by GlasOwl

X

The story of the Vukovar Medical Center and its satellite clinics is a story of rare courage, of fidelity to duty and principle. Professionals and volunteers treated the sick and wounded of all ethnic and religious affiliations for months under desperately dangerous conditions. Despite inadequate food and water, lacking electricity for light or heat, babies were born, surgeries were performed and patients were kept clean, fed, and nursed under a never ending storm of bombs. In a city of heroes, the staff of the Vukovar Medical Center set an unimpeachable standard for dignified and selfless devotion to patients and to the principles of the healer's vocation.  If the human spirit is a work in constant progress, then none have done more to ennoble our honor.
 

Jeri, Kelly and Alenka came to the Vukovar Medical Center on a November night when the daytime drizzle had become a full-scale storm of wind and heavy rain. The mortars still fell from positions on the Serbian side of the Danube, but the weather had caused a number of Chetnik gunners to seek shelter. The chill discomfort was balanced by the relative safety it provided to the three women as they made their way to the hospital. They had to stop several times to let Alenka rest. As they neared the Center, the amount of shelling increased, as if the hospital was a light in the darkness drawing the unwanted attentions of a ghastly new strain of exploding insect.

Alenka was swaying on her feet when they reached the shelter of the hospital.  Dripping and shivering, all three women were met at the door and hurriedly conducted below ground.

"What do we have here?"  a woman asked, casting a practiced eye over the bedraggled group. Kelly recognized Dr. Vesna Bosanac from her other visit to the hospital. Although she looked a bit rumpled and showed signs of weariness in the dark circles beneath her eyes, her voice was alert and calm. Not waiting for an answer, Dr. Bosanac took Alenka's hand and led her to an area of light that came from several flickering candles. She nodded thoughtfully at the makeshift dressing fashioned from a dishtowel. It was soaked from the rain, but there appeared to have been little blood seepage.

"Good work," the woman commented as she removed the dressing.  "Who did the stitching?"

"She did."  Jeri nodded toward Kelly and translated.

The woman glanced at Jeri with more interest.  "You are not from here?"

Jeri shrugged.  "We are now."

"These are my aunties, Dr. Bosanac."  Alenka smiled wanly at the gray-haired woman.  "Auntie Laura and Auntie Stella. We have come to see my Stepan who was brought here from the front. Stepan Sipek."

Jeri and Kelly were far from the strangest sights Dr. Bosanac had encountered in the last several months. Still, one eyebrow rose as she looked at the two American women.

"We hear rumors of a fighter, a foreign woman named Estelija, who appears like a demon behind the YFA lines. They say she sows fear and confusion."  Dr. Bosanac did not appear entirely unpleased by what she had heard.

Jeri shrugged again.  "Rumors in war are always exaggerated."

Dr. Bosanac stared at Jeri a few seconds and then turned her attention back to Alenka.  "You need rest, child, but come with me and I'll take you to the soldiers.  I think I know which one is your Stepan."

Progress through the underground corridors was difficult because beds had been set into every open space available. Patients were sleeping two to a bed in some cases. The arrangement, one of necessity, had the advantage of at least increasing body heat since the hospital's generator was damaged again and the air was quite chill.

Stepan was dozing when they reached him in the bed he shared with another Croatian Guardsman, but he opened his eyes at the sound of approaching footsteps. Jeri was used to the drawn and weary faces of the frontline soldiers, but to Alenka and Kelly, Stepan was almost unrecognizable. Pain, hunger and fatigue had redrawn his youthful features, but his pleasure at seeing them was still evident.

"Alenka! And the aunties."  He managed a smile and lifted a hand so he could clasp Alenka's. His bedmate turned toward the wall in a gesture toward privacy.

Alenka pulled the young man's hand to her and kissed it fervently before bending forward, careful not to hurt him, and gave him with a more cautious kiss on his mouth.  "How are you? I have been so worried."

"They tell me there is no need to worry.  That you and I will be dancing again before long."

"Again!  Stepan, you and I have never been dancing."  Alenka spoke with some of her former spirit.

"I know, but I didn't want to tell them that.  It made them happy to say such a thing.  But what happened to you?"

