Surviving the Dance of Life and Death: Inside a Medical Stabilization Unit near Bakhmut

There are two black bags on the grey Donbas soil. With the bodies of those who died for this land inside. A little to the side, near the dirty cars, there are people in pixelated uniforms, military medics, standing and smoking.

This is the point where wounded soldiers are brought from point zero, and from here they are transferred to stabilization units. Now, the military doctors are in no hurry — there is nothing they can do for the two who have just been brought in.

They discuss TV shows from the early ‘90s. Someone remembers Angélica, someone remembers Isaura the Slave Girl. Polina takes a drag on her cigarette and says that her grandmother used to watch Simplemente María. It's unlikely that she remembers this — "Simply Maria" was on the screens long before she was born.

Polina is 22. She signed the contract at 19.

"Since childhood, I've had a thing for the military in my head. I dug it," she says.

For her age, she is very straightforward and strict. And there’s no time for lyrics amid the mud with two corpses a few meters away?

Polina hasn't been home or seen her family in two years. She didn't have time before the full-scale war broke out as she was already engaged in tactical medicine. After February 24, she was unable to as her house, where her grandmother had watched Simplemente María, was occupied by Russians.

Polina's father and uncle are in captivity. And even this fact is mentioned casually. When asked if she watches the video every time after the exchanges, she answers dryly: "What for? To dog myself every time?" She knows where her relatives are being held, she knows they are alive, and that is enough for her. She is waiting for the exchange.

"300 (wounded in action - ed.)!" — this is the word that ends our conversation. Polina hurries to the vehicle that has just dropped off the wounded.

The most important thing in her job is to triaging. If 8-10 people arrive, she has to quickly figure out who to send to the stabilization unit first.

"I judge by the condition. If see light, small shrapnel, then they can wait for the next vehicle, we will bandage them up here. Above all, we try to triage them: who goes straight away, who goes in the next vehicle. No matter how good a medic you are, if you misjudge the condition, you will lose a human," explains Polina.

This time there are three wounded and they are lightly injured, so there is enough space for all of them. The men are taken to a stabilization unit 12 kilometers away.

Shock Room 1: don't post it on PornHub later

Behind the door marked "Shock Room 1," above which a yellow and blue wooden angel has opened its wings, six people are leaning over the soldier. The wounded man moans softly. Blood seeps through his pants. At the same time, the medics begin to cut off his clothes — they use special scissors to cut off his pants and T-shirt.

"The boots, they’re good boots, don't cut," the wounded man says through gritted teeth, trying to ease the pain.

"We won't," the medics promise.

One of them, a middle-aged man in a black T-shirt with a large pysanka Easter egg on his chest, simply cuts the laces and takes off the wounded man's footwear.

"What hurts you, brother?" he asks, continuing to take off his boots.

"Nothing hurts anymore. I can return to my position," the wounded man laughs.

He has an intravenous drip connected to one arm. On the other, there is a blood-red bandage.

"It's a bullet wound. Something here - he points to his blood-soaked underpants.”

By this time, his pants had already been removed.

“They tamponaded two wounds here," he points to his leg. Seeing the camera, he tries to joke:

"Don’t post it on PornHub later."  

Then Dmytro, the wounded man, explains to the medics that he has "a couple of hryvnias" in his pockets. And they are already joking with the fighter: "Planning to buy coffee at your position?”

When Dmytro is left completely naked, the doctors start to perform an ultrasound. They squeeze a transparent gel on his stomach and move the machine.

"Breathe, catboy, breathe," says the doctor with an Easter egg on his T-shirt.

This man, whose name is Oleh Tokarchuk, calls all the wounded cats. Cats or brothers.

“It tickles,” the wounded man reacts to the ultrasound manipulations.

"Basically, we are here to tickle you," says Roman, a young anesthesiologist. It seems that humor is the only thing that saves them all here, both the wounded and the doctors.

“I am interested in whether I will be able to get it up again. I have a wife at home, a doctor, three kids, come on!" Dmytro tries to get information from the doctors about his sexual prospects.

“Three kids and you still have more plans?”

“Of course. I have three sons. I want a daughter.”

“Ah... Now I get you. Don't worry, it's not that bad. It's just a scratch.”

“Your most important organ is intact!" Roman assures.

After all the manipulations, the fighter is dressed and taken out of the "Shock Room 1" in a wheelchair to the corridor. There, Dmytro tells us what happened to him. He and his comrades had been under fire from four in the morning.

"We didn't even have a smoke break for five minutes. When I was wounded, I immediately applied a tourniquet myself. We were taught a little bit of tactical medicine, which came in handy. Then my comrades carried me back, because it was far from the positions," he says.

Doctor, deputy mayor, director of stabilization unit

Meanwhile, Oleh Tokarchuk is filling out a "form 100" for Dmytro, the so-called "sotka", the wounded man's cover letter. The document depicts a human body on which doctors mark the areas of injury. They write down the type of injury, the medications that were administered, and passport data. They also enter information about the type of transport and where the wounded person is to be evacuated next.

