Martyrs’ Crossing (5 page)

“No, I've told you. I can't let her in,” said Doron to the angry man. “Not yet. Tell her two more minutes, and I'll have permission.”

“Lieutenant Doron?” interrupted another young private, who appeared at the door to the trailer, his face dripping with rain. Doron wheeled on him.

“What?”

“We're to send the rest of them home?”

“Yes. Now. Not the woman with the baby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it now,” Doron said. He turned back to the man he hated.

“The baby is sick. He's sick,” the man said.

“So you've told me,” said Doron. He peered out at the mother and child, sitting on the bench a few yards from the tiny trailer window. “Can't you see I've got a lot to do here? I've already called an ambulance from Hadassah for my man; they can take her too.”

“Then let her in. Into the guardroom, I mean. Out of the rain. Do it. You must.”

Doron peered out at the drenched woman. It was hard to see detail through the coursing rain, but he saw a woman holding her child inside her coat, trying to put some kind of contraption over his face. It was cold out there. Doron had already put on the blue-jean jacket he kept in the trailer for winter nights. She must be freezing.

The ruling from headquarters was no Palestinians inside the trailers. Doron pushed open the sliding window a crack.

“Come on in, ma'am!” he shouted to her. He saw as she stood and came toward him that she was the woman who had been making her way in their direction at sunset.

She flashed him a resentful look, stood, and started to walk in. Zvili stopped her at the door with his metal detector. He flicked it up one side of her, down the other. In terms of security, his frisk was dangerously superficial: he didn't check the bag or the boy. Really it was just harassment, Doron knew. Zvili stepped back from Marina, holding on to his detector, considering what to do next. Doron put his hand on Zvili's arm. Marina was shivering. She stepped inside.

“I would never set foot in here if it were not for my boy,” she said in English.

“Thanks for the news bulletin,” Doron answered. He noticed her eyes, very deep, very black. “I would never let you in here if it were not for your boy. We agree. Sit down while I deal with headquarters. Fill these out.”

The woman was soaked. She seemed to Doron to shake slightly or to vibrate, but maybe that was just the storm plowing and harrowing and exploding around them. She sat down and bent her head over the papers and her child. Doron wished she were not the enemy.

•  •  •

G
EORGE ARRIVED
at the hospital just in time to scrub up, and the procedure went perfectly. The bubble pushed up into the patient's arteries like a worm digging a tunnel. And there it all was on the monitor, George the Worm, unblocking the flow. It was elegant, angioplasty—far better than bloody bypass, which he had observed many times. He liked that shred of distance that angioplasty left him; the illusion, with the monitor and the catheter, that you were not deep inside the bloody workings of another human being. No spurting.

He had one last appointment before he left for the day, with Carol Gerstman's husband. Carol, his patient, was a humorous person, always pleasant even when she was sick, but Joe was a little touchy, and he had the unfortunate American habit of discussing politics as if he were sure you agreed with him. George went into his office and clipped some pictures up on the light walls so Joe could inspect the work George had done for Carol in the cath room last week. He'd update Joe on Carol's progress.

The nurse let Joe in. He looked as if
he
had undergone the procedure, not his wife. He was pale and damp, and smelled of cigarette smoke. He was carrying a newspaper folded under his arm, and he looked at George with a knot of concern between his eyes.

For some of his patients, it was hard to trust a doctor with a foreign name. George knew that. Joe was Jewish, which probably didn't help the situation. Although Joe had always been correct with George, even genial, George continued to have just that little suspicion, and there was something in Joe's face, now, that got George's attention. He hoped what he saw was just the stress of Carol's illness.

“It went perfectly, Joe,” George said. “Perfectly. You
know
that. She's fine. You can relax for a good long while now.” Joe smiled wanly. Be hearty, man, George thought. Be proud. Be relieved.

“It was a textbook procedure, which is rare. Here's what we did.” George beckoned to Joe, who allowed himself to be toured around the X rays, as George explained each one. Joe didn't seem to be focusing, but then again, the explanations were a bit technical.

