One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [41]
‘Ibby? The baby?’
She nodded, fearful: then began to wail, turning her face to the sky, shaking her hands in the air. Yes, the baby.
‘What? What?’ I cried.
At my voice her teenage son appeared behind her in the doorway, bleary-eyed. The woman turned to him and spoke rapidly. His face darkened; he knew this story. He turned to me. She was taken to hospital, he explained in broken English, the baby was coming, they borrowed a car. They all went, all the family, to Dubrovnik hospital. But on the road, on the way, the car was shelled.
‘Oh God.’ I sat down in the dust. ‘All dead?’
‘Yes, except the young mother. She survived and they got her to hospital, I think. I don’t know.’ He shrugged; looked wretched. The woman began to wail again, pray and cross herself as I sat there, stunned in the dust.
Moments later I was up and running to the warehouse, stumbling as I went. Alam, his parents, Mona – all gone. Oh, Ibby! I had to stop and clutch my stomach. Take a few moments. Finally I reached the quay, and between sobs, told Pablo, the Italian boy, who was still there, what had happened. I needed a Bedford, and I needed him to come too, right now. He hesitated. The lorries were empty from the night’s convoy, but still, we shouldn’t. In a few hours’ time they’d need to be loaded again. Tears streamed down my face as I begged him, and in another moment he was sitting beside me in the nearest one as I started the engine.
I drove as I’d never driven before down that baked, potholed road towards Dubrovnik, a long plume of dust spreading out behind us over the fields like a smokescreen. ‘Aide Humanitaire’ on the side got us through the checkpoint outside town, the red crosses doing their work within the city too. At the hospital, in the busy main street, Pablo sat outside in case the lorry was stolen, whilst I ran in.
Other atrocities were never far away: a residential area had been hit in the same shelling that had taken out the Mastlovas’ car, and inside, a mass of terrified relatives swarmed, demanding news of loved ones, hospital staff struggling to put up lists of the injured. I pushed through the mêlée and, on a hunch, made for the stairs. People were sitting on the floor the entire length of the corridor, some bandaged and sick, some waiting for treatment, some for news. I caught hold of a harassed-looking nurse. Maternity? Third floor, I was told.
As I staggered up the staircase I wondered if Ibby knew, had been told, that her husband and child… Oh, Mona! In my mind I saw her running to meet her young friend on the corner, satchel swinging. Had to stop on the stairs to steady myself. Then I stifled a sob and stumbled on.
The news I was given outside the delivery room was bad. Ibby had died from her wounds as she’d gone into labour. And the child? The child had been delivered by Caesarean section. The baby was weak, but alive.
I don’t remember a great deal about what happened next, but I do remember the confusion. The floor seemed to tilt from under me, and as I slid backwards, I felt the eyes of the rows of people sitting on the floor rise above me, gaze down. I imagine I was taken somewhere. I don’t know where. I don’t know how long I was out for either, but when I came round, someone was leaning over me, the same doctor who’d given me the news about Ibby: very young, in a bloodstained white coat.
‘Was the baby a boy or a girl?’ I asked.
A boy.
‘And was he OK? Was he going to live?’
Yes, he was.
The doctor went to sit down beside me a moment, but a shout went up outside in the corridor. The door flew open. A nurse spoke rapidly, clearly in distress. The doctor hurried from the room. I turned to the woman beside me in the next bed: a school had been shelled, I gathered, close by; they were bringing the injured in now. Kindergarten age. More horror, more chaos and confusion. I just wanted it all to go away. To go away. I shut my eyes.
Sometime later I left the hospital: stumbled numbly down the corridor, down the stairs and away. I didn’t expect Pablo still to be there and he wasn’t but miraculously he’d