Girl at War(17)

Like the areas in Croatia far from Zagreb, Bosnia was mainly full of nothing: vast expanses of rocky soil, so that even the grass looked like it’d prefer to be rooted somewhere else. Clusters of cement-block houses appeared every so often but seemed to dissolve against the bleach-bright sky as we sped past. Finally, signs presented us with digestible distances to Sarajevo: 75, 50, 25 kilometers.

“Allaaaaaahu akbar,” the adhan began as we passed a peripheral mosque at the limits of the capital. We didn’t have mosques in Zagreb, at least not ones with public presences, and I cranked the window down the rest of the way to soak in the mysterious strains of the muezzin’s call. Rahela slept through it, and I craned my neck around the headrest to survey the rise and fall of her chest.

Sarajevo was on edge, the expectation and anxiety almost palpable. The war hadn’t yet come to Bosnia, and the haze of a city left to wait was familiar, though more like a remembered dream than an actual place I’d lived. We passed through the city center, the curvature of mosque domes and sharp angles of Yugoslav skyscrapers forming a rugged skyline. Still, Sarajevo and its inhabitants seemed similar to, if a bit cheerier than people in Zagreb. Markale market was not yet infamous; the parliament building stood boxy and firm, though it was the bloodshed here, not ours, that would catch the attention of the international community in the end. Gazing through the back window at children my age playing stickball in the street, I thought of our war games and generator bike fights and wondered if the things I’d come to consider ordinary were not so normal after all.

My mother traced her finger along a sheet of directions, and my father maneuvered through the alleys in accordance with her commands.

“That’s it!” she said suddenly, and my father pulled the car up on the curb to make room for passersby on the narrow street. I recognized the MediMission logo, red and gray and loud, affixed to a corner concrete building. Clutching Rahela, my mother ran across the street without even checking for traffic.

“Lock the car,” my father said, tossing me the keys and ducking through the undersize doorframe.

The waiting room gave off the impression of having once been a different kind of room hastily decorated to look like a doctor’s office. The carpet was stained; the plastic upholstery of the chairs was hard and cracked. It smelled of antiseptic and rotting fruit. Still, it was more official-looking than the living room–turned-clinic we’d been to in Slovenia, and there was comfort in this formality. But Rahela was shaking with fever now, and a nurse took her from my mother and into an exam room. Dr. Carson, with her insufferably white teeth and a matching lab coat, appeared from the back soon after and ushered us inside.

“Good to see you again,” she said. No one replied.

By the time we reached her room, Rahela was already strapped down to the infant-size examination table, one flex of plastic tubing in her nose and another in her foot. Her chest and mouth moved as if she were crying, but produced only the faintest trace of what appeared to be a full-blown wail. I tore a corner off the exam table paper and scrunched it into a ball.

“Okay let’s flip her,” the nurse said.

“What’s going on?” said my mother.

The nurse rolled Rahela onto her stomach, then refastened the straps restraining her arms and legs.

“We have to do a lumbar puncture to check for bacterial infection,” Dr. Carson said in sterile but much improved Croatian. She snapped on her latex gloves; a long needle gleamed on the tray beside her.

“Lumbar?” said my mother. “You’re going to put that in her spine?” She lunged toward Rahela, but my father caught her by the elbow and pressed her firmly against the wall, whispering things I couldn’t hear.

My mother began to scream. Somehow it was easier to watch the needle. I uncrumpled the paper and shredded it, the scraps falling to the floor.

My father forced my mother down into the room’s single chair. The doctors turned Rahela back over, shot her with pain medication, gave her a pacifier. She looked comfortable for the first time in months.

“All right then,” said Dr. Carson, placing a hand on my mother’s shoulder. For a moment I saw what looked like sadness flicker across the doctor’s face, but it was gone quickly. “Here are the forms for Rahela’s transport to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. They have some of the best pediatric specialists for renal failure in the world. We’ll have her on the plane as soon as she’s stable.” Dr. Carson gestured to the second of two piles of paperwork on the counter. “And here are the foster family consent forms.” My father looked up and my mother lowered her eyes.

“Foster family?” my father said. “Dijana, what is she talking about?”

Dr. Carson jiggled some change in the pocket of her lab coat. “Your wife informed me that your visas were denied?” she said, pausing for my father to affirm this statement. He didn’t. “Rahela will be admitted to the hospital upon her arrival, where she’ll be housed in the intensive care unit.” Dr. Carson was gaining speed now, employing the most professional of the range of tones in which we’d heard her speak. “However, after emergent care is completed, there is an outpatient treatment portion, for weekly dialysis and examinations.”

“Outpatient?”

“Rahela will stay with a volunteer emergency foster family until her program at the hospital is complete. Rest assured that all foster families are screened for safety by MediMission—”