"We were shocked when we saw through the wound how the girl’s heart was beating"

He was rescuing women after the explosion of the maternity hospital. Through an open wound from the fragments, he saw how a seven-year-old girl’s heart was beating. Hoping to help, he resuscitated an already dead 16-year-old boy. And once he almost got under direct tank fire.

Serhiy Chernobryvets, an emergency medical service paramedic from Mariupol, came to the hospital on the first day of the war and worked 22 days in a row.

I worked as an emergency medical assistant at the emergency medical service, and 24 February was my day-off after a 24-hour work shift. However, in the morning I started receiving phone calls from my friends from various places. At first, I did not pick up the phone, as I always have some rest [after a work shift], but then I realized that something was wrong.

I answered the phone. My friend Kyryl called me, “Well, Serhiy, the war has begun.” At first I thought, “Kyryl, what are you talking about? What do you mean?” Well, I said that everything was fine with me. He said, “Switch everything [TV or gadgets] on.” Well, I switched on and saw that shelling began on military targets. I realized that was it.

I understood for myself that it would be so, and then the morning came. I went out to the food store to buy some food to take with me to my work, and saw that there was a big panic around. People were buying everything and there were huge queues at Privatbank. Well, I did not succumb to that [panic].

I thought that nothing serious would happen, and that I would not follow that line, like everyone did. I bought what I needed, well, what I usually buy, and called my management at work. I said that I would come to work, given the situation, and asked if they were OK with it. They said, “We don’t have any objections. Of course, come over, we will be glad to see you.” Well, I packed up and went to work. Basically, then we already heard some explosions and popping sounds, everything like that, somewhere outside the city.

We all were in a positive mood at our emergency medical aid station. We believe in the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine), everything will be fine, we will win, they will not enter the city. This was our initial setup, so to speak – everyone was in a positive mood. We were holding on, and everyone made a decision for themselves that we would remain at the medical station.

I remember the beginning, remember my first wounded patient. I did not work alone that day. I was with a friend and colleague Anton Shaulskyi. Unfortunately, he still remained there. He did not have the possibility to leave due to the situation. Well, we worked together with him that day and we got a call – a wounded patient. We went there and picked up a man. He was about 45 years old. He had a head injury and his arm was injured too. He was not really a cooperative patient for us, but we learned something from what we could ask him, what we were able to find out.

That he was at home watching TV and their house was hit by shelling. So he was the first victim, the first one we picked up. Then closer to the night, some people were evacuated from the left-bank part of the city. They were taken closer to Prymorskyi district. There are some sanatoriums and recreation facilities, so people were accommodated there, let’s say, for some time. There were some intra-city IDPs, so to say. If we can call them that way, or I don’t know how to call it. We went there, as some people needed help. There were no people with injuries there. Well, just some people were in stressful conditions, so to say.

Further, the situation became more and more tense. Explosions and popping sounds were heard closer and closer. But I will speak for myself. In fact, I fully believed that our uniforms and all medical institutions, broadly speaking, that we were all under some protection. I thought that according to all conventions, according to all the rules of war, and so on and so forth; I believed that no one would touch doctors or paramedics, because doctors are doctors. We are supposed to rescue everyone, so to speak. But then, in reality, it all turned out to be wrong. Later on, the shelling was closer and closer.

I remember 1 March. It really stuck in our memory. The area near Kirova Square came under shelling. We were at the medical station when some truck pulled up. It was just a truck, we could not even tell what sort of truck it was. We thought that they brought us water, as a similar truck normally delivered water to the medical station. There was no central water supply by that time.

We went out, young guys... Well, we were a group of young guys there, all of us self-motivated emergency aid workers. I think all of us came because it was our duty. And we saw it. That was the very first such critical case for us when we needed to quickly make a decision and act. The guys quickly rushed into the truck’s body and began to quickly stop the patients’ bleeding. We were on standby and stepped in immediately. All this happened in just five minutes. In about five minutes, we provided first aid to people, stopped the bleeding, arranged venous access, anesthetized the patients and put them into vehicles. Next, we all rushed to the regional hospital. I mean, everything was very fast.

