23/04/2023
We will protect you
The operating room is clean and cool. Monitors beep rhythmically. The nurse leans over the patient:
- Don't worry, everything will be fine.
- Thank you.
- You'll see!
- I hope so.
- Don't even doubt it, in two hours we'll meet you in the ward.
- I can't wait.
My wife works in the operating room. She prepares the patient, adjusts the equipment, and monitors its operation. Of course, she is not the only one, there is a whole team.
In addition to their professional duties, the whole team is required to take care of the patient's psychological state: to say something encouraging, to distract, to instill confidence.
This is very important for a person who has already laid down on the operating table. They are not yet under anesthesia. They hear, understand, and feel everything. And they experience a state that is difficult to compare with anything else. Their life is on pause.
- Vik, do you talk to every patient?
- Definitely!
- And does it help, calm them down?
- It depends… Not always… Sometimes it's difficult to find the right words of support. But you know what's amazing?
- What?
- I don't know how it happened, but we found the words that always work with everyone.
- Interesting.
- Yes, yes! You just have to say them and... Oh, miracle! The person immediately calms down. It's just magic, can you imagine?
- What words?
- Can't you guess?
- No, what are they, Vik?
- A very simple formula. Listen: "We are a strong team and..."
- "We are a strong team and...", I repeat, "and then, Vik?"
- And then there are only three more words: "Anahnu nishmor alekha!" (Hebrew אנחנו נשמור עליך). And all the fears, all the anxieties just disappear, dissolve! It works stronger than anesthesia.
Thunder and lightning! I don't even know how to translate this exactly.
"We will keep you"?
"We will protect you"?
"No matter what happens, we will not give you up, we will not let you go, we will fight for you until the end"?
Everything is in this one phrase: "Anahnu nishmor alekha!"
And suddenly I remembered how twenty-five years ago I lay in the operating room, staring at the ceiling. Kiev in the 90s: syringes, IVs, cotton wool, and bandages - everything from the pharmacy around the corner. Everything - on its own.
Bright light shone in my face, and there was a window with a strip of sky on the side. I looked at that blue through the window and felt that my life had been put on pause. And all the time I was calling out, I don't know to whom: "Why me? Why is this happening to me? For what?" If someone had told me back then, "We are a strong team, anahnu nishmor alekha!"
I am writing about this today. I don't even know why. Maybe because you turn on the TV...
, the entire world is in your living room. There are no longer distant, unfamiliar people who have nothing to do with you. Everyone is connected, not just through trade or weapons.
There is something else, something much larger than everything that happens to us. And it's present in every frame, picture, and story. I don't know how to define it yet, but it's definitely there. Is it our shared destiny? Shared misfortune? Shared purpose? It's something that affects everyone, whether they're in Uganda, America, Ukraine, Russia, or Israel.
Everyone needs everyone else, and everyone is needed by everyone else. And if someone finds themselves on an operating table, without a piece of bread, lost under fire, or in a hopeless situation, they should hear: "You are not alone! Rely on us. We will protect you! Don't even doubt it - אנחנו נשמור עליך!"
