Bombs going off. Or artillery. Hard to tell. Still in the distance, but closer than they should have been. This is a damned hospital! But I hospital! Why is it a target? [Inserted sentence “Why is it a target?” okay?] But I know it’s because someone is probably on the roof shooting rockets at the Israeli positions. [I broke the paragraph here.]
There’s a military officer at the officer standing at the entrance to my room. He’s laughing. Why is he laughing? We’re going to die!
The ground shakes. Dust and scraps of ceiling tile fall around me and me, and someone is covering me with their body. Beeping sounds around me. Hands on my chest. Why are there hands on my chest? Have I been wounded? Am I dying?
I must have been sleeping. [I deleted this obvious sentence—okay?] The world is spinning a little when spinning when I opened my I open my eyes to see eyes and see [“open my eyes to see” (“to see” rather than “and see”) would imply that what the narrator sees is the purpose of his opening his eyes, clearly not your intent] a handful of people in scrubs working around me. A beeping sound has invaded my ears and lodges itself into my brain.
“Welcome back, Mr. Bishara!” says a young man a little too loudly as he withdraws his hand from my chest. Must have He must have been the person covering me in my dream.
I grunt. It’s the only communication I can manage.
“Ok, “Okay, Mr. Bishara,” says the attending physician, “your Bishara.” The female voice comes from behind my head. “Your lungs gave out on us for a few minutes and minutes, and your heart is really stressed. Can you take stressed.” I gather that the voice belongs to the attending physician. “Can you take a deep breath for me?” [Suggested revision because later we learn that the narrator doesn’t “have the energy to turn [his] head to look at her” and cannot “determine how concerned she is”]
I try to make my lungs obey.
The young man who was so boisterous a few seconds before seconds ago [“before” would have been appropriate had the story been written in past tense] now looks with deep concern at my doctor. [Consider adding a sentence here to actually describe in detail his look of “deep concern.” (Furrowed brow? Intensity of eyes toward where the female voice comes from? A specific description of his face)] I don’t have the energy to turn my head to look at her, so I look at him to see how continue looking at him to determine how concerned she is. I’ve learned this trick in my 57 years my fifty-seven years in and out of hospitals. [Here we learn that the narrator has been regularly hospitalized since he was a baby.] If the residents and students are concerned, they’ll look at the attending doctor, and if they calm down, it’s because the attending is in control.
Sadly, it doesn’t appear that my doctor is in control. I’m not sure why that surprises me. I’ve known I known that I was dying for a long time and getting closer by the minute. time, that I’ve been slipping ever closer to death by the minute. [(1) “for a long time and getting closer by the minute” is garbled syntax; you mean that the narrator himself is “getting closer [to death] by the minute,” but the phrase can be misread that “getting closer” somehow (absurdly) extends “a long time”; (2) the “that” inserted near the beginning of the sentence is for parallelism with the second “that” in the syntax repair (parallelism is a rhetorical device to smooth, and speed, the communication between writer and reader, or speaker and listener); “slipping” is more descriptive than the vague “getting”] Guess I’m just not ready to go yet.
“He’s stable,” I hear the doctor say. “Increase rounds to every half hour.”
“ICU?” asks the young man.
I don’t hear her say any words, but she must have shot the idea down because the boy’s shoulders visibly slump. [“the boy’s shoulders” renders “the young man” considerably younger in the reader’s imagination; it diminishes the doctor’s assistant, even turns him into a child, and makes us wonder why he is so juvenile (and thereby perhaps distracting us from the narrative by introducing a secondary plot thread). But maybe this is deliberate on your part? The assistant “hasn’t seen enough death yet” (and he’s certainly not “a resident” yet). If you don’t want to make him quite so juvenile, though, consider changing “the boy’s shoulders” to “his shoulders.”] He hasn’t seen enough death yet. By the time he’s a resident, By the time he’s finished with his residency, he’ll have better control of his body language. I want to reach out to him and let him to let him know [“to let him know” (rather than “and let him know”) appropriately implies that letting the young man know something is the purpose of the narrator wanting to reach out] that it’s ok – that [CMoS stipulates em dashes (—) rather than en dashes (–) here, with no spaces surrounding them] it’s okay—that this is normal – but normal—but I don’t have the energy to move.
The doctor touches my right shoulder and says, “I’ll shoulder. “I’ll check on you in a little bit. Hang in little bit,” she says. [Consider interrupting he speech right here, describing something like the following: She has moved around where I can see her. Then in a separate paragraph, describe her appearance: how tall she is, how old she seems, other distinguishing features, some quirky mannerism, and something that firmly establishes that she is an Israeli. Then: She focuses her eyes on me, demanding my full attention (which has been wandering) and compliance. Then resume her speech.] “Hang in there. I have I’ll have some questions for you.”
Damnedest thing happened as soon as they left. I suddenly wanted to make it to the to last until the next time my doctor came by. [Or “survive until”? The suggested revision (more than the rather flippant “make it to”) emphasizes how close the narrator is to death.]
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