“Uh-hunh,” Joe said, as they finished with each picture.

Then they sat down. George had no family photographs on his desk. His only decorations were a single piece of Palestinian embroidery on the wall and his certificates from Harvard. The other diplomas and certificates he had stuck in a drawer. On the floor, in an unused corner, there was a small Shirvan carpet from his father's lost house in Jerusalem, a real jewel.

Joe picked up his newspaper and looked up from it at George with pale, beseeching eyes. George waited for the unavoidable questions about prognosis. He did not like this part.

“How do you explain
this
?” Joe held up a section of the paper and whacked at one story with the back of his hand.

“What?” George was taken aback.

“Look,” Joe said. He threw the paper onto George's desk.

George looked at the upper-right-hand column. Oh, yes, the two Israeli settlers who had been killed in a drive-by shooting.

“Yes,” George said.

“A man and his wife. Young people.”

Joe's wife was sick, for Chrissakes, and
this
is what he wants to talk about? Well, maybe that was the explanation for the outburst—maybe Joe was trying to take his mind off her condition.

“
I
didn't shoot them, Joe,” he said. He tried to make his voice gentle.

“No, but you think it's okay?” Joe looked at him. “How can you go around saving people's lives and then think it's okay to do this?”

The picture was gruesome: a machine-gunned car, blood, an arm dangling out the window.

“I didn't say it's okay. It's complicated,” George said. I will be patient and kind, he thought.

“Being dead is not too complicated, is it?”

“People get killed in wars, and not just soldiers.” Oh, he'd said that so many times. Everything about The Cause was repetitive. He felt a wave of fatigue. Thank God he didn't have to live in Palestine. He remembered Marina on the roof, bending over the coffee.

“A war?” Joe was plainly outraged. “Killing people driving their car home from the supermarket?”

“To the people who did this, those two were not just driving their car home. They are part of an occupying force. The settler certainly thought he was fighting a war.”

“And now they're dead.”

“Yes.”

George took it back, a little. “I don't mean ‘that's okay.' You're right. It's dreadful. But that's what happens. They came to live in a place for political reasons; and they're not wanted there. They bring their children into this place, they put their children in danger by deciding to live in a place where they are not wanted. Where they're seen as the advance troops of the enemy.”

“Oh, come on. You guys just hate them because they're Israeli.”

“We would hate anyone who took our land away from us. We believe we are at war—that's why we're negotiating a peace. You can't have a war and then get squeamish because people die. The Israelis never said sorry when they blew up the British, and why should they have?”

“You don't even really believe in peace, do you?”

George felt defensive.

“I believe in peace, but this is a loser's peace,” George said. “It's corrupt, the people who are doing it are corrupt.” Said it so many times; it was his refrain. He picked up his prescription pad and put it down again. “Victory is for winners, peace is for losers. The only reason the Chairman wants this peace is because he's old and tired and desperate.”

“Better to just go on shooting innocent people and tossing crippled men off boats, and like that, right?” Joe asked. “Is that your argument?”

“Come on, Joe, you
know
me.” George was truly appalled. He knew these feelings lurked out there, but he'd rarely had them addressed to him in person. He preferred being criticized in print, where it was less emotionally immediate, and he could respond logically and calmly. “You know I don't believe in cruelty.”

“I don't know anything about you except that you're one of the best cardiologists in the world.” Joe was standing now, holding his newspaper as if it were Exhibit A. “I don't want to fight with you. Actually, I thought you'd be as revolted as I am by this attack.”

“You did.”

“I did. I hoped, anyway. But I won't pursue it, George,” Joe said. He looked down at the Shirvan. “You're too important in my life right now for me to feel comfortable saying what I really think. Maybe some other time.”

“It's okay. I think you've made your feelings clear,” George said. He hoped he didn't sound huffy.

“Sorry if I've upset you,” Joe said.

“Not at all, believe me. I'm used to it.” George felt Joe was now trying to placate his wife's doctor. That he was nervous. Poor guy.

