The Covenant (32 page)

It was almost too much to bear.

“Will he be all right?” she demanded hoarsely, almost rudely, not allowing herself to examine him too closely until she got the answer. She couldn’t stand it, to add this uncertainty, this life-or-death watch, to all the other uncertainties, all the other watches. “Please, just be honest. Just let me know what I’m up against.”

“Why don’t you come into the office and sit down, Elise?” Dr. Gabbay said kindly, “and we’ll explain everything.” Slowly, with a sense of heartbreak, she removed her finger from the baby’s grip.

“This is Dr. Levy, the head neonatologist. He’s taking care of your baby,” Dr. Gabbay said, introducing a tall, red-haired giant of a man. For no reason, Elise wondered if his wife was one of those petite little women big men sometimes married, the kind who could fit into their pockets; if that was how he had learned to use his big hands so gently. “Hello, Mrs. Margulies, Mrs. Helfgott. Let me give you a little background,” Dr. Levy began in unaccented American English.

An American-trained doctor, Leah thought. Good. Not that Israeli doctors weren’t… but someone who knew English… someone she could understand.

“A baby that’s born at thirty-two weeks still has some growing to do. It doesn’t have enough body fat to keep it warm, so we keep it in a warm place, an incubator. It doesn’t have the reflexes to suck on the breast or bottle yet, so we feed it through a tube in its nose. But if you can pump breast milk, that would really be very helpful. We’d feed your baby that.”

It had not been just talk. There was something she could do, something she had control over. “Of course!” Elise said, feeling her spirits rise.

“Believe it or not, preemies grow faster than regular babies, so it will need lots of nourishment. And all those big machines with the blinking
lights… they are just a way of keeping abreast of how things are going. We check the glucose levels, the salt, the calcium…”

“But tell me… is there anything really wrong? Anything dangerous?”

“Well, his most serious problem is the immaturity of his lungs. A baby that young doesn’t produce surfactant…”

“Sur… what?”

“Surfactant. It’s a substance that keeps the lung tissue flexible so that it expands and contracts. Years ago, preemies often died because of this. But we’ve made enormous advances. We gave you some artificial surfactant before you gave birth, and have been giving him doses ever since. So far, so good. He has a little jaundice, and he’s slightly anemic. Both of these things are common problems in preemies. We’ll keep him under ultraviolet light for the jaundice, and if the anemia gets worse, we’ll transfuse some red blood cells until he starts manufacturing his own—”

“He’s in good shape, Elise. Really,” Dr. Gabbay reassured her.

“Well—” Dr. Levy hedged.

“What?” she asked.

“Elise, this is going to sound terrible, but believe me, it’s not,” Dr. Gabbay said, with a long glance at his colleague, who shrugged.

“WHAT?” she demanded, pushing away from the desk. “TELL ME!”

“This morning, your baby had an incident of intraventricular hemorrhage.”

She blanched. “What does that mean?”

“What it means,” Dr. Levy said calmly, “is that bleeding took place into the normal fluid spaces of the brain. A baby this size is very fragile, and there is a whole network of tiny blood vessels around the brain. All this means is that one of these tiny vessels burst. It wasn’t serious. He didn’t lose much blood. These incidents are commonplace in preemies and most of the time don’t cause any damage at all.”

No. No. No
, she thought. God, don’t do this to me. I can’t take this, no. It’s not fair, God. “Are you telling me the truth, about it not being dangerous, about it being commonplace?” she demanded.

“Absolutely. I don’t believe in sugarcoating the truth. I want parents to be team players, and there is no point in stringing them along with false hopes. I’m telling you that it wasn’t serious. And we don’t expect any damage at all from it.” He was calm, assured and matter-of-fact.

Elise searched his face, the kind brown eyes, the young, healthy cheeks, the genuine smile. She decided to believe in him, in God. In mercy, and small miracles. “Thank you, Doctors. Dr. Gabbay, Dr. Levy. For everything.” She got up. “I’m going to spend a few minutes with my baby now.”

He was a person, she thought, startled. Her son. Jon’s son. liana’s brother. A person with a place in the world. He had his own face: widely set eyes, like Jon’s. His nose too had Jon’s tiny little downturn. She could almost see Jon’s face wrinkled in laughter and pleasure as he saw his big features miniaturized in his tiny son’s. He was his father’s son, and like his father he would hold on, he would fight for his life, she told herself. God willing, father and son would both win.

With that thought, something lit up inside her, a moment of bright certainty. This will be your story, baby. The story of when you were born. How your parents were in all the newspapers. And how your father didn’t get to see you for a day or two, until the army brought him and your sister home.

They would tell this story on green lawns festooned with red and blue balloons, as children laughed and ran around, and a portable radio played over the hissing of an outdoor grill. And Jon would hold out his arms,
my fon
, and the baby would take his first steps into them, like a little drunk, waddling on the soft grass, smiling into his father’s happy, satisfied eyes. And his big sister would hold his hand, and teach him ballet steps on the green lawn, and they would twirl until both collapsed on the soft grass, the summer grass, next year… “Everything is going to be all right, little fellow,” she whispered, her forefinger stroking his tiny forehead. “I just know it.”

“Elise…” Dr. Gabbay was touching her shoulder. “I’ve just gotten a call. General Nagar is downstairs waiting in your room.”

Her heart had the strange sensation of hiccuping: a sharp draining, an emptiness and then a sudden filling. She felt faint, grabbing the back of the chair. General Nagar was the Israeli army’s chief of staff.

“Oh, Elise!” Leah called out, alarmed, rushing forward.

“Get a wheelchair!” Dr. Gabbay ordered.

“No…”

“Don’t be stubborn,” Leah begged her.

She had no struggle left, she thought, sitting down gratefully when the chair arrived. They wheeled her out of the unit.