Alenka hesitated. Then she started the story. She and Stepan were speaking in Croatian and Kelly drifted on the rhythms of the speech, a habit she had acquired at the Tesla School. She leaned against Jeri and a welcoming arm went round her shoulders. Crossing the ruined city in the dark and rain had been desperately perilous and exhausting.

Dr. Bosanac had left but she returned with a stool for Alenka so she could sit beside Stepan's bed. She gestured for Jeri and Kelly to follow her.  "Come with me. I think you both need some rest. Our accommodations are a little crowded, but I have some floor space available for a few hours." She spoke with a certain grim humor.

In her dream, Kelly knew it was the Danube, this wide river where the several councils always gathered. The boat was waiting to take her to the island where she was to conduct the ceremony and she was not ready. She held the baked-clay dove that marked her office, but something was not right, had not been right for a long time, and she hesitated. Shallow water lapped at her feet. She glanced at the boatman, her brother, who stood with the long pole, holding the low-sided craft steady here in the mist among the tall grasses. He smiled at her and she was unaccountably pleased to see him. Drums sounded from the river island, calling, reminding her that it was time to make the crossing. She glanced back at the beloved face of the Guardian who stood, as always, attendant to her need. She turned again to the boatman, and saw with horror that he was angry with her, screaming and bloody-faced. She held the gun straight in front of her but nothing happened, it was useless, and the man she had killed was coming for her and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

"Kelly, Kell.  . . .baby, wake up.  It's only a dream, you're safe."

The Danube mist receded slowly and Kelly woke gratefully into the safety of Jeri's arms. It was the only comfortable aspect of the situation. She was cold, her clothes were still damp, and she ached from the hard floor -- and the face of the dead man still hovered close in her mind's eye.

"Tell me the dream, love."

Kelly told the dream. When it was done, she added, "I want to go to that school you were telling me about."

Jeri didn't recognize the reference immediately.  Then she remembered the day they had driven so carelessly out of Dubrovnik and into the heart of Croatia.  "Kell . . ."

"When we get out of here, I want to learn. If you hadn't taught me what to do with the gun, Alenka and I would both be dead by now.  I'll think about what it means later, but I want to know how to be strong when I need to be."

The dream images still retained the texture and substance of reality.  Even though she suspected that the woman who had lived along the Danube -- might still be living on the far side of a misty curtain for all Kelly knew about the way time worked -- even though that woman would not approve, Kelly was who and where she was. Different lives have different needs, she thought to the other woman, with whom she likely shared a soul. She let her mind drift to the image of George's face and took comfort in seeing him. When the nightmare face threatened to return, Kelly gave herself back to the present and Jeri's arms.

Jeri fell asleep. Kelly was sitting with her back against the wall and Jeri just leaned over, laid her head in Kelly's lap and went to sleep. Several other people were sleeping or attempting to in the little room. Privacy had become a mental rather than a spatial matter in Vukovar. It was so unusual to see Jeri give up her vigilance that Kelly could not even guess at her weariness. She scarcely dared to breathe for fear of waking the sleeping woman.

Jeri's hair had grown into a confusion of thick dark curls, reminding Kelly of smooth marble statues of Alexander the Great. One strand outlined the edge of an ear. Kelly didn't remember taking time to examine Jeri's ears before. It wasn't an unusual ear, but it had a certain delicacy, like the G-clef sign on a music staff. The lobe was pierced but Jeri had never worn earrings in the time she and Kelly had known each other. Kelly wondered when Jeri's ears had been pierced -- high school? earlier? -- she must remember to ask.

An emotion, a series of emotions chased each other across Jeri's sleeping face but she didn't wake. Kelly had to restrain herself from attempting to wipe away a streak of grime that grayed a portion of Jeri's jaw-line. Kelly wondered what dreams came visiting to trouble Jeri's sleep, but she declined to speculate too far along that path. It wasn't as if Kelly was eagerly confronting all the other conditions of her own life and simply ignoring the one small aspect of having deliberately killed another human being. She had been living in a siege for over three months; the experience of Vukovar was more like being trapped in some medieval castle than like living in the modern world. Kelly had seen sights and heard sounds and smelled smells that she wanted desperately to forget, and killing a man was one more horror to add to the list. Like Alenka, Kelly wondered where Europe was, where the UN, where America, that the massacre of Vukovar was allowed to go on and on.

