Amid the utter chaos of the first 24 hours of October 7, as the corridors of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba were continuously filled with bloodied stretchers, another group of wounded soldiers was rushed inside.
Medical teams raced to the wounded, among them Noam, a 23-year-old Golani soldier whose left leg was severely injured and bleeding heavily.
Noam was wounded during a heroic battle at the Magen-Alumim military base. As he was hurriedly carried down the corridor on a stretcher, his father, Avraham, was standing there. Until that moment, Avraham had not known what had happened to his son amid the inferno.
The hospital’s security cameras captured the emotional encounter: a father recognizing his son on the stretcher, running toward him and managing to give him a quick kiss filled with love and concern before the medical teams rushed onward. Avraham stayed by Noam’s side, accompanying him to the entrance of the trauma room, where Dr. Uri Galanta, director of the Internal Medicine Intensive Care Unit, received him.
Outside the trauma room, family members gathered, waiting anxiously for every fragment of information.
“I remember how much hope there was that perhaps the leg could be saved," Dr. Galanta recalls of those dramatic moments that morning. “Very quickly came the realization - and the family’s devastating understanding of what was going to happen to their son. At the same time, we tried to put things into perspective and tell them: He is alive. He will live without a leg - but he is alive."