"Hello," he said finally to anyone who might be nearby.
No one answered.
"Hello," he called out louder.
"So, you're awake," a man's voice answered in a not altogether friendly tone.
"Where am I?" Tom asked.
"You're in the apartment of Dr. Rhoda Felsberg on Ramat Aviz in occupied Tel Aviv." The man spoke quickly and his voice gave the clear impression that Tom was an unwelcome guest.
"How did I get here?"
"You were brought here nearly a month ago by my sister's rabbi who found you on the street."
"A month ago?! Have I been unconscious the whole time?"
"Pretty much."
"What do you mean, 'occupied Tel Aviv?"
"Just that," the man responded, not offering any more information.
"Occupied by whom?" Tom probed, becoming a little exasperated at the man's apparent unwillingness to provide substantive answers.
"The Russians," the man answered.
Tom didn't know whether to take the man seriously. He began to wonder if he had awakened in a psychiatric ward and the man he was talking to was a patient.
"You said I was brought here by your sister's rabbi. Is your sister the Dr. Felsberg you mentioned?"
"You got it," he answered.
"And she has been taking care of me?"
"Yep."
Tom desperately wanted to know what was going on and what had happened to him but he wanted to talk to someone who would give him reliable, complete answers. "Well, can I talk to her?" he urged.
For a moment there was silence. "Yeah, I guess so."
Tom heard the man dial the telephone.
"Hey, Rhoda," the man said. "He's awake and he wants to talk to you."
"I'll be right there!" Tom heard the woman answer.
A moment later Dr. Rhoda Felsberg arrived and went directly to Tom's side and began to check his vital signs. "Is he cognizant?" she asked, a little out of breath from running up the three flights of stairs from her office on the first floor. Like her brother, she had a New Jersey accent.
"Hi, there," Tom said, with a half grin in answer to her question.
"Oh," she said, a little surprised. "How do you feel?"
"Well, I have a terrible headache and when I opened my eyes it felt like somebody was dragging razor blades over them."
"I thought I got all the glass out," Rhoda Felsberg said, followed by an indiscriminate sound that Tom interpreted as a negative assessment of his condition. "When you opened your eyes, did you see anything?"
The full meaning of her question was apparent at once. "I don't think so," he said haltingly. "Am I… blind?"
"We can't say yet," she answered. Her voice had no emotion but seemed somehow reassuring. "I need you to open them again slowly and let me look inside. Then we'll go from there."
Tom felt her sit down on the bed beside him. Wincing, he opened his eyes, hoping desperately to see something. He didn't. He felt Dr. Felsberg's hands on his face as she examined him. They were strong but soft and, despite all else that was going on, he noticed the faint sweet fragrance of her perfume as she leaned down close to him and peered into his eyes with her ophthalmoscope.
"Can you see the light in my hand?"
"I can see a light spot."
"Good, at least that's a start," she said. "Your pupils both seem to be working properly. But I'm afraid there must still be a few tiny particles of glass." Tom felt her put some eye drops in his eyes, which brought quick relief from the pain. "I'm going to bandage your eyes to keep them closed until we can get you to an ophthalmologist."
"Will I be able to see again?"
"It's too soon to say for sure," she answered, as she helped him to a sitting position and began to bandage his eyes. "You should be glad just to be alive. I removed several pieces of glass from each eye when you were first brought here. You're actually very fortunate. If the glass had gone much deeper into your eyes, the vitreous fluid would have escaped and your eyeballs would have simply collapsed."
Tom had no idea what vitreous fluids were, but the thought of his eyeballs collapsing was quite alarming, and at least in this regard he did, indeed, consider himself fortunate.
"The scarring to your corneas is quite extensive," she continued. "In addition, both of your retinae have been burned. Was there a bright flash when you were injured?"
"Yeah, I think so," he said, thinking back to the last thing he remembered.
"The burns on your retinae are our biggest worry. The corneas can be replaced with transplants but there's no way to repair a damaged retina. I may be able to remove the remaining glass myself, but I'd feel better if we had a qualified ophthalmologist do it."
"How soon can that be done?"
"Well, it could take a while." The tone of her voice said 'a while' might be a very long time indeed.
"Why? What's going on here, anyway? Will you please tell me why I'm here instead of in a hospital?" Tom was trying not to panic, but it wasn't easy: he had just been told in gruesome detail that he may never see again.
"Please, Mr. Donafin. We're friends. We want to help you, but you've got to realize that a lot has changed since your accident. Israel is an occupied country. If you'll be patient I'll explain everything, but first you need to try to eat something."
Only then did Tom notice he was starving, so he didn't object.
From the kitchen Tom could hear the hushed conversation of Rhoda Felsberg and her brother Joel.
"So, now that he's awake are you finally going to move him in with your other patients?" Joel Felsberg asked.
"No," Rhoda answered. "I'm not."
"Why not?!"
"Because Rabbi Cohen said he should stay here."
"There's no reason for him to insist that you keep this man in your personal care."
"He's the rabbi," Rhoda answered, as though no further justification were necessary.
"Yeah, well he may look like Hasidim, with his earlocks and all dressed in black, but I've heard that the other Hasidic rabbis won't have anything to do with him." Right now Rhoda was glad that Joel wasn't more aware of religious matters; if he had been he would have known that Cohen's standing with the other rabbis was actually far worse than he imagined. It had not always been this way. At one time Cohen had been thought by many to be the heir apparent to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, considered the most politically powerful rabbi in the world. Now, however, it was not only the Hasidic rabbis who wouldn't have anything to do with him; none of the other rabbis, not even the most liberal ones, would even mention his name without spitting to show their disgust.
"Oh, and since when did you start to care what the rabbis think?" Rhoda asked her brother, not letting on.
"The point is, he's a kook," Joel answered.
"Come eat," she said, not wanting to argue the matter.
"Rhoda!" Joel said, trying to get her back on the subject as she took the pot of soup and some bowls and headed back to Tom.
"Come eat," she said again more sternly, then added, "We'll talk about it later," though she had no intention of allowing the subject to reemerge.
Rhoda put a spoon in Tom's hand and set his soup on a tray in front of him. Tom found it difficult to eat without being able to see, and his first few bites were a bit messy. Rhoda gave him a napkin but as he began to wipe his mouth, he felt the scars that covered his face from the explosion. Silently, he traced the scars with his fingers.
"How bad am I?" he asked.
"You had lacerations over most of the front of your body. Most of the scars will disappear eventually," Rhoda answered. "Some minor plastic surgery may be needed later for some of the scars on your face. We'll just have to wait and see."
Tom reached down and felt his arms, shoulders, and chest. "Well, I guess I was never really that much to look at anyway," he said, trying to hide his pain in humor.
"So, how about that explanation? What am I doing here and when can I see an ophthalmologist?"
"The night after the war began," Rhoda explained, "you were brought here by Rabbi Saul Cohen, who found you buried under rubble about five or six miles from here. Since then, you have been either unconscious or disoriented and delirious."