Emotions were running high on the day they took me to the hospital. There were still disagreements over whether it was the right decision.
The burn center was an old hospital building with tall ceilings and dark corridors. As they rolled me in on a gurney, I held my breath to avoid inhaling the smells of medicine, sterilization, and burned skin.
They first took me into a big new patient examination room with large windows and dark, heavy curtains that cast shade on almost the entire room. I tried to keep my face off the yellow chlorine-smelling sheets on the surgical table while the head surgeon was examining my burns, but my neck began to hurt and I eventually gave up. He told my grandma I would need surgery and it would take months to heal.
It got gradually darker in a squeaky elevator, and I was waiting for the flickering light bulb on the ceiling to burn out at any moment. The two nurses with me were quiet, staring at the doors of the elevator. Maybe they were thinking about lunch. Maybe something dreadful was happening in their lives too. But at that moment, I thought it was another work day for them, a dark and scary world for me. The table shook as the elevator hit the third floor, the children’s ward, and stopped.
Mom and grandma immediately made friends with other families on the third floor. There was a grandma with a joke-cracking five-year old girl who knocked a pot of hot water over herself. Later, two preteen sisters joined us. The eldest, Natia, whose entire body had burned, would undergo 12 surgeries and stay at the hospital for over a year. Natia slept with her eyes open and scared me on more than one occasion, when we passed each other on our gurneys. We never actually spoke while at the hospital, I left before Natia recovered enough to talk. Natia and her sister stayed across the hallway from my room. Whenever I tried to complain, my family would remind me of Natia and tell me how lucky I was.
My family also befriended some of the nurses and doctors, who were quick to share their most personal stories — death of a child, love affairs and broken hearts at the hospital, and more — often in front of me, in detail. No one was happy in Tbilisi, I had decided.
On my first night at the hospital, they shut off electricity. Soldiers from the nearby military base came over, demanding morphine from the nurses. I heard a woman cry all night in an abandoned hospital garden, where people went to grieve. She was mourning her 24-year old daughter, a mother herself. Innocent, ordinary actions, like a spilled tea or a match lit in the shed, resulted in death and loss.
Moments in Words 