The Phone Call

Hillary's phone call may come at three in the morning, mine came a little after seven.
Louise called from Denmark to tell me that Benjamin, her brother and my nephew, was in a hospital in Afghanistan, having been hit by a bomb.
She was not clear how it happened, only that they were removing shrapnels from face and body and that he was alive. Still. And that he would be back in Denmark in a couple of days, transferred to some hospital for further and, one imagines, extensive care.
And that brought back to mind a thing I saw on the news a couple of days back, where the Barbie doll announcer chirpily told us that the building we just saw imploding on the screen, a vast building, used to be a hospital and that now, and here she could barely contain her enthusiasm, on this now vacant site, a stadium was to be built.
I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking that a stadium trumps a hospital; the saving of lives and treating of diseases is less important than the business of sports.
And now with my nephew going into a hospital, another victim of this groundless war, I cannot help but wonder how a stadium could ever, ever replace a hospital.
Ever.