“Mrs. Doctor Jon…?”

She looked up at the pale young woman who stood in her path outside the NICU She was dressed in a hospital bathrobe and modest head covering. At first, because of the head covering, Elise thought she might be an Orthodox Jewish woman, one of her neighbors. But as she drew closer, she realized the woman was a Muslim. A Palestinian.

“What do you want?” Elise asked her cautiously.

“I don’t know… My name is Nouara. Your husband is my doctor.”

Elise felt a complicated range of emotions, everything from primitive hatred for a faceless enemy to true affection and concern for a fellow suffering human being.

“Nouara. Jon talked about you so much. How are you?”

“Your husband is not here to tell me how I am…”

“I have the feeling it will all be over soon,” Elise said wearily.

“Inshallah.
Mrs. Doctor Jon?”

“Yes?”

“I am so ashamed, so ashamed. I want to kill the people who did this. They did it to me too. And to my husband and my children. They are not Muslims. May Allah punish them. I don’t know what to do.”

“Just keep yourself well. Make sure when Jon comes back, he finds you well.”

The young woman shook her head in doubt and despair
“Inshallah, inshallah.
I will try I will pray for him. May Allah keep him and liana safe and return them to you. And to me.” She leaned forward and kissed Elise on both cheeks.

Elise took the young woman’s fragile hand in hers and held it. Understanding passed between them, and a strange kind of solidarity. They were, in a way, in this together, both their lives dependent on the outcome.

Elise watched her as she shuffled down the long corridor, her shoulder brushing the wall for support. A young Palestinian woman. A young mother. A neighbor. She too was a victim of the coarse and hateful people who seemed to be in control of all their lives, people who had created a world without intelligence, or fairness or compassion or justice. A world that made no sense at all.

“Ready,
Bubbee”

Leah wheeled her down the corridor.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem
Thursday, May 9, 2002
2:00
P.M.

G
ENERAL MOSHE NAGAR
was not at all the image one would have expected of the toughest man in the Israeli army. A short, intense, wiry man, with a sharp face and balding scalp, he was barely an inch taller than herself. But his posture reminded Elise of one of those aggressive breed of pit bulls who made up for their small stature with the ferocity of their natures. He was a man, she thought, whom no one should underestimate, particularly not the enemies of the State of Israel.

Born on the eve of Israel’s independence to Jewish refugees who had been thrown out of their home in Egypt, along with 650,000 other Jewish refugees from Arab lands, he’d been brought up to understand the meaning of sacrifice and the worth of Jewish self-rule and self-defense.

“Mrs. Margulies,” he said warmly, extending his hand. He was surrounded by tall, taciturn army men.

She remembered watching him on television on Memorial Day, as he addressed the friends and families of fallen soldiers. Instead of speaking of glory, pride and duty, he had spoken about little boys in Purim costumes and mothers kissing new recruits on their way to the induction center. He had spoken about beloved sons and daughters, each one an incalculable loss to their boyfriend or girlfriend, brother, sister, father or mother—each one an unbearable rip in the fabric of the country’s life. If your son had to be in the army, you’d want him under the command of such a man, she’d thought.

She got up and held out her hand. He took it, warmly.

“Please, both of you. Sit down.”

Leah took his advice gratefully. She was as weary as she had ever been in her life.

“First of all, we think we have located where your husband and child are being held.”

She felt her body tense. “Thank God!”

“Yes. But now comes the hard part. To get them out alive and well.”

“When?” Elise pleaded, her eyes boring into his.

He didn’t look away. “I don’t know yet. I don’t want to lie to you. They are in a safe house in one of the villages in Samaria. But we believe the house is booby-trapped. We need time to organize.”

“But the deadline…!”

“We have every reason to believe that they will extend it.”

She looked up at him. “Do you believe that?”

He shifted uncomfortably. As former commander of forces in Judea and Samaria, he’d had extensive contact with terrorist groups and had observed firsthand how they cynically exploited all agreements to build up their infrastructure, train terrorists, and smuggle arms. How they hid behind small children when they fired. How they placed their explosives in ambulances to ferry them around. No. He did not trust a terrorist to be a gentleman.

“It’s not a question of trust. We are working on another angle. I can’t say much right now…”

Elise studied her hands, then hugged herself tightly. “You know who I keep thinking about, General?”

He didn’t move, studying her silently.

“Danny Haran.”

The effect of the name on the army men was immediate and devastating.

On April 22, 1979, the Abu Abbas faction of Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) landed four terrorists on the seashore in Nehariya. Armed to the teeth, they walked into an apartment building and broke into the home of Danny Haran. They kidnapped the young father and his four-year-old daughter, while the mother hid in the storage space beneath the ceiling with the baby, covering its mouth in a desperate attempt to keep it from crying and revealing their hiding place.

Danny Haran and his daughter were taken to the beach. As the young
father was forced to look on, terrorists smashed in the head of the little girl with rocks just before shooting him. Back home, in a tragic accident, the baby suffocated. Only the mother survived.

“I have a question for the general,” Leah said suddenly. “Elise, translate for me?”

“Bubbee
, please…”

“No, no, it’s all right. What is it?” General Nagar said in Israeli-accented English, kindly. “My English is not wonderful, but also not so terrible.”

“I heard on the news that the prime minister of Israel called on Yassir Arafat to free my Jon and liana. Is your prime minister joking? Is this a joke?”

The general didn’t meet her eyes.

“Maybe Elise, you should translate?”

General Nagar exchanged glances with his entourage. “No, it’s not a language problem. For the IDF to go into these territories is a political problem… We aren’t supposed to go into Palestinian-held territory. That was the Oslo Accords we signed. We pulled our troops out so that they could police themselves…”