Children's Hospital in ruins: The heartbreak of another Kyiv attack

Someone was screaming that the children had survived. But Oksana didn't believe it. She stood before the toxicology ward, howling in pain. From the window, a body was hanging out. Somewhere down there, under the rubble, was her daughter.

The night was stuffy and sticky, making it hard to sleep. When the sirens wailed in the early morning, Anna Brudna woke up immediately.

She looked at the clock on her phone: it was about 9:30 PM. A coincidence? They do it on purpose! They're tormenting us. It's the time of the deepest sleep and regeneration, and fighter jets take off somewhere at an airport in Murmansk or some other Saratov. Maybe MiG-31, or maybe Tu-95. They have hundreds of them, just like rockets and bombs. But they don't always fire them. They circle near the border until they almost run out of fuel. And the entire map of Ukraine is red from alarms.

The sirens wail. It supposedly lasts only seven seconds but feels like at least a quarter of an hour. The sound is uniform and paralyzing. It sends chills down your spine. You want to get up and run. But where? To a musty basement? To the hallway, hide behind a double wall? In a few hours, it'll be time to get up. No, it's better to turn to the other side and fall into a restless, shallow sleep.

Anna knows it's going to be an intense day. Mondays in the bone marrow transplant ward at Ohmatdyt, Ukraine's largest children's hospital, are always like that.

Test results for the patients will be available soon. They need to be analyzed and treatments adjusted. This week, all hands on deck. Four transplants are scheduled. Sergey, a 6-year-old patient of Anna's with diagnosed leukemia, is also waiting for surgery.

She disinfects her hands before Anna enters his room and puts on a new cap, gown, and mask. Sergey has no immunity; any infection is a mortal threat. Therefore, his room is sterile, and the humidity and air temperature are appropriately regulated.

There's a small command center by the bed. Infusion pumps, a screen, and equipment continuously monitor saturation, blood pressure, and body temperature. The room is modern, with new colorful furniture, a bed for a parent, a private bathroom, and a large window with a view of Kyiv.

A lot of bad things can be said about Ukrainian healthcare. The hospitals are underfunded, with scary, dirty corridors lacking medications and equipment. But Ohmatdyt is an exception on a national scale. It is like a town composed of dozens of buildings where 18,000 children are treated annually, the most severe cases from all over Ukraine.

In 2019, a new building was opened. Five oncology departments, hematology, diagnostics, and ten operating rooms. Everything is up to "Eurostandard," as they say in Ukraine. European, modern, friendly.

In the morning, the sleep-deprived city goes to work. The sun is mercilessly hot, and the air smells of melting asphalt. Crowds fill the metro and spill out at bus stops.

Oksana, a short brunette with an oval face, stands out among this sea of people. She rushes to the toxicology ward. She wants to get there before seven to kiss her daughter before the nurses take her for dialysis.

Two years ago, Solomiya was diagnosed with kidney failure, a terminal stage. Since then, she has practically not left the grounds of Ohmatdyt.

"It's our 'home 2.' That's what we call it," Oksana says.

Dialysis will last four hours, so mothers go for coffee at the nearest kiosk. Some have been stuck in the hospital for years. They are bonded like family.

At 4:52 AM, the sirens wail again. Some children go to shelters. Others can't because they're bedridden in intensive care. Operations are ongoing in four rooms. Children on dialysis are in the toxicology ward.

Also, in Anna's ward, most patients shouldn't leave their sterile rooms. Only once did the hospital administration order a full evacuation. Anna can't even remember when exactly it was. "Sometime in the first weeks of the invasion." Because that time all blended.

The staff lived in the hospital because moving around the city was risky. Every day, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, burns, and amputations came to the trauma ward. Parents were killed, and children were in critical condition. Ohmatdyt accepted everyone.

