Sin Fronteras Spring 2017 Sin Fronteras Spring 2017 | Page 60

The Day of the Atom
Juan Pablo Chavez

I remember that day as if it was yesterday. It was April 26th, 1986 and
the Chernobyl disaster had just happened. A long time has passed now,
and I have learned the reason why the accident happened. The government
tried to hide the truth from us, the lab scientists were executing a power
failure stress test and they turned off the safety systems, a grave mistake
that would cost everyone dearly. Suddenly, with the safety systems off,
nobody was quick enough to stop the uncontrolled, utter and complete
destruction that took hundreds of lives with it. The explosion spread
radioactive isotopes for nine days into the atmosphere. Radiation spread
through the air after being released in the explosion. With all of this material
then going out to fall out on much of the surface of the western USSR and
Europe.

I remember the last time I saw my husband in a healthy condition,
before he went on to evacuate the city. He had ensured that I was safe
before going about his job as a police officer. I remember that all of us
wanted answers, but the government kept hiding them from us, the police,
and from all the emergency services.

After one month of being away, the love of my life arrived to the
town I was in, but from the moment I first saw him I knew there was
something wrong with him. He always tried to be strong for me, but when
he came to visit me, he collapsed on the floor. There was blood coming
out of his mouth and nose and I just stood there in horror, watching as
they took him away to the hospital. When I visited him in the hospital,
I was told he received too much radiation and therefore developed an
extremely aggressive cancer that had spread through most of his body.
The look on my husband’s face said it all. He had the look of a man who
had gone through hell. A look of a man who had lost his will to live. His
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black eyes no longer showed the strength and hope they once did. The
look he gave to me was the one of a dying man. The radiation had given
him cancer and the diagnose only gave him a couple of months to live. He
said he wanted to end his life. I changed his mind by giving him the news
that I was pregnant, hoping he would live long enough to meet the baby.
Unfortunately, he died in the span of three months, trying to hold on to
life. I remember I cried all night in the hospital, my life was utterly ruined
and things just kept getting worse. Looking at myself in the bathroom, I
kept screaming and punching the glass until I had blood coming from my
hands. The cracked glass reflected a broken woman, completely lost in life.

After I got my bearings again, I walked out of the hospital and a
seemingly never-ending rain started. The morning after, I noticed the
clouds were very dark and that the droplets were black and after the rain
ended, there was dust that circled the town for weeks. The government
always told us not to worry and to carry on. But what me and another
150,000 pregnant woman of the surrounding areas didn’t know at the
time was that we were being exposed to radioactive fallout through the
rain and dust. The day of my child’s birth came, and it could have easily
been the saddest day of my life. The doctor knew there was something off
about my baby and, as soon as the baby was born, he gave it to me. As I
held my baby in my arms and looked down on him, there was an ache in
my heart. With tears in my eyes I looked at my baby’s disfigured body, his
black eyes staring back at me. The stare of my baby quickly turned very
similar to the one of my husband right before he died. I gave the doctor
the lifeless body of my child back, looking into the skies and thinking, “I’m
ready to die now”.
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