“I know you're not well, either,” Joe said. “I shouldn't have . . .”

“I'm fine.” George bristled. He looked up from his desk. “Just fine.”

“Well, that's good to hear.” Joe picked up his coat. “Carol was worried.”

“You tell her not to worry,” George said. “I'll tell her not to worry. She has enough to worry about without adding me to the list.” The two men shook hands.

“Thanks for everything, George,” Joe said. He walked out of the office, his shoulders drooping.

Down in the parking lot, George walked through the slush to his reserved space, but his car wasn't there. He stood for a moment in wonder. Had it been stolen? Impossible. The locks and alarms on it were too good, the parking lot too well protected for a car thief to consider. He was befuddled. He felt lost and stranded. How would he get home? He would have to call a cab. He turned back to the hospital entrance, resigned, when he remembered. Of course. He had parked the car elsewhere. After his panic of the morning, he hadn't wanted it sitting in the space marked
DR. GEORGE RAAD.
Now, the car was anonymous. But lost. Lost in the Peter Bent's enormous visitors' lot. What an ass he was. George the Worm. The intended victim, indeed. An old ass. Was this how he seemed to Ahmed's boys? Worse, was this how he seemed to Ahmed?

•  •  •

D
ORON HELD ON
to the phone like a lifeline. The boy didn't look so bad, but he was straining for breath.

“See?” his mother said. “See?” She tugged on Doron's sleeve. “It's getting worse, it's getting worse. I can't wait for your ambulance.” She had heard him talking about the ambulance to Zvili, in Hebrew. She understood some words.

Doron knew the issue was even less clear. It wasn't about the ambulance; the ambulance was for his injured man. But what if he couldn't get headquarters to let her in? The computer said she was the wife of Hassan Hajimi, a terrorist who was in jail on the Israeli side. So? If he couldn't get her through, then she and the boy would be stuck, ambulance or no ambulance. He trusted her feelings about the boy's condition. She knew, after all, didn't she? This was a medical crisis, not a terrorist ruse. Even a terrorist's kid can't help being sick.

She was murmuring to the child; Doron couldn't hear the words. She hardly looked up. Headquarters had put Doron on hold again; they had a lot to deal with at all the checkpoints, but still. He kept having to identify himself and explain the urgency of the predicament. How many times did they have to hear it? He was listening to computerized ragtime. She ran her fingers through the boy's hair.

With one ear on the phone, Doron turned to the man who had been her advocate. He was tired of the guy's presence. “You get out, now. You've done your duty. Go home.” The man shrugged.

“I'm glad you're in, miss,” the man said to the woman, in Arabic.

She said nothing. He shrugged again, and turned and walked away from the trailer door. Doron watched him trudge up the road toward Ramallah.

Doron hung up and called again. On hold again, more mouse music. An operator, another operator. It was too late to get through to the normal numbers. He didn't even know who he was waiting for. He had already ordered the fucking ambulance, he kept pointing out to whoever would listen. All he needed was permission to let the woman and her son cross over. The phone receiver felt like a toy in his hand.

“I'll take a taxi,” she said. “Just let me through, and I'll take a taxi from here.” There was always a line of taxis waiting on either side of the checkpoint, even during a closure. God, he just wanted to zip her across. She was right, a taxi would be faster. Who knew when the damned ambulance would come? He had told them his man had a light injury. They were probably busy.

Her dark eyes were imploring.

He shook his head and pointed at the phone.

The boy started to gasp. Her eyes widened. Doron wanted to hurl the receiver across the guardroom and watch it shatter, but instead, he sat there, mentally screaming for them to pick the fuck up. Pick it up. Pick it up. Another operator gave him a secure number to call. He scrawled it across the back of an empty cigarette pack before he dialed. It rang and rang, and then, surprise, someone picked up. They asked for the woman's name. Which checkpoint? they asked. Shuhada, Doron said. Then there was more waiting. Finally, they came back on.