On Thursday afternoon, the phone rang, on the line was the commander of one of our soldiers, “Come quickly to Tel Hashomer Hospital, N. was injured in a car accident.” My phone number is in N.’s file as an emergency contact for such cases, I got into my car and fifteen minutes after the notification I was already at the hospital, N. broke his leg and his hand in the car accident, I entered the room as the soldier’s father, I knew from his commanders that they were just waiting for me. The doctors also treated me like his father, “Dad will you hold his hand, Dad will you help us with the blanket,” from x-ray to putting on a cast, and back again, accompanied by friends from his unit.
The doctor approached me and said:
“You can take him home, he will not be hospitalized, he will need a lot of help now (as if I did not know). He has to come for a check-up and may need surgery later on.”
So we took him for a last x-ray, we ‘loaded’ him on the car after we properly padded the backseat and went to Kiryat Arba. The sight was so natural that the doctor never imagined that he was a lone soldier and that I was not his biological father and that his biological parents did not even know or did not want to know what had happened to him.
It was clear that his apartment on the fourth floor of one of the buildings is not going to be an option, he also needs close help until the two other soldiers who live with him will be back on Friday afternoon. Two soldiers were waiting for me near my house and helped me carry him to the room I had prepared for him in my house. My life has changed. On Friday, I ran to get him a wheelchair and crutches, to take care of medication, all this after a sleepless night of being beside him to help him with all his needs including feeding and showering him. He spent the entire Shabbat with me and so my house became a pilgrimage site for all the other soldiers who wanted to visit him.
On Saturday night, his feeling improved, and the soldier (who was released by his commander so that he could help out) came in.
Slowly he climbed to the fourth floor, and we gave him food and treats, our support families cook food for him every afternoon.
Tell me, what would he do if we did not exist? Tell me what do the other lone soldiers do in such cases?
Here is another chapter of the association’s activities.
The money received by a lone soldier from the IDF is probably not all he needs.
