The Black Widow

“What’s your name?” she asked him in Hebrew, a language that many Arab residents of East Jerusalem spoke well, especially if they had jobs in the west. The wounded Palestinian hesitated, then said his name was Hamid.

“Well, Hamid, this is your lucky day. An inch or two lower, and you’d probably be dead.”

“I want to be dead. I want to be a shahid.”

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place for that.”

Natalie lifted a pair of angled bandage scissors from her instrument tray. The Palestinian struggled against the restraints in fear.

“What’s wrong?” asked Natalie. “You don’t like sharp objects?”

The Palestinian recoiled but said nothing.

Switching to Arabic, Natalie said soothingly, “Don’t worry, Hamid, I’m not going to hurt you.”

He seemed surprised. “You speak Arabic very well.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re one of us?”

Natalie smiled and carefully cut the bloody shirt from his body.

The initial report of the patient’s condition turned out to be incorrect. The wound was not through and through; the 9mm round was still lodged near the clavicle, which was fractured some eight centimeters from the breastbone. Natalie administered a local anesthetic, and when the drug had taken effect she went quickly to work. She flushed the wound with antibiotic and, using a pair of sterile tweezers, removed the bone fragments and several bits of imbedded fabric from Hamid’s shirt. Then she removed the 9mm round, misshapen from the impact with the clavicle but still in one piece. Hamid asked to keep the bullet as a memento of his attack. Frowning, Natalie dropped the round into a bag of medical waste, closed the wound with four neat sutures, and covered it with a protective bandage. The left arm needed to be immobilized to allow the clavicle to heal, which would require removing the plastic flex-cuff restraint. Natalie decided it could wait. If the restraints were removed, she reckoned, Hamid would struggle and in the process cause further injury to the bone and the surrounding tissue.

The patient remained in the emergency room, resting, recovering, for another hour. In that time, two of his victims succumbed to their wounds down the hallway in the trauma center — the older of the Haredim, and the secular Israeli who had been mistakenly shot. When the police came for their prisoner, there was anger on their faces. Normally, Natalie would have kept a gunshot patient in the hospital overnight for observation, but she agreed to allow the police and Shabak men to take custody of Hamid immediately. When the restraints were removed, she hung his left arm in a sling and secured it tightly to his body. Then, without a soothing word in Arabic, she sent him on his way.

There was another attack later that afternoon, a young Arab from East Jerusalem, a kitchen knife, the busy Central Bus Station on the Jaffa Road. This time, the Arab did not survive. He was shot by an armed civilian, but not before stabbing two women, both septuagenarians. One expired on the way to Hadassah; the other, in the trauma center as Natalie was applying pressure to a chest wound. Afterward, on the television in the staff lounge, she watched the leader of the Palestinian Authority telling his people that it was their national duty to kill as many Jews as possible. “Slit their throats,” he was saying, “stab them in their evil hearts. Every drop of blood shed for Jerusalem is holy.”

Evening brought a respite of quiet. Natalie and Ayelet had dinner together in a restaurant in the hospital’s gleaming shopping mall. They spoke of mundane subjects, men, movies, the sex life of a nymphomaniacal nurse from the childbirth center, anything but the horror they had witnessed that day. They were interrupted by yet another crisis; four victims of a head-on collision were on their way to the emergency room. Natalie saw to the youngest, a religious girl of fourteen, originally from Cape Town, who lived in an English-speaking community in Beit Shemesh. She had suffered numerous lacerations but no broken bones or internal injuries. Her father, however, was not so fortunate. Natalie was present when the child was told of his death.

Exhausted, she stretched out on a bed in the staff lounge for a few hours’ sleep, and in her dreams she was chased by a mob of hooded men with knives. She woke with a start and squinted at her mobile phone. It was seven fifteen. Rising, she swallowed a cup of black coffee with sugar, made a halfhearted attempt to put her hair in order, and headed back to the emergency room to see what horror the last two hours of her shift would bring. It remained quiet until 8:55, when Ayelet was notified of another stabbing.

“How many?” asked Natalie.

Ayelet held up two fingers.

“Where?”

“Netanya.”

“Netanya? You’re sure it was Netanya?”

Ayelet nodded grimly. Natalie quickly dialed the number for her parents’ apartment. Her father answered instantly, as though he were sitting next to the phone, waiting for her call.

“Papa,” she said, closing her eyes with relief.