Seema kneeled to eye level and took the old lady’s hand in her own to calm her; the pair bathed in a single beam of light that illuminated Seema’s strawberry blond hair – poking out from underneath her ballistic helmet like a halo – amidst the darkness and despair of the woman’s cluttered home.
The woman, Alexandra, was having a heart attack. Seema had to immediately convince her to take medicine to slow the onset of symptoms and then to head to the nearest hospital for proper care— a move the woman and her husband had avoided for 19 months as their front-line town, Sivers'k, came under constant shelling from nearby Russian forces. Alexandra was disoriented and fearful, unable to stop crying and nervously laughing before bursting into tears again.