In the oncology department, the mood was gloomy. How long would they be able to treat the children? Have power? Medications? The rockets were falling on Kyiv. The hospital walls were shaking. During one such attack, the entire ward went to the basement. A closed space, dozens of crammed people, and children without immunity, balancing between life and death.

After that, many children had complications caused by infections. Life-threatening conditions. Now, parents prefer not to risk it. The infection seems like a more tangible threat than a missile strike. And many, like Oksana, believe deep down that a children's hospital can't be a target. They feel safe in Ohmatdyt.

Anna has no such illusions. She painfully experienced the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol. Then, the death of her colleague, Oksana Leontieva. During a missile attack in October 2022, her car burned in the middle of the road in central Kyiv. Her 7-year-old son still believes his mom will come home after the war.

The sirens wail, and Anna tries to ignore them. She sits at her desk in the doctor's room, studying test results.

One of the doctors in the room is visibly nervous. She urges everyone to go to the hallway away from the windows, but no one moves. Sometimes, the alarms repeat six times a day. When would they have time to treat?

But the doctor doesn't give up. She tracks the attack's progress on Telegram channels: planes have taken off. The first group of missiles is heading towards the Chernihiv region. A few minutes later, another group entered Ukrainian airspace from the south. More planes are in the air. Missiles from the north are changing their flight trajectory. It's a massive attack on Kyiv. Estimated impact time: eight minutes.

Tension fills the room. From the outside, dull thuds are heard. The air defense is at work. One, two, three missiles. A powerful explosion, something hit nearby. Windows shake, and smoke columns rise over central Kyiv. Seconds away from tragedy.

Oksana saw the frightened face of a nurse and immediately understood: something's wrong. She looked into every room, asking them to go to the shelter as quickly as possible.

"What about the children?"

"The doctors are just going down to them."

The toxicology ward is an old, three-story brick building. Doctors hesitate to leave their room at the top—work, test results. A 30-year-old nephrologist, Svitlana Lukiyanczyk, had just returned from vacation. She's trying to catch up.

When the first explosions are heard, she quickly goes to the children. She faces a difficult choice: interrupt the dialysis, risk their health, or ignore the wailing alarm.

Oksana, along with other parents, goes down to the basement. Everyone answers calls from home: "Are you okay?" Before she can respond, Oksana hears a whisper. Fractions of a second, a dry crack, a powerful shockwave. It's dark, everything is spinning, and rubble falls on her head. It's hard to breathe; the basement is filled with thick dust and smoke. It smells of rocket fuel.

Someone shines a phone light. Oksana sees she's buried in rubble up to her knees. Her head is spinning. She doesn't think clearly, but instinct drives her to the exit. Outside, smoke and dust. People are running in panic. A young woman with a bloody child in her arms. Someone is screaming terribly.

Oksana looks at the toxicology building and finally realizes what has happened. She wails in pain. Medicines and torn mattresses on which children slept are scattered everywhere. The part of the building where the doctors' room was, and below it the dialysis room, is now a pile of bricks. A body is hanging from the window. Thin, pale hands hanging limply.

Oksana wants to get inside, but the entrances are blocked by rubble. She tries to climb through the window but cannot. She screams in helplessness. She circles the building and comes back to the same place. Bystanders appear. Someone carries a ladder. Parents try to climb it, but the ladder slips, nearly toppling over. The sounds of approaching fire trucks and ambulances are everywhere.

Finally, Oksana gets inside. The body she saw from the window was the doctor, Svitlana Lukiyanczyk. Someone's trying to resuscitate her. However, the injuries are so extensive that even a tourniquet cannot be applied.

Someone shouts that all the children survived. But Oksana doesn't believe it. She watches as the doctor's body is covered with a blanket. Somewhere under the rubble is her Solomiya. She wails in pain.

Later, Anna will replay that moment hundreds of times in her mind. She only remembers the bang and everything spinning as if an earthquake had started. Then the film cuts off. The next image is a hallway, terrified children, weeping mothers, the ceiling on the floor, and bloody nurses.

