Upon arrival at the ICU unit at the Soroka Medical Center, Adael was covered with a sheet and put to the side. There was no heartbeat and no hope.
“As soon as I arrived at the Emergency Room in Soroka, I tried to find out what had happened to Eliyahu and Adael,” Aviva says. “Despite my terrible condition and the staff trying to stop me, I yanked open the curtains around the cubicles, looking for my family. Finally, I found my husband crying.” Eliyahu had realized how badly injured Adael was. Aviva kept searching madly for Adael until her brother, a policeman, who had arrived at the hospital, promised to go and find her. “Then I began to pray. I screamed to Hashem to save Adael. I begged Him to take every single one of my merits. I was ready to start all over again. As long as Adael lived. Then I began to feel pain,” Aviva says.
A Russian nurse later told Aviva, “Angels pushed me towards your daughter. Something made me approach her, despite the fact that she had been covered. The head nurse saw me and told me to leave her because there was no more hope for her. As I walked away, I felt the angels pushing me again towards here again. I checked and found a faint pulse. I yelled out so that we could save her.”
Aviva’s prayers had saved her daughter.
A Family Recovers
Although Shalit suffered shrapnel wounds, she shrugs them off. “I’ll get over them,” she says. Although Eliyahu’s back, hand and leg injuries will not heal as easily, it is Aviva and Adael who have suffered the most. Aviva spent six weeks in Soroka Medical Center undergoing four operations on her legs due to a stubborn infection that refused to heal. “Pini Rabinovich, Southern Region Coordinator for OneFamily, came to us the day after the attack and he has been in touch with us daily since then, accompanying us along the road to recovery,” Aviva says. Unfortunately, the shrapnel in Aviva’s leg is lodged too deeply in a muscle to risk removal. For Aviva, walking will never be easy.
Adael spent three months at Soroka Medical Center and then moved on to the Sheba Medical Center (Tel Hashomer) in Tel Aviv where she underwent an intensive rehabilitation program for another eight months. After that, she spent six months commuting between her home and Soroka where, three times a week, she underwent procedures to build up her upper thigh. “A balloon was inserted into my stomach and thigh area. At intervals, the balloon was blown bigger and bigger to encourage my skin to stretch and grow.” Adael, today twenty-four years old and overflowing with youthful energy, can laugh at the memory. “I was absolutely enormous,” she says. Then she adds, “I have a metal plate in my thigh area.” Sometimes, when I go through an X-ray machine, the machine beeps and I have to explain that it’s all part of me. When I joined a trip to England for teenaged terror victims sponsored by OneFamily, the X-ray machine at the airport beeped wildly. Even though I had a letter from the hospital explaining about the plate, I was still taken aside to be searched.”
Although three years have passed since the attack, the Shitrit family is still undergoing rehabilitation. A recent infection in Adael’s thigh put her in the hospital for two months. “You can either break down or cope,” says Aviva, her dark eyes alive with a mixture of pain and determination. “We’re heading towards the chuppah for Adael and Shalit.”