We did not have any messing up; no one of us got lost or confused in any step we took. We swung into action promptly, immediately. We brought them to the regional hospital. Staff there did not expect this either – I mean, the fact that such a number of patients would be delivered and all of them seriously wounded. Well, they also coped with it, basically. I remember that I then found out that those people who were brought there survived. All of them survived.

We all held on; everyone supported each other and so on. We addressed the problem with food by deciding that everyone would go home and bring everything, all food that they had at home. It was when the city was not yet under shellfire, when everything was still outside the city. There was no electricity then. The food supplies included meat, some preserves, some canned food, cereals and porridges. Everyone brought whatever he or she could. We brought everything, as we did not know how long we would live at the medical aid station. We took all the food to a separate room and made some kind of a small warehouse. Then we decided on our meal plan based on that.

Then, there was another case that stuck in my memory most of all. It was a case of a wounded seven-year-old girl who was brought to the station. She was brought in a passenger car by either her parents or some acquaintances. It was a difficult case, as everyone was screaming and bustling... We immediately got into the car. She was lying in the back seat on her tummy. A seven-year-old girl.

We just saw it and all of us froze for a moment. We saw it and had a five-second stupor. But how and what... Certainly, it was hard for us to see it – that she was alive and her heart was beating through that open wound. Well, I remember Oleksandr Konovalov was the most senior in the team then. He said, “Ok, guys, let’s get to work.” And that’s it. Everyone swung into action. Some of us were stopping the bleeding and others were dealing with the wound.

Someone was putting the venous access and someone was anesthetizing the patient. That is, everyone knew their job, and this, basically, saved her. She is alive, by the way. Everything is fine with her. I even saw her, I visited her in the hospital later and she handed over a drawing. We got no other calls, except for the wounded, traumatic amputations, and shrapnel wounds. All our other calls were of this kind.

We went to patients on calls. As for the calls, the Emergency Service officers brought us a radio and they transmitted us information over the radio. They informed us about the places where the wounded needed our help. The second option was when people came to the station themselves by their cars and brought the wounded. We provided medical aid on site and then sent people to the hospital. And the third option was that some people came on foot, those who could come, and said that in some particular area, at some address, the wounded were lying. Then we had to go and pick them up. Those were the three options.

Well, in fact, we can call it word of mouth, when someone passed it on to someone else and everything came to us along that chain. There was a case when I lost control. I came out of the regional hospital’s building. I was standing near the reception department when a red passenger car drove up. A man ran out of it and said, “I have wounded people with me.” I said, I shouted, “Paramedics from the reception department, come over here!” Because I was standing alone and had no medicines with me, nothing. I said, “Well, open the car.” He opened the car trunk and I saw two wounded boys, both about 16 years old. One of them was a son of the man who brought them, and the other one was his son’s friend. One was conscious and the other one was unconscious. The paramedics ran out of the reception department. The one who was conscious was taken away immediately.

The second one was taken out of the car and I started the resuscitation. That is, I was resuscitating him, but he, in fact, did not have two of his limbs. Those were traumatic amputations and there were no tourniquets applied. I understood this. Well, I don’t know why… I somehow understood that I needed to resuscitate him. I was resuscitating him; we were trying to return him to consciousness. I shouted asking to bring a defibrillator, an Ambu-bag, as we need to resuscitate the boy.

Well, I kind of understood in my soul and in my mind that he was dead, but I physically could not stop resuscitating him. Then my colleague from the ambulance service came up and said to me, “That’s it. You can stop it.” But I still continued. Well, then he pulled me away and said, “That’s it, he was brought already like that, you can’t do anything.”

I said, “Well, let’s try more.” I went off and then I just had some kind of decline or breakdown. I felt complete emptiness. The fact was that, damn it, the boy was just 16 years old. He had his whole life ahead of him. He could build any plans for himself, and then this just happened to him out of nothing, and he just, well ... And his dad was standing outside. He came up to me and asked, “Well, how is it?” I did not know what to say to him. What should I tell him... I was just confused then, and I said quite roughly, “Go to the reception department.

