Hospital Basement: Dninpro, Eastern Ukraine
She crouches beside a low cot over a cement floor. Behind her are metal shelves stacked with boxes and equipment. Her hair falls over a navy-blue scrub top, and her forearm rests on a blue oxygen tank. Every few seconds she patiently squeezes a self-inflating bag and when she looks up at the camera her expression turns from wane concentration, and she offers up a smile. Next to her, on a blanket decorated with little toy cars, lies a baby. A breathing tube is secured with tape to his cheeks and a central line runs into his umbilical cord.
The camera pans to show more babies, bundled together in blankets on low cots. Most have nasogastric tubes, and I can see two other nurses squeezing air into babies’ lungs. It reminds me of a transport years ago. We were bouncing down the freeway when the transport ventilator malfunctioned, and the flight nurse and I took turns squeezing the ambu-bag forty times a minute for the remaining twenty-minute ride. I remember the slow burn in the muscles of my forearms and the repeating cadence of the breaths as the minutes stretched out. As I watch the video, I wonder how long the evacuation to the hospital basement in Eastern Ukraine lasted.
And I wonder about the parents. Fathers in fatigues in the snow, mothers huddled in bomb shelters somewhere in the city. I wish I could take over for the nurse and let her rest her tired arms. I wish I could move each vulnerable baby into our neonatal intensive care unit, away from the danger of ordinance and an approaching army, away from the risk of building collapse and the deadly consequences of limited electricity and oxygen.
There are many images of war: acrid smoke curling from bombed-out trucks, collapsed buildings, and the sharp bursts of machine gun fire. And babies in a cold hospital basement, the minutes ticking by as the oxygen tanks bleed dry and the battery-powered monitors draw down.