As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (61)

I assess who needs to be taken care of first. The more they inhaled, the less time they have. I spring to a boy lying on the ground, shaking violently, and push his wailing mother to the side. I don’t have time to explain anything as I jam the needle in his vein, praying all the while. I don’t even check to see if he responds. Time is a luxury we can’t afford now. As soon as I get up for another patient, Nour takes my place and administers CPR.

Another girl with tears streaming down her face and foam at her mouth stares at me without looking, and I fear I’ve lost her. Intravenous injections work fast, I keep chanting in my brain. Her pulse is weak, and her eyes are slits. My breath hitches in my throat. I try not to look into her eyes as I grab her elbow and jab the syringe’s bevel in her median cubital vein. I move on to the next victim. Little Ahmad’s last words ring in my ears the whole time, and I feel his ghost watching me move too slowly to save anyone. His eyes burn like hot coins at the back of my head, impatient with my sluggish hands that don’t inject the antidote fast enough.

I’ll tell God everything.

I lose count of how many I can’t save. Their eyes black, like a starless night, a frozen expression of fear and confusion forever inscribed on their faces. I realize I’m trembling when my hands helplessly clutch at a young woman’s frail shoulders, trying to shake the life back into her.

“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “Please, don’t be dead!”

Her breath doesn’t fog her breathing mask, and she stares lifelessly at me. The smell of bleach burns my nostrils.

Chlorine.

They didn’t just use sarin.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

The next bodies my hands touch are dead. No one’s alive. I’m too late. They were right there, and I couldn’t get to them in time. I rise slowly to shaking legs and look at the catastrophe all around.

Bodies upon bodies surround me, and I stand in the center, watching them judge me. My hands are raw and red from the gas coating the victims. The same story is repeated with different characters, but the ending is always the same. And yet, despite knowing it, the pain is great. Greater than I can handle.

Everything unrolls in front of me in slow motion.

I watch young children grabbing the sides of their protectors, howling with anguish. I see entire families lying beside one another, holding hands, hoping when they ascend to Heaven they will still be entwined. I walk slowly, training my eyes on the exit door. I need air. I need to breathe something that isn’t chlorine.

“Salama!” Nour grabs my arm before I open the front door. “What are you doing?”

“Outside,” I rasp. The sarin from treating the patients has finally absorbed into my skin and is beginning to close my throat. God, it burns.

“Not without this you’re not.” She shoves a surgical mask in my hands. “It won’t do much, but it’ll help.”

It won’t do anything. But how would we know? We weren’t ready for a chemical attack. Are normal doctors even prepared for this?

I collapse on the hospital’s steps, shivering from head to toe. Hours have already passed without me noticing and now it’s late afternoon. Death steals the seconds away from us. Oxygen slowly creeps back into my lungs, and I finally begin to remember my family.

“Layla!” I spring up, looking in the direction of our home. She’s safe. I know she is. Because none of the victims were from our neighborhood, which is a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital. The sarin didn’t reach the hospital, which means it didn’t reach my home either.

My next thought latches on to Kenan and his siblings. My stomach twists on itself with terror. I have no idea if he came in today. Oh God, please don’t let his neighborhood be affected.

I take off the mask, fiddle with it, and pace around, trying to summon rational thoughts.

If they were affected, they would have been brought here. But… what if they died as soon as they inhaled the gas? Oh God. Oh God!

I breathe in deeply and decide I should leave right now, check on Layla, and then immediately head to Kenan’s house to make sure everything’s fine.

“Salama!” a voice shouts behind me, and I whirl around to see Kenan standing in front of the hospital doors, holding a makeshift cloth to his face. Alive. He lets out a deep breath I feel inside my soul.

My knees go weak with relief and I collapse on the steps.

“Salama!” he shouts again, hurrying down to me. “Are you all right? Oh my God, please tell me you are.”

He crouches beside me, removing the cloth from his mouth, and I fill my eyes with him. His bright green eyes, his beautiful, honest face.

“I’m fine,” I whisper. “Are you? Lama? Yusuf?”

He nods quickly, his hands hovering beside my head, steeling himself before he takes them back. Still, I can feel their warmth, the blood gushing through his veins.

“The attack wasn’t… it wasn’t near where we are, but I had to come here to make sure you’re alive,” he says, and as if the energy has suddenly been siphoned out of him, he all but collapses beside me. He smells of smoke and remnants of the gas and lemons. My legs shake with weariness, my arms ache, and all I want is to lie here on these chipped steps and sleep forever.

The faint voices of the injured seep through the cracks in the hospital walls and I close my eyes, unable to hold their pain in my heart without folding into myself and crying myself to death. Why? Why is no one helping us? Why are we left to die? How can the world be so cruel?