong enough to survive.
Me:
Have not.
Doctor:
Sure you have. It’s something you’ve wanted, a defining moment, and this nut is my gift to you, a physical reminder of the pain and grief you asked for, felt you always deserved, felt you’ve had coming to you after a quaint, two-parent upbringing devoid of poverty, sickness or death.
Me:
I don’t want it, don’t want any of this.
Doctor:
Whatever. Just take it. You’re one of us now. There’s no going back.
Me:
I can go back.
Doctor:
No, you can’t. And another thing: you’ll never throw it away. It will always be with you. Put it on a keychain or turn it into a necklace. You know, something meaningful, as a reminder.
Me:
Fuck you.
Doctor:
Bye now.
Holding the container, repulsed, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want such a thing. But I also knew this: he was right. I would never throw it away. And I also knew that there had been times when, walking along busy streets in Jerusalem, I had stopped and thought, I want to experience it, wishing for a bomb to explode. I understood this impulse to be an ironic one. A bomb was the last thing for which I’d actually wish, scared by the possibility of sudden violence. But in Jerusalem such a possibility made me feel alive. With the illusion of death seemingly so close, I was alive, perhaps more so than at any point previously. And I thought, I want to know what it is Israelis feel, what they must deal with, this trauma, this grief, wondering if a personal experience with destruction was a defining national characteristic. Wondering if, in order to understand what it meant to be fully human, such an experience was essential.
Once, I leaned over to a friend and admitted this, admitted that I constantly felt guilty about secretly pining for a bomb to explode nearby. I felt guilty about turning on the news to see if another attack had occurred, feeling a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning every time a broadcast was interrupted by reporters on the scene, always the same scene, always being simultaneously repulsed and awed by the brokenness, the wailing, the lights flashing. And so I admitted this to him, and he just nodded and said, “Of course,” as if such thinking was to be expected amid the bedlam of people spontaneously exploding on public transportation and in cafés.
But standing in the waiting room with the plastic container – with the unknown now known – I flinched as pieces of my core disintegrated. Holding the physical representation of what Jamie had lost, would lose, I understood that this was anything but living, anything but being fully human, wondering if we would ever become whole again.
Following signs in Hebrew that swung from the ceiling on metal chains, I found the blue double doors leading to Tipul Nimratz – intensive care. Pushing through, I saw Jamie lying directly before me. She was in the back corner of a shallow, wide room, patients lying in beds along the wall, lined up to my left and her right. Everyone was still.
Jamie’s eyes opened. She smiled as I approached and scanned her body. Aside from the bandages, it looked whole. She was whole. Until she said, “I was sitting with Ben and Marla,” and it became clear in that moment they were lost, our friends. And as Jamie saw the significance of her words register on my face – I could see reflected in her eyes a recognition of the change in mine – I knew she was lost as well. We both were as she said, moments out of surgery, hours removed from the cafeteria’s rubble, “Don’t tell me what happened to them. I don’t want to know.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise.”
“I won’t.”
Then I left to tell those searching for Ben and Marla what Jamie had said, what she knew, what she couldn’t know.
When I returned, the nurses were changing shifts and settling Jamie in for the long night. It had not occurred to me that I wouldn’t be permitted to stay with her in the ICU, that I would be asked to leave, to abandon her. And so, not knowing, I kneeled at her side, expecting to remain in that position for the duration of the night, to remain there and watch her breathe.
But the new nurses, the night nurses, began making clear signals that it was time for me to go, noting that she would be in good hands, that I couldn’t stand all night – there were no chairs, a hint I’d failed to absorb. I looked at Jamie, unable to touch her, and said, “Goodbye,” said, “I’ll be back,” before exiting the ICU and catching a ride home from one of the teachers who was still in the waiting room.
On the ride home, watching the dust of East Jerusalem fade into the Western city’s expanse of stores and apartment buildings, I feigned a sense of ease, a sense of calm, chatting him up about our class, how much I enjoyed it, that I planned on completing upcoming assignments on time – was looking forward to it, actually. When we reached Ha’moshava Ha’germanit – the German Colony, a Jerusalem neighborhood teeming with chic cafés, bakeries, and Americans – I thanked him for the ride, said, “I’ll see you soon, in class perhaps.” He turned his head and stared, smiled weakly, the weakness saying, You’re in deeper than you understand.