Jeri opened her eyes, instantly present. A small smile curved the corners of her mouth, affection softening her features. She lifted one hand and placed it along Kelly's cheek.

Alenka had slept by Stepan's bed, but the whole corridor was awake when Jeri and Kelly arrived.

"This is Anton."  Stepan introduced the other soldier who shared the bed.

"He was here another time, when the bomb fell," Alenka said.  "That was the first time he was wounded. Stepan, tell them the story."

"The bomb?"  Jeri lifted an ironic eyebrow, wondering what would make one different from the many. Even now the rumble of explosions continued like the ticking of a monstrous clock.

"This was a big one," Stepan said.  "Two hundred and fifty kilos.  Two bombs, actually."

Jeri was impressed. She translated for Kelly.  "That's big, she added.  "Each bomb would be almost as tall as a man."

"It was during the day when the planes came to destroy this nest of military activity," Stepan continued.

"Oh, yes," Anton couldn't refrain from interrupting.  "We are bedridden patients by day, but at night we pick up our infusion bottles and swarm all over the Chetniks.  The first bomb, it blew up the second floor and shook the whole building like an earthquake. The whole surgical wing was blown apart.  But the second . . ."  he started to chuckle.

"The second came through six floors."  Stepan shook his head.  "This guy with an arm wound --this guy was sleeping and he wakes up to find a bomb in his bed. Can you believe this? He wasn't hurt at all, but you can bet he was surprised."

A series of jokes went round the nearby patients, jokes on the theme of bombs in bed. They weren't particularly original or even humorous, but they did entertain the wounded guardsmen.

"Why didn't it explode?"  Kelly asked.

Jeri translated her question and this set off another round of ribaldry.  It was Stepan who finally managed to answer.  They say the detonator was missing, Auntie Laura, but I think the guy in the bed maybe thinks that God is Croatian."

"God may be Croatian, but He and Zagreb both seem to have left Vukovar."  Anton's comment stirred a round of less humorous laughter.

Kelly had heard the charge before, that Tudjman was leaving Vukovar to be demolished in order to sway world opinion through sympathy.  If this was true, world opinion was apparently quite hard-hearted.

"Now when did Vukovar ever need Zagreb?"  No one had seen or heard Dr. Bosanac approaching.  "We are not forgotten here, we are all very important.  There was no Croatian army before but there is now. And now everyone knows that the Chetniks can hardly beat an army when they cannot even beat one small city. So -- how are all of my patients today?"

Dr. Vesna Bosanac moved among the beds, stopping to talk, to examine bandages. Strands of gray hair escaped the bun that held her hair from her face and she brushed them aside unconsciously. She was not a tall woman and, so many months into the siege, she should have appeared worn, exhausted, but instead, she seemed to generate a certain energy. Dr. Bosanac had been the subject of admiring gossip among the medical workers at Tesla School, and Kelly remembered hearing that she had been a pediatrician before she became the medical director. It was her practical foresight in the spring and summer that had prepared Vukovar Hospital and its satellites for the agony of siege. Indeed, one mark of her success as a health worker and a director was the extent to which Serbian television was vilifying her.

As Dr. Bosanac moved among the Guardsmen, it was easy to think of her as a pediatrician. She radiated the kind of calm that can soothe anxious children as she spoke to each man as if he might be her son. And so he might; Kelly had heard that Dr. Bosanac's own son was with the Guard at the front.

Dr. Bosanac reached the bed holding Stepan and Anton.  "Hello, Anton."  She smiled at Stepan.  "Anton thinks we do such a good job here that he couldn't stay away. Your visitors seem to be doing well, Stepan. I hope they aren't wearing you out." This last was spoken with a certain humor since any distraction from the reality that shook the medical center even as they spoke was a welcome distraction.

Dr. Bosanac examined Alenka's head again and once more pronounced Kelly's stitches well done. Then the medical director turned to Jeri and gestured for her to follow. The two women made their way through the crowded halls.  Jeri drew a few stares, but most of the people they encountered were more interested in a nod or a word with Dr. Bosanac than with the tall woman in Croatian Guard camouflage clothing who accompanied her.