The doctors there are responsible for him, I am not...” He went off there, and then I simply thought that I did not know what to do. That’s what it was.

Once we came to a city district that was under shellfire previously and an elderly man there came up to me and said, “A girl was wounded there.” I received the information and I ran there.

A girl was lying on the pavement, covered with a white bed sheet, a woman standing near to her. I asked, “What’s happened here?” She said, “I don’t know.” I raised the edge of the bed sheet and saw a girl, about 24 years old, or around 25 years old. I tried to check her pulse, but she was already cold. She was dead. I asked, “Is she your acquaintance?” She said, “She is my daughter.” And she also asked, “What should I do now?” I was standing there realising that she expected me to tell her some next steps or what to do with the body, and so on. I did not know what to say. I simply did not know what to say to her. And you know, I thought if I now tell her to hold on, what will it give her? My “hold on” words would give her nothing.

We just stood there for some two minutes in silence. I covered the body again, just said sorry to the woman and left. It was the time when the city’s residential areas were under shellfire. By that time, almost everywhere things were not very good, so to speak. There was a case when we needed to take a wounded patient from the first medical aid hospital (BSMP) to another hospital. We put the patient in the vehicle and headed off. We were driving along our Myru Avenue when a tank appeared on the road crossing and turned its muzzle towards us. Well, a thought flashed through my mind for a second “that’s it, this is just the end.” Well, our driver turned sharply to the left, we made a U-turn, he floored the accelerator and we raced back. Well, for a second I thought that was the end.

The shelling of the maternity hospital was a similar case. It was very loud. We were quickly evacuating everyone. It so happened that I took only one girl. She was pregnant, on the 40th week, and she had two open fractures of her lower extremities. I also thought about this situation for a long time. If she was going to have a C-section, and she would deliver a child and, let’s hope, everything would be fine. But how she would spend her time with and care after the baby if she herself is a lying-down case for at least a year. She had two open fractures, it’s just very... These are some people whom I don’t know, but still I feel very [sorry] for everyone...

Speaking about our staff members, there was a situation when one driver finished his work shift and said, “I’ll go home, I need at least to feed the dog.” Everyone said, “Okay, we are waiting for you, come back.” An hour later, some civilians brought him in, as a shell struck into his house. He had an open fracture and some small shrapnel wounds all over his body.

I also had a case that some people condemn... Although, some doctors in this case say that I am a hero, and so on. But I never considered myself a hero. We just did our job. We had to do it. This was our duty. But speaking about that case, according to all the protocols a doctor should work only where it is safe. If he or she is a civilian [non-military] medical expert. However, these protocols are not designed for a situation when the whole city is an unsafe place, but you still need to save people.

A woman came over to the medical aid station and said, “My husband came under shellfire and got a head wound. Help me please.” She was standing, looking at me and crying. I said, “That’s it! Calm down. I’m going now, done. Let me just put on an armoured jacket and a helmet. I’ll go, don’t worry. You go back to him and I’ll come right away.” She said, “Okay.” They lived, basically, not far from our medical aid station. Maybe, one kilometre away, in a private houses’ sector. Well, I took my driver, Volodymyr Vitoshynskyi, with me. He is a great man. He is 65 years old and he is just a straight fire. He said, “We will go wherever you say.” I said, “Okay, let us go.”

We left the station and when we were some 200 metres away from that house, shelling started again. We came under that shellfire and it hit the house near which I was hiding. We kept our windows open so that we could hear well. It struck the house and it was destroyed. The explosion deafened us. I remember that moment when I had such a ringing in my ears. I felt completely lost, “Where, what and how to be.” Then all the sounds came back abruptly and it became very loud. My driver drove forward immediately. We left the shelling zone and stopped for a second to come to our senses.

I said, “We have a patient with a head wound there. Not an old man, quite a young man.” I thought it over for about a minute and made a decision. I said, “Well, let’s go. If we are lucky, we will break through and get there.” We went off and, thank God, we got through. The shelling ended. We did it very quickly... I just pick up the man; we also picked up his wife and rushed to the hospital. I was bandaging him, giving him first aid and doing all my medical manipulations in the vehicle on the way.