In the ICU, lying in a bed, waiting for whatever one waits for in the middle of the night, attached to tubes, probes, bags, unable to sleep, unsure exactly what happened, knowing exactly what happened, Jamie watched as a Palestinian man approached. Stopping short, he bent down and changed the garbage bag. Then walked away. Agitated, Jamie called for a nurse. “Please check it,” she asked, needing assurance that he had not placed a bomb inside, this man, this suspicious man. The nurse understood – knew why Jamie, why everyone else in the ICU for that matter, was there. She checked the garbage and winked. “It’s okay, sweet child. It’s empty.”
She did not sleep.
Nor did I, back at our apartment where every light burned as I lay awake, waiting for dawn to come, for my rightful place back at Jamie’s side when visiting hours began the next morning. That I couldn’t sleep seemed reasonable given the circumstances. Sleep would have been luxurious, self-indulgent, an easy escape from reality, a reality which, while buried emotionally, had awakened within me a deep sense of responsibility, of honor. Besides, I was a natural insomniac who had difficulty shutting off the brain after even the most mundane of stimuli. But the lights.
After entering the apartment, I traced the floor plan and, pausing at each threshold, slid a palm up and down the walls, searching for a switch. I turned on every light. Living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, closets, mirpeset – the small, concrete deck that jutted away from the building’s façade. Then the television, the computer, the oven light. Everything. I feared relinquishing control – a failed sentry wired by the guilt of abdication – and so demanded that the physical structure surrounding me pulse with energy. Demanded that we all remain alert, awake.
Sleep wasn’t a question; I knew the night would be long, each second noted by the grandfather clock standing guard in the hallway, keeping its post, a reminder that I had abandoned mine, its swinging arm ticking, saying, Bomb, bomb, bomb.
Perhaps it was a genuine fear of darkness which kept the lights burning, a vulnerability reaching back to childhood visions of monsters in the closet and under the bed. Once – when I was around seven or eight years old – I stirred before dawn and peered from under thick covers at the open doorway to my room. A cloaked man stood there holding a compound bow. He raised it and took aim at the bed, firing translucent arrows, the shafts slowly spinning, the feathers swooshing in the air, fixed on my head. Using the comforter as a shield, I retreated underneath. Taking shelter under folds of cotton, I kn
ew the one thing that would end this encounter: light. If I turned them on, he’d disappear. I knew this. But the switch was perched adjacent to the door’s frame, inches from his body. A child of television, I remember thinking, Is this how I die? Something probably culled from MacGyver or The Greatest American Hero. Creating a bunker of blankets, forming a hole from which to peek, I formulated a plan: wait for the reload and pounce. It was my only chance. When his hand moved for the quiver, I threw off the covers, sprinted to the wall, and flicked the Mickey Mouse switch with a wet palm. In the subsequent months, I kept a flashlight buried beneath my pillow. Just in case.
Perhaps I subconsciously thought, as I did so often in my childhood, that light would keep those visions crouching in the darkness of my mind at bay. Visions of ripped flesh and gauze soaked red, of a Palestinian wrapped with wires, gripping a button, waiting for me behind the potted palm tree in the living room. Your turn, Jew. So the lights stayed on all night that first night as the world slept and I wondered how the world could sleep, how I would ever sleep again.
Through two long, arched windows with sky blue trim, I waited for morning to come, watching the darkness of night slowly swell, the black heavens eventually giving way to lighter tones that matched those pulsing inside the apartment, light rising to meet light. And as the rays mingled together in the dreamlike haze of dawn, I rose and did the only thing I could think of doing: I prayed the morning service. It was something I had done nearly every morning for years: rising early to daven, hoping – as a stubborn realist – for elusive slivers of spirituality. However, this time, as dawn approached, there was no religious motivation. Such motivation was dead. Instead, I prayed to pass the time, in the hopes that doing so would shave an hour or so off the wait, turning this holy, religious act into a time-eater, defiling it, an existential Fuck you to Whomever.
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife? Page 3