(2 of 4)
Ratrout's parents nonetheless criticized her for abandoning needy Palestinians to treat Israelis and kept the news of her return to Hadassah from disapproving neighbors in Nablus. Ratrout, who lives in a one-room apartment near the hospital, goes home to see her family only every two weeks, since it takes at least a day to get through the Israeli checkpoints to Nablus, which should be less than an hour's drive from Hadassah. Though Israel promised to ease West Bank roadblocks after President Bush's recent meeting in Jordan with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it took Ratrout two days to get to Nablus last week.
In the bed next to Lekior's in intensive care, Steve Averbach, a victim of an earlier bus bombing, on May 18, watches Seinfeld on a portable television through eyes barely open. Seven people died in that blast, which left Averbach with a spinal-cord injury and lung damage. One of the nurses who cared for him was Naela Haeik, who was born in an Arab village in Israel's Galilee region. She recalls that after surgeons operated on Averbach's spine, she spent four hours settling him into his bed. She hooked the 37-year-old father of four onto a cardiac monitor, a mechanical ventilator and an intravenous drip. It was hard, physical work for her and another nurse, lifting the helpless body of the tall, muscular Averbach, who works as a private weapons instructor. Then she introduced herself. With a name that any Israeli would recognize as Arab, Haeik says this is the moment when 1 in 10 of her Jewish patients recoils from her. "Hello, I am Naela," she said softly. Averbach didn't react, and Haeik simply checked his monitor.
Averbach, who emigrated from the U.S. at 18, has recovered enough to be able to speak to his family, though he hasn't moved his limbs. His mother Maida, who along with her husband flew in from West Long Branch, N.J., was visibly moved to see Arab nurses like Haeik working so closely with Jewish medical staff members on their son. "Why can't it be like this on the outside too?" she asks.
Hospital employees are not immune to the violence. Ghalab Tawil, 42, a Palestinian from Shuafat, took a job as a janitor at Hadassah so he could be closer to his daughter Iman, 13, during leukemia treatment at the hospital. He died in the explosion that wounded Averbach. Passions ran high after one of Hadassah's doctors, Shmuel Gillis, was shot dead in the West Bank by Palestinians in February 2001. To avoid clashes with victims' families, an Arab social worker usually stationed in the E.R. no longer works there immediately after terrorist attacks. E.R. technician Assaly is also wary of victims' relatives, who often lash out at him on the wards. As he develops Lekior's chest X ray, Assaly, who learned Hebrew from a suicide-bomb victim he treated, recalls stopping at the site of a terrorist attack last year and administering first aid. An Israeli identified him as an Arab and tried to drag him away, he says. Assaly's mother, who was with him then, tells him to keep a low profile around the hospital after a terrorist attack. "When people behave like that because I am an Arab, it makes me mad," he says. "But I don't think about the nationality of the patient."