There was also a case, for which some paramedics, well not all of them, criticised us saying that we should not have gone there, in fact, since it was not safe there. Shelling, well, when the whole city is unsafe and you don’t know where you might be in a minute. I believed that some forces were helping us, so to speak. We realized that we needed to leave soon. I came up to our senior paramedic and said, “I need to get some sweets or something...” (my birthday is on 18 March). He said, “It’s ok, you’ll get it, don’t worry.” I said, “Well, okay.”

Then we got a call. It was a patient with a leg wound. Well, it was not far, basically. I said, “Well, I’ll go.” We knew from some rumours that the Russians were already in the city. Our guys did not want to go on calls anymore. It was clear, as everyone had girlfriends and wives. Safety mattered. I said, “I will go.” We left the station, drove some 200 meters and saw the checkpoint of the so-called Russian “little green men”.

They checked our documents. They asked and I also showed them my labour book (I had it with me). They did not understand the Ukrainian language. I just translated for them what was written there. They said, “Well, you can go, but there are more our checkpoints there. Well, okay.” That’s it. They let us through. That is, there were no deep checks and so on. We drove further, and most likely, the next checkpoint on the way was a “DPR” (the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic) checkpoint. We could tell by the dialect where the Russians were and where the “DPR” people were.

They ran out from the road crossing with machine guns, fired into the air and yelled, “Everyone lie down! Or we are going to shoot you!” We jumped out and fell down on the ground, without thinking long. They came up to us and pointed their machine guns in our back, that’s all. “Who are you and where are you going?” And other similar questions. We were trying to explain that their checkpoint, the one behind us, let us through without any problems. We are ordinary paramedics, and everything is fine. Well, when you have a machine gun poked in your back, you don’t know what people have in their mind.

Then they ordered us to stand up. They checked all our documents again... The distance between us and them was like now between you and me, and when a man was checking the documents, he said, “Step away from me. Why are you standing so close.” I said, “But there are two meters between us.” And he replied, “I don’t care.” He then checked the documents, gave them back to us and said, “I can shoot you down now and will get away with it, believe me.” I said, “Good, and what’s next?” He answered, “Nothing! Turn around and get out of here to where you came from.” I returned and told my people, “Well, that’s all.

We can get into a very bad situation. Guys, we need to think what to do.” We advised everyone who was at the medical aid station, who was with us, that they should try to leave.

We did not really have a supply of medicines, and basically, we were not allowed to leave. How could we be helping there? Just sit and wait for something?

Some people who knew everything the way it was, with whom we were in contact, and we, all of us believed that they [the enemy] would soon be driven away from everyone. And then some of those people quickly shifted their ground and began to give some “nice’ interviews saying that some cases were played out, that something was not the case. That Ukrainian soldiers took away food supplies, and similar stuff. That is, they began to talk such a bullshit...

You know how it was. And you’re talking such a nonsense on camera!” They could say, “I will not say anything. Look for someone else.” There was one nurse there, who is from the regional hospital and to whom my friend Oleksandr Konovalov brought a wounded girl. The one that was resuscitated. I think you saw the video. The nurse came out then and said that it was all faked, for Western countries, to show that Russia is so bad. “But I’m a nurse, I was there. I know that she was already dead when they brought her.” And that’s it.

“It was all feigned, and those paramedics from the ambulance… They were asked to…” And so on. Well, for some reason, when my colleague Oleksandr came back from this call, he was so stressed. He sobbed, poor thing, that this girl, this child... And you, damn it, dare talk this bullshit! Although we all know her. She was not even close there. This nurse just was not there on site.

Well, for me they are traitors, for me they are the real traitors of medical profession, of their cause. This is very bad. As we say among ourselves, as soon as it is liberated, yes, as soon as Mariupol is liberated, we will all leave here. We are all spread across different cities, but we will all come back. All the guys, we text each other, as soon as it is liberated, we will go back to clean and rebuild everything. We will return, we want to return.

This is our home. Well, we are in Ukraine now and everything is fine. We got a lot of help, in many ways. We were well received, but we are still longing to go home.