Balad hospital workers cope with the pain of wounded children

Five-year-old Sajad was taking a short ride with his grandfather when a roadside bomb exploded. The boy's lower body was burned and his left leg was smashed, chunks of it sheared away in the blast. "I could see the bone," said his father, Hani Shaker Mahmod, who pulled his son from the burning car with the help of his wife. "There were burns and blood everywhere." Capt. Michelle Marino, a pediatric anesthesiologist, was part of a team that recently treated Sajad following the Jan. 24 blast. The Air Force Theater Hospital, where Marino works, was set up to stabilize injured troops before they could be airlifted elsewhere. It was not designed for children, and though hundreds have arrived in recent years–many of them mangled in bombings–supplies to treat them remain limited when compared to a major U.S. hospital. So the doctors improvise, figuring ways and fashioning devices to save their small patients.