With her stomach ripped open and her intestines exposed, covered only by a thin nylon band, Dina Shaheen, 21, wakes up from her coma in the intensive care unit of AlAhli alarab Hospital in the Zeitoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City. She wakes up trembling from the sound of bombing and the roar of artillery.
Dina is consumed by a single fear: that the sudden invasion will force her parents to flee south without being able to accompany her. Drowning in respirators and medical monitoring, she terrifiedly pleads with the doctors, “Please, call my mom and dad. Tell me they didn’t abandon me and are still outside.”
On the hospital’s open stairs, her parents have been sitting for days without sleep, clinging to their spot as if their presence is the final lifeline for their daughter.
Umm Dina told Al Jazeera Net, “We returned from the southern Gaza Strip and set up a tent over the rubble of our house in the Zeitoun neighborhood. However, under the bombardment, we were forced to leave for a neighboring area, where our daughter was injured by a drone’s bullet.”
Dina had finished her practical training at Al-Shifa Hospital and returned to her tent. As soon as she sat down, she was struck by two bullets fired from a Quadcopter drone. The first penetrated and exited her thigh, while the second exploded in her abdomen, tearing apart her intestines.
She underwent successive surgeries, during which two meters of her intestines were removed. However, the complications proved unbearable. Her abdomen swelled, and food leaked from her wounds. Her intestines then exploded again. A few days ago, she underwent another operation, after which the doctors left her wound open, waiting for the swelling and inflammation of her intestines to subside.
With each awakening, Dina asked the doctors for a phone to confirm that her parents were present, fearing that she would wake up alone. Her wound could not be removed, and her exposed intestines required speqcial conditions that might not be available amidst the shelling and mass displacement.
Dina is not alone in facing this predicament. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 2,000 patients and wounded, including 120 on ventilators and in intensive care, and 400 suffering from kidney failure, as well as children, premature infants in incubators, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses, will face imminent displacement, and many may die during the forced transfer south.
