Perhaps this IS a true story. Perhaps it isn't. Only she knows.There was a nurse that traveled to many countries. It didn't pay as much as she would have made here in the United States but it made her feel she mattered. She was able to HELP people, really help. Her passport was full of stamps. Countries that not many people had ever visited. Would ever want to visit. A few years ago, she went with a medical team to Chechnya. It was a very small team. A doctor, another nurse, an interpreter and a body guard. They were one of the very last of any Americans or Europeans allowed into that sad, desolate country. It was winter and the roads were filled with craters. Craters from explosions. The trees were gone. The birds were gone. It was if NOTHING could survive there. The teams would travel by jeep to scenes of horror. The Russians had invaded and some Chechnyan rebels were trying thier hardest to keep out the Russians. There was brutality. Unlike anything that she had ever seen. Dead children. Men that had been blinded. Intentially. Women that had been raped. They would sit around a fire at night and listen to the wolves howling in the mountains and they would light the fires higher. She was cold and she carried a Makarov pistol. Healing hands holding a killing machine. One night she went to a nearby village and delivered a baby. The baby lived. The mother gave her a horsehair bracelet as thanks. It is one of her most treasured possessions. She would help the doctor amputate legs and feet and arms. Landmines and bullets know no boundries. They would pile them in a heap outside the tent until they had time to burn them. There is NO smell like flesh burning. NO sound like the explosions that are taking lives. They lived with the illusion that the Red Cross on the jeep would keep them safe. Keep them alive. Maybe it did. The one thing that kept her sane was thinking of the man that she loved. The man that waited for her. The man that she missed terribly. She yearned to touch him. She wanted to have his child. She loved him. One evening the team was in Grozny, the capital. Grozny is a Russian word that means cruel. There was very little, sporadic electricity. The walked by an old hotel that had been bombed and she shone her flashlight into the hole where the wall had been. There was a piano in the corner. It was piled high with debris but she cleared it off. She sat down and played "For you". She always thought that it was one of the MOST beautiful love songs that she had ever heard. She played very softly at first. They noticed that people were filing in. Listening. Then the soldiers came in. They listened as well so she played louder. No one but her and the American Doctor understood the words. She sang them to the man that she loved so much. The man that was an ocean away. A lifetime away. The only sounds in that cold lobby of that bombed motel were sniffling. The only sight, the glow of cigarette ashes from the soldiers smokes. She finished playing and there was silence. People shuffled out. Afraid again