First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [97]
Ahead of me, two nurses kneel beside a young boy. An old woman sits cross-legged next to them, her face long and sad. The nurses are busy preparing silver trays of tools, bandages, and alcohol bottles. I hover over them, looking at the boy who lies motionless on a straw mat. He looks five or six years old, but I really cannot tell. His eyes are slightly open; his lips are gray and bloodless. My body vibrates with pain when I see that his upper body is badly burned. The skin looks as if it will peel off in one crisp layer. One of his legs is missing from the thigh down and the other is wrapped in bandages. The old woman cries softly, her hand clutching his small one, her thumb massaging the top of his hand in a circle. Her other hand fans his body, chasing away the black-green flies that wait to lick his scorched flesh.
“Bong Srei, what happened to him?” I ask the nurse as she prepares to clean him.
“He was walking here to visit—”The boy screams then, making the old woman sob louder. My toes and feet tingle when I hear the nurse say the boy either kicked a grenade or walked over a landmine. I quickly walk away and leave them with the boy screaming until he passes out.
When I find the grandmother, she is in the process of having her bandages changed by a nurse. The nurse is young and pretty, and wears a graying white uniform. She kneels by the grandma and reaches out for her arm. The grandmother swats her hand away and screams in protest. Hearing the screams, another nurse walks briskly over to assist the first nurse. She holds the grandmother by the shoulders and pushes her down on the cot. Under her weight, the grandma is forced onto her back.
“Are you with her?” the nurse asks, noticing me standing behind her.
“Yes.”
“Well, you better help us then. She is a tough one. Grab on to her other leg so she won’t kick me. I have to change the bandages.” I quickly obey her.
With one nurse pushing her down by the shoulders and my arms wrapped around her leg, the nurse unravels layers of bloody bandages as the grandmother squirms and shakes to be free of us. The bandages coil on the floor like red-dotted albino snakes, exposing the grandmother’s ankle. It is red, raw, and covered by a thin cake of dried blood. Just above her ankle is a tiny black circle the size of a cigarette burn. “It’s lucky the bullet went straight through the flesh. Any lower and it would have shattered the ankle.” The grandmother screams in response. “It looks good, but we still have to clean it.” The nurse takes the silver tray of tools and pours alcohol into a white plastic bowl. With a pair of thongs, she dips a piece of white cloth into the alcohol bowl, allowing it to soak through. “Okay, it’s time to really hold her down now.” I grip her leg tight, my nails digging into her flesh as the nurse swabs the alcohol-soaked cloth on the wound. The grandmother screams and curses us, but the nurse continues to jab the cloth at the wound, wiping away the caked brown blood. When she is satisfied it is clean, the nurse wraps the ankle up again with clean white bandages.
“Please,” the grandmother pleads, her bony fingers dragging the snot from her nose onto her cheeks, “please give me some medicine. It hurts very much.” For that brief moment, the grandmother looks vulnerable, desperate, human. My heart goes out to her. The nurse looks at her and slowly shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Grandmother. If we had some I would gladly give it to you, but we do not have any medicine.” The grandmother cries, both hands massaging near her ankle. She looks so frail and sad that even I pity her.
When the nurse leaves, the grandmother’s face darkens and she turns her attention to me. “What are you doing? Give me my food!” she barks at me and unwraps the banana leaves to find rice and salted pork. “Stupid girl! I know you ate some on the way. I am old and I need this more than you.” I say