They came to a small room that was full of files and lit by an oil lantern.  A bald man was sitting at a long table, writing in a small script -- even in a place such as Vukovar, paperwork had to be maintained. At a nod from Dr. Bosanac, the man excused himself. For a moment, the medical director seemed at a loss for words. Then she looked Jeri directly in the eye.

"I have received word that Vukovar must surrender soon.  You need to be somewhere else when that happens.  I think it would be best if you go back to the units."

The news was not unexpected. In so many ways, Vukovar barely continued to exist.  Even so, Jeri's heart lurched and she had to blink.  "Can Laura and Alenka stay here?"

"Yes, of course."  Dr. Bosanac sighed.  "This will be as safe as any place.  Perhaps more. There will be international observers here to see that all is done correctly. But you will not be safe anywhere there are Chetniks in charge."

"And you?"  Jeri asked, thinking of the reports on Belgrade television that had called her a Nazi, a female Dr. Mengele who experimented on Serbian prisoners.

"Nothing to worry."  She made a gesture brushing aside concern and shrugged.  "Maybe it is time for us to quit. I have cases of gangrene. In a modern hospital in the '90's I have cases of gangrene.  That's criminal.  We have bought time for Croatia, but now we have no more.  And you?  Why are you here?"

"I was here and I knew how to help.  I'm not the only volunteer fighting for Vukovar."

"No. No you are not, and I am personally very grateful.  Now I would like it very much if you would go and stay alive."

"It was a privilege to meet you, Dr. Bosanac.  Please do what you can for Alenka and Laura."

Jeri walked back toward the soldiers' area through the chilly, crowded basement. As she turned the corner of the corridor, Jeri saw Kelly and Alenka and Stepan: her family, such as it was, together.  She made sure of her smile before going to them.

"What did Dr. Bosanac want?"  Alenka asked.  Kelly and Stepan also waited for Jeri to answer, trying to keep their apprehension from showing.

"She had a message for me to take back to the Commander.  Which I must do soon.  Can I get a comradely hug before I go, Stepan?"

Stepan grinned and shrugged and then held out his arms.

"Oh, Auntie Stella.  I thought you could stay longer."  The hug that Alenka gave Jeri was like a child's hug as she wrapped her arms tightly around the tall woman and laid her head against her. The code said that one ought to be light and off-handed, but Alenka held Jeri for several long minutes.

Then it was time to say good-bye to Kelly.  Jeri held out a hand.  "Walk with me," she said.

They walked along the underground corridor, but it wasn't until they were near the stairway that they found a space where only a few people were passing by.  Jeri drew Kelly into the shadows.  The noise of falling shells made a kind of privacy.

"Vukovar is going to surrender," Jeri said.  "Very soon. Dr. Bosanac says you and Alenka can stay here at the hospital."

"And you?"  Jeri could scarcely hear the words as Kelly's head pressed against her, but she did hear the misery.  "Where will you be?"

"I have to go. It seems I have a certain reputation with the Chetniks and Dr. Bosanac thinks I'll have a better chance of escape with the Guard.  Listen. Go to Zagreb. You'll be civilians, you and Alenka.  Stay with her.  Go to Zagreb and call this number." Jeri said the number and then repeated it.  "Ask for Shamrock."

"Shamrock? That's your spy name?"

"Jesus, Kell, what did you expect?  Something from James Joyce?  Spies aren't really all that creative -- we're just sneaky."

And then they were making love, standing up, in the shadows. It was far too fumbling and frantic to be satisfying, but then it wasn't about being erotic, it wasn't even about comfort, it was about clinging desperately to life, to each other. Their minds and hearts had agreed to necessity, but their bodies were as frightened as children, helpless, resisting separation, demanding an impossible immersion of each into the other. The siege had made them far too wise regarding the probability of survival, and each moment together was desolate with the knowledge of imminent separation. Jeri and Kelly both strove to quiet the hysteria that mounted with each kiss, with each graceless and demanding touch. They managed a kind of climax that was more like a surrender of hope and then they rested against each other, the darkness hiding their tears.