All rooms were destroyed. Windows blown out by the shockwave fell on beds, infusion pumps, monitors, and everything sliced by shrapnel. Only one thought pulses in her mind: what next? Children with leukemia need constant medication. Antibiotics, antivirals, painkillers, fluids. Some should be having chemotherapy now, but their catheters are torn out. Every hour missed is a risk to their lives.

The elevators don't work. The evacuation is dramatic. The children can't go down on their own. Someone is vomiting. Someone has deep glass shard injuries. Someone can't stand on their own feet.

Minutes pass. Volunteers arrive in the building. They help carry the children and survivable IVs.

Other mothers help Oksana pull herself together: Solomiya has already been pulled out! They've taken her to the shelter in the cardiology ward.

Oksana runs. In the shelter, children cry, and nurses are injured. She checks every bed but can't find her daughter. Someone says to check the administrative building. All injured children have been taken there.

Running again. She immediately spots Solomiya. She's lying on a cot, with four paramedics standing over her. Her heart stops. Her daughter isn't moving.

Oksana runs closer. She sees her daughter's face, pale as chalk. She's covered in dust, with blood under her eye. Tears well up in Oksana's eyes. She's unable to speak. She laughs and cries. She's alive. It's a miracle!

Outside, it's like an anthill. Hundreds of ordinary people come to Ohmatdyt. They bring water, food, and sweets. They form human chains. Some pass supplies. Other bricks and debris. Bloodied doctors in gowns clear the rubble.

Other hospital directors quickly arrive at the scene. They will organize beds and transport for the most severe oncology patients in the next few hours.

Anna monitors Sergey's condition in the ambulance. His fate hangs in the balance. Will he catch an infection? Will he have the transplant? The boy feels terrible. He's nauseous and has a severe headache. Painkillers don't work.

In the city, the alarms wail again. Phones are red hot. Anna reads the news but can't believe it. Three hours after the attack on the children's hospital, the Russians destroyed a maternity hospital in Kyiv. There are dead and wounded.

The next morning, the city went to work. Crowds filled the metro and spilled out at bus stops. The sun was mercilessly hot. The air smelled of melting asphalt. As usual, but in a depressing silence. A choking sense of injustice. What now? A sharp reaction from the West? More weapons, Patriots? Or will it end in outrage?

Within a few hours, the Russians fired 40 missiles. They attacked Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, and Pokrovsk, killing 47 people, and nearly 200 were injured.

They destroyed apartment buildings, business centers, and two private clinics. They devastated an entire block near the crowded Lukianivka metro station.

One of the missiles hit directly in the toxicology ward where Oksana and Solomiya were. Anna's ward, located several hundred yards above, was shredded by shrapnel and the shockwave. Similarly, the children's surgery ward was damaged.

At the time of the strike, there were over 600 children in the hospital.

Solomiya keeps talking about that day. That she couldn't breathe, that there was rubble everywhere. She said that she was very scared when the ceiling crumbled. Oksana listens and realizes that the impossible happened. The dialysis machines saved the children. They're tall and heavy. They bore the falling rubble and slabs. The staff says they were undamaged. They will probably be reused. Sometime. Because the toxicology ward is not suitable for reconstruction. A modern building is to be built in its place.

Sergey's surgery and the other three patients went ahead. Miraculously, the cell bank was not damaged. Conversely, the laboratories didn't stop working even on the day of the attack. Anna and the other doctors received all test results on schedule.

"No one left their workplace; they just did what they had to do. That's why the children’s therapy was not interrupted," Anna says.

In three days, most of the rubble was removed. Broken windows were covered, and pieces of glass were swept away. In a week, the less affected wards took their patients back.

What next? Anna responds with stoic calm:

"Previously, the Russians attacked hospitals, shopping centers, and cultural centers many times. This time, it happened to us. This is the price of living in Ukraine. And I have to accept that it might happen again."