3 June – form the handwritten notes of Lisa Robinson

I am sitting in a worn office chair in the Free Zone 110 Hospital. Kelly is lying on one of fifteen beds in the long, narrow ward. Her dear, little face is pinched and white against the slightly whiter pillowcase and her soft moans blend in with the coughs, wails and cries of the fourteen other small children in the room.

My choices were limited this morning. I either skipped going for the job interview I had finally managed to wrangle and brought her here, or risked coming back to a dead child. Overnight, Kelly’s temperature had climbed steadily and, despite my lying her on the floor of the bathroom and filling the room with steam from the hot water tap in the shower, her cough had worsened, booming in her chest, and making her frail body shake with effort.

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