"Come back to me," Kelly begged.  "Please come back to me."

"Yes.  Know that as long as we're apart, that's all I'll be doing. I'll find a way back to you, baby, I promise."

Kelly found more than enough work to keep her busy in the days that followed. The kitchen was in a constant struggle to provide food, not only to patients and staff but to people from nearby shelters who no longer had food. The hospital had plenty of Izosan and chlorine tablets to treat water and make it safe to drink, but with only a liter a day for drinking and washing for each person, it was impossible to maintain proper hygiene. The water supply for the Medical Center was limited at best after the city water system was destroyed, but on the worst days, getting it could cost a life. Three firemen had already died bringing water in cistern trucks. One day in early November, when the kitchen had received no water because the shelling had people too terrified to venture out, Dr. Bosanac herself went for it.

Kelly did dishes. The work absorbed all her energy and left her too tired to think. She preferred it that way. The trance of exhaustion was more welcome than the anxiety that threatened to take its place. She worked until Anica, the kitchen manager, insisted that she quit.

"You have to eat, Laura. Take this."  Anica spoke in English. "We'll make a peasant of you yet."

Kelly took the square of bread, spread with a little lard and sprinkled with dry pepper. She managed a wry smile.  "I was born a peasant you know. Mom used to keep a can of bacon grease on the back of the stove for frying eggs."

"Yes?  There, you have a pretty smile when you use it, now go visit your friends. But come back here to sleep, at least it's a little warmer."

Kelly didn't need language to read the anxiety on the faces of people that she passed on the way to Alenka and Stepan.  She had said nothing, but the pending surrender of Vukovar was now a rumor that everyone avoided saying aloud.  The wounded soldiers' corridor was unusually quiet as Kelly made her way toward the young couple.  They had a smile of welcome for her but she could see that pain and worry were bothering both of them.  Fear and hunger did not make the best of conditions for healing wounds.

"Auntie Laura, sit here."  Stepan adjusted himself so there was room for her at the foot of the bed. This required that Anton also move, but the Guardsman appeared to welcome her arrival only a little less than Stepan and Alenka.

Kelly greeted her little family with a kiss by way of greeting and sat.

"We were talking about when we were young," Alenka said.

"You're still young."

"But of course that's what an old lady like you would say, but when we were children, we would take our bicycles and go down to the river. Stepan's parents and mine both forbid such a thing. They said it was too dangerous."  Everyone paused for a smile over what had passed for dangerous in happier times.

"It was dangerous, you know."  Stepan was remembering the children they had been from the vantage of his wiser young adulthood. "Especially when we took that boat. If the current had caught us, we might have ended up in Belgrade."

"I know." Alenka giggled, still the mischievous child.  "Remember how angry Rafi was when he found us?"

"Oh, yes!"  The memory caused an expression of alarm.  "He promised not to tell but I believed him when he said he would beat me if we ever did such a thing again."
 

Darkness made it impossible to see the men gathered on either side of her, but Jeri knew they all felt the same feverish anticipation that had her screwed to a nearly impossible pitch. A hand suddenly clasped her own and although it startled her -- she was taut as a bowstring -- she gripped it back. Petar had been extraordinarily pleased at her return, and now he kept closer than a shadow. Jeri calmed her breathing. They were about to attempt their break out, attempt to find a way through YFA lines and gain the relative safety of Vinkovci. Anything could happen, was about to happen.  The defenders of Vukovar might survive to see another day, or they might all be massacred in the field they were about to cross.

The signal came down the line and Jeri heard movement to either side.  She stepped out with her squad, placing her feet carefully, looking for a good balance between speed and stealth. This was not the same as slipping alone behind enemy lines. Unless the whole universe had gone to sleep, someone was going to make a misstep soon and then they'd all be in the soup. It was inevitable.