"This is a very important document. It verifies a soldier's injury and supplements the investigation so that he can receive a pay-out or an examination. It is a tool that transmits information between the stages of evacuation, what was done where. It is supposed to be filled in from the front line, and each additional unit adds what it did and where it did it. When a soldier gets to the hospital, they see that this has been done, that that has been done, each stage has its own area of responsibility and scope of work," explains Oleh.

He is the director of the stabilization unit. Although according to the documents, such a position does not exist. But when the medics of several brigades organized this stabilization unit, Oleh was appointed to run it because he had managerial experience in civilian life.

The egg and the inscription "Who are we without a pysanka?" on his T-shirt are not accidental. Tokarchuk is from Kolomyia, a western Ukrainian town that is considered the center of Easter egg making and has a museum of Easter eggs. Until February 24, Oleh was the deputy mayor, and before that he worked as the town's chief doctor for many years. He is a traumatologist by profession.

"In Kolomyia, it was physically easy, but here it's hard (points to his heart - ed.). And here it's easy for me. Even though it's a 24/7 job and there were times when we slept for three hours a day. But it was easy because you knew you were doing what you had to do," he says.

This stabilization unit can handle 200 wounded people a day. But Tokarchuk notes that it exists for those three to five who would not be able to get to Slovyansk or Kramatorsk, the nearest cities with hospitals.

"Five people out of 5,000 died on this table. This is a very small number. We have a team of professionals here, and we have developed processes so well that if a person arrives here alive, everything will be done to keep him or her alive.

We don’t just stabilize a person. If they need blood, and we don't have any, one of our employees will lie down and donate their blood. This has happened many a time," says Oleh.

"This is psychiatry"

At this time, the soldier is being carried to the unit under his arms. They put him on a gurney right in the corridor. He looks up at the ceiling with wide, glassy eyes.

Tokarchuk crouches down next to him. He begins to feel his stomach. There are no visible wounds or blood.

"Tell me honestly, brother, was there heavy shelling?”

"Yes," he says, barely audible.

“Did anyone hit you — on the stomach, on the chest? It's important, tell me. I won't tell anyone.”

“No, nobody hit me.”

“What is your relationship with your commander like?”

“It's okay.”

Tokarchuk gets up and makes a diagnosis: "This is psychiatry." 

Among the doctors present is a neurologist who also confirms that he has seen this fighter before with a severe form of depression that literally paralyzes him. He says that he was prescribed strong antidepressants, but apparently this is a recurring situation.

"Send my photo to Putin directly!"

Then the corridor is filled with a whole cavalcade of soldiers. Some with light injuries, some with concussions. The doctors scatter down the corridor. They inquire about what hurts. Someone's arm is bandaged, someone's leg is bandaged.

"Do you have a concussion?" a medic asks the man leaning against the wall.

"Concussion is not quite the right word," the man answers.

His pants are covered in blood.

Seeing the camera, he adds: "You can send my photo to Putin right away, so he knows I'll be back. Write it down and send it directly to Moscow."

The door opens again. The wounded man is being carried on a stretcher. Tokarchuk runs. The soldier has something wrong with his leg.

"Don't you have any painkillers?" he asks pleadingly.

"I'm giving you an injection, catboy. By the way, you have a slight fracture." Tokarchuk feels the leg, states that the fracture is closed and he will apply a splint.

"Check the other leggie"

In a little while, another seriously wounded man is brought in. He is missing several toes. The man is placed on a table in the "Shock Room 2". Blood is quickly trickling down the white bedding. He is unconscious.

Some medics rinse the wounds and wrap them with a clean bandage. Others make a puncture near the neck and inject medicine. A blood pressure monitor is placed on his sooty black arm.

"Check the other leggie," Tokarchuk tells his colleagues after they have bandaged the wounded man.

And this diminutive "leggie" makes my heart clench. Meanwhile, the doctor himself begins to do an ultrasound. The second leg is also bandaged.

Then, under Tokarchuk's supervision, a young volunteer of the First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, Olena, with the call sign “Taro”, makes an incision under the soldier's armpit.

"Here you cut, here you slowly press, come on, come on, you're doing great," Tokarchuk encourages his younger colleague.

This manipulation is called "drainage of the pleural cavity".

From here, the wounded man will be taken to a hospital in Slovyansk. His cut clothes will be sorted. All pockets will be thoroughly checked. If they find ammunition or grenades, they will take them away. While personal belongings — money, phones, icons, photos, documents — will be put in a transparent bag with the soldier's name on it and sent with him.

Tattered clothes are packed into large black bags and taken outside. Near the entrance to the unit, a pile of black bags filled with the cut shoes and clothes of the wounded, as well as rags soaked in their blood, has already formed.

With some of the wounded taken to hospitals and others still to be brought in from point zero, the stabilization unit has a moment of calm.

The clock reads well after midnight. Oleh Tokarchuk connects his phone to a portable speaker and sings along at the top of his voice: "Dance with me slowly, let the crazy world wait," and does not hide his delight.

Amid the gurneys, stretchers and wheelchairs, Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital volunteer Olena Shkolna, call sign "Taro," whom he taught a few hours ago to do pleural drainage, dances with Lera from the 54th Brigade.

And if you close your eyes, you can imagine for a moment a "crazy world" in a different setting. A world without the war and the Russians who started it.