The young girl was walking with difficulty, gasping in the snowy courtyard of the hospital in the city of Serres in Macedonia. She was completely alone, and as the cold was biting, it had almost paralyzed her. The night, a frozen embrace, had begun to tighten around her more and more. But she endured. She had to endure. And if she didn’t owe it to herself, she owed it to someone else… Otherwise, she would have given up long ago.
She pulled her right hand over her huge belly and dragged it down until her frozen fingers clung to her left hand, trying to hold back the baby that was coming. Blood was running from her feet, dripping and staining the snow-white ground, leaving traces of a red stream along with her footprints.
She stopped in the middle of the yard and looked at the gray mass of the building. She had almost arrived. She had made it. Fifty more steps and she would be inside. She wiped the tears that were running uncontrollably down her waxy yet so fresh face. She was about sixteen years old. A grimace of pain carved a wrinkle between her eyebrows, but she didn’t utter a sound. She bit her bruised lips until they bled and dragged her steps forward, while the red stains behind her grew larger and thicker.
Five minutes later she opened the main door of the building and went inside. Before saying a word, she collapsed on her back on the concrete floor in front of the astonished eyes of a nurse who was passing by at that moment. The nurse first saw the fallen body, then the huge belly, and then the blood running between the open legs that had already formed a small red pool.
She let out a loud scream that was heard all the way to the patients’ rooms on the first floor.