Impossible to know what started it. One second the noise was behind them as the usual shelling sought their lines, the next they were surrounded by explosions and the clatter of automatic weapons. No need for caution now.  Jeri started running. She yelled for Petar and heard him scream back her name. The air seemed to have taken on substance: it shook and rippled and running through it was like a dream in which one's feet would hardly move.  Jeri wanted to throw herself down and huddle against the ground, but instead she put Kelly's face in front of her and tried to remember that the only way to see Kelly again was to keep moving, to somehow keep moving. To her left, she saw a bright blossom of flame and several figures floated away from it like dolls tossed into a wind. To the right was darkness and Jeri went toward it instinctively.

Stuttering, rattling flashes broke out of the night ahead, ripping what was left of the fabric of the air, and this time Jeri did hurl herself to the ground and continue forward by crawling. She thought she saw a blackness unpunctuated by the stuttering flashes. She yelled for Petar to follow her but she had no idea if he could hear, indeed if he was even still nearby.  She felt a hand on her foot, knew it for Petar, and she began scuttling, as low to the ground as she could manage.
 

Kelly woke to the clanging of metal pots. She had stolen a few minutes break near the cooking stove and fallen asleep in the aura of warmth. A peculiar atmosphere pervaded the kitchen, a kind of cheerful despair.

"Anica, has something happened?"

"The soldiers have escaped."  There were tears on the woman's broad face.  The siege had taken weight from her, but she still maintained a roundness of feature and form that expressed so well her kindly soul.  "The soldiers have escaped. I just now see Dr. Bosanac and she says that her son is in Zagreb.  Never before have I have seen her weep, but today she has tears. Three times he was wounded, but now he is safe in Zagreb."

Wounded three times! Kelly pressed her hands to her mouth, unsure whether to weep or laugh. It must have been horrible, but some had made it. Oh, please be safe, she thought, wishing she had the comfort of prayer, or knew a direction toward which to aim the hopes of her heart. Oh Jeri, love, be safe.

"We must prepare now for the Chetniks," Anica added and the happiness fled from her.  "Vukovar has surrendered. I think soon you should go to your friends. No one knows what will happen next."

It was the silence that was odd. The scuff and squeak of shoes on a tile floor, the creak of a bed as someone shifted position, the sound of a door closing around the corner, the wheels of a rolling cart, the sniff of someone with a cold. Tiny sounds that had been concealed for months returned like jittery sparrows. Everyone whispered or spoke in the lowest of tones. Which only increased the nervous anxiety of waiting the arrival of their conquerors.

They were quite correct when they arrived. There were the officers who came, presented unreadable faces and left. There were the soldiers, youngsters who kept their curiosity checked behind a formal bearing that also hid what just might be embarrassment. The officers strode past impatiently, neat boots colliding with the floor, obviously intent on getting to the next important place. The soldiers stood at corners, reducing the movement of the hospital staff, like sheep dogs keeping a flock from moving too far.

"We have to leave," Alenka said to Kelly.

An officer had just come and issued a series of instructions to the people in the corridor ward. Alenka and Kelly were not the only friends or family who were with the wounded soldiers.  The impatient officer barked several commands which were in no need of translation. "Hurry up, quickly!"  sounds the same in any language.

"Stepan . . ."  Kelly hugged him tightly.  She had grown very fond of this young man.

"Auntie Laura."  He grinned.  "You will take care of Alenka, yes?  Take her to my parents in Zagreb?"

"I'll take care of her," Kelly said.  "We'll see you in Zagreb."  Then stepped back to give Alenka a chance to say good-bye.

Kelly found it hard to believe that the young woman who walked toward her from Stepan's bed with such dignity was the same child who had flown down the steps to greet her and Jeri in the late summer. But as soon as they turned a corner of the corridor, Alenka sagged against the wall, sobbing.

"Why did I say I didn't love him? You must think I am a horrible person."

"I think nothing like that. Now isn't the time for sorting out such things -- besides, I see how you love him."

The correct young YFA soldiers directed them to a room on the first floor that was still somewhat intact where many of the hospital's civilians had been taken. Kelly realized the last time she had been here was the day she and Jeri had ridden to the hospital with Yakov and Mrs. Lakovic. She and Alenka found a place to sit and then waited for instructions.

