JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, A TALL, LEAN MAN DRESSED IN A pinstriped suit hovered over the wounded boy on the gurney as he was being rushed toward surgery through the scrubbed, harshly lit corridors of Hadassah Hospital. A male nurse trotted along on the other side holding high a plastic container of glucose, which dripped through a tube into the boy’s forearm. The hair on the boy’s head was matted with blood; a piece of his scalp hung loose like a flap, exposing a section of skull the color of sidewalk. On the stretcher, the boy’s jaw worked, as if he were chewing on words but having trouble swallowing them. “… short … heavy-set … short cropped hair …” The man in the pinstriped suit leaned closer to catch the rest. A orderly materialized at the double door of the surgical theater. “The police are not permitted past this point,” he announced.
Straightening, the tall, lean man backed away and turned to watch through a window as half a dozen doctors in pale green smocks and surgical masks, moving with the languid grace of people underwater, bent over the wounded man. Then a nurse inside the operating theater tugged closed the curtains, blocking the view into the room.