And waited. At one point an officer of some high rank came and talked at length. From the stony looks on the faces of the people around her and the way that Alenka occasionally squeezed her hand -- to restrain herself from speaking -- Kelly was glad that she didn't understand. Alenka might have been able to stay quiet but a few people closer to the officer finally spoke up at which point he gave them a haughty glare and stalked out. The room broke into a buzz of murmurs.

"It was a political talk," Alenka said to Kelly. "The colonel says we can stay now that they have liberated Vukovar. They will be sending a staff from Belgrade to run the hospital. Those who want to leave may go to the Croatian border. Someone asked him why there were Chetniks in the hospital when he had promised that only YFA would enter."

"I still don't understand how you can tell the difference."

"Oh Auntie Laura."  Alenka attempted a flash of her old humor.  "They have different uniforms."

"Oh."

"Yes. The Chetnik paramilitaries have a Serbian flag and 4 S's like the Cyrillic Cross on their uniform."

"Oh."

"You must learn to pay attention to these things.  You probably also forgot to notice that we have been liberated."

And still it wasn't until the next morning that people from the Medical Center who chose to go to Croatia were allowed to leave. Kelly and Alenka were put on a bus with hospital personnel and a few civilian patients.  Others who wanted to leave were distributed among the vehicles of a YFA convoy.

"Where is Stepan?  I don't see any of the soldiers?"  Alenka leaned out the bus window, but a YFA soldier sternly told her to close it.

A woman sitting a few seats away spoke and when she was finished, Alenka nodded and turned to Kelly.  "She says she asked earlier and they say the military men have been taken ahead. That is good, I suppose."  She turned to stare out the window.

The Medical Center was pocked and pitted by the months of savage shelling.  Sections of the wall had gaping holes and much of the roof was missing. But awful as that was, the passage of the convoy through the devastation of Vukovar was worse. For some it was their first time outside the hospital in weeks. For everyone, it was the first view they had had of the city without fear of being hit by a grenade or mortar or bullet in months. A gasp could be heard now and then, a sob, but mostly the low-gear sound of engines as the convoy wound through the ruin and destruction, negotiating roads that barely existed for all the holes. Here and there soldiers could be seen collecting people from basements, marching small groups toward some unknown destination.

Alenka leaned back and closed her eyes.

"Are you all right?"  Kelly asked, fearful that the wound was hurting again.

"I don't want to look anymore.  That's all."

Kelly leaned back and thought of Jeri.

If Vukovar was terrible in its devastation, it was almost worse when the convoy reached Negoslavci, worse for its lack of any marks at all. The small village lay to the south of Vukovar and no sign of war had touched it.  Despite their loss of leaves to November cold, the trees looked like sentinels guarding a road to sanity. The houses, all without a broken window or a lost tile, tucked behind hedges or gardens, appeared like dwellings in the landscape of an alternate reality. People along the road stared at the convoy and Kelly took from their expressions a notion of how she and Alenka and the others must look: dirty, gaunt, unkempt.

The convoy stopped and it soon became clear why this village had been spared.  Townspeople gathered and began shouting and throwing things.  "Ustasha!"  Kelly heard, the only word she really recognized, but the rest must have been terrible because Alenka threw her head into Kelly's lap and covered her ears.  A rock struck the window and Kelly ducked, but the bus was a military vehicle and the glass held. Kelly wanted to look away. She had never felt the intensity of directed hatred before.  The faces she saw screaming at her were ugly with rage.

Someone from the crowd broke and ran for the door. A YFA soldier jumped in the way and forced the man back.  For a moment the crowd quieted, but it wasn't long before the shouting reached its former furious pitch.

Again someone from the crowd rushed the bus and this time the door to the bus was forced open. A man in a paramilitary uniform, waving an automatic pistol, pushed his way through and into the aisle. He shouted while the crowd outside roared in approval. Kelly could feel Alenka's body shaking and she held the young girl down, protecting her as best she could. The Chetnik was drunk; even in another language, Kelly could distinguish the slurred words and ranting tone. At least he was several rows away, but the people sitting closest to him were terrified. A YFA soldier came aboard and started to argue with the paramilitary. The interruption only momentarily stopped the wild ranting, but it gave time for two more soldiers to arrive and use force to remove the Chetnik.

Then the convoy began to move again.

"It's okay, Alenka, we're moving again.  We're safe now."

"No we're not," came the muffled reply. "This is like a dream where you try to escape and it just goes on and on."

Kelly thought Alenka must have the gift of prophecy when the convoy returned to Vukovar before nightfall.
 

Stepan wished he wasn't so afraid. It would be easier if he wasn't afraid.

"What is the name of this place? Where are we?"  he had asked when he and the other wounded Croatian Guardsmen, about two hundred, were taken off their buses and brought into a large warehouse that smelled of machinery grease and oil.

"What do you care?  Does it matter where you're going to die?"  The drunken Chetnik had laughed and then beat him. All the Guardsmen were beaten.

Stepan believed he was going to die here and, yes, he would like to know the name of the place.  He hurt where he had been hit but that wasn't as bad as being afraid. There shouldn't be anything to be afraid of; he'd seen so many people die that it wasn't as if he hadn't known all along that it could happen to him. He was Catholic, not all that good, but he had never done anything that God couldn't forgive. He was worried about his parents, about Alenka. She would go see them in Zagreb, he was sure of it, but he wondered how long it would be before anyone knew what had happened. He hoped they knew soon -- it would be terrible to wait for him for months, or years even.  Better they should know.

He loved them all so much. Better to feel that than anger or fear. He heard shooting from near the door. Anton was trying not to cry too loud. Stepan wished he could take Anton's hand, but he thought that might make it harder for both of them.

"Remember the day Alenka and I took the boat?"  He didn't say it too loud, but Anton heard. Anton had liked this story.  "The sun was very bright. It was a perfect summer morning in Vukovar."  Alenka had run ahead and she called to him from the bank that she had found a boat. She was so beautiful.  That was the day he'd first known he loved her, that he wasn't a child anymore.

"Ovchara," said the Chetnik who had approached.  "The name of this place is Ovchara."

But Stepan didn't hear.  He was sending his boat out onto the sun-flecked ripples of the Danube. He meant to catch the current and ride it as far as he could.
 

Just maybe the convoy was going to make it through this time. Kelly and Alenka had both been overcome by the lassitude that accompanies helpless misery. They'd been allowed off the bus once in the morning to go to a bathroom but other than that they were kept in the same seats as the day before. And once again the convoy had left Vukovar, proceeded, stopped for no apparent reason, gone on for no apparent reason, stopped again.

Kelly was worried about Alenka.  She had lost interest in anything outside the bus, and dozed intermittently while leaning against Kelly.  Kelly couldn't see any sign of infection around the wound but the young woman's forehead did feel hot to the touch.

One of the other bus passengers plucked the sleeve of Kelly's jacket.  Alenka looked up.

"She says we have to change buses here."  Alenka's voice was dull, uncaring.

Kelly picked up her stained nylon bookbag.  She still had The Inferno and Black Lamb Grey Falcon.  Alenka carried nothing. Outside an overcast sky dimmed the sunlight, but it was still bright enough to make the bus passengers squint.  Kelly put an arm around Alenka's shoulders wondering where to go next.  She peered the length of the convoy, seeing other refugees standing, waiting for direction.

Then she saw Jeri.  Who had already seen her and was striding toward her.  They must have crossed the border into Croatia. Until that instant, Kelly  hadn't realized how little she had dared hope, hope that Jeri was still alive, hope that they would be together again. So now she simply stood and watched the tall woman walk toward her, savoring the pure joy of the moment, seeing her own radiant heart reflected in Jeri's smile.

Alenka recognized some change in Kelly and followed her gaze.  "Auntie Stella," she breathed, disbelieving, and then her hands flew to her mouth and something seemed to catch in her throat.

Jeri paused and allowed a man who had been behind her to move forward.  He was a dark-haired man, perhaps in his late twenties. Kelly thought he looked familiar. He came a few steps closer, his face twisted and his lips a thin line.

"Alenka?"  Almost a whisper.

Kelly turned to Jeri, who had reached her side.  "Rafi?"

"Yes. The old Soviet Union is in such confusion, they just let him go."  Jeri's arms folded around Kelly.

"How did you find him?"

"It's a long story. And we have time, baby. Now we have time."
 
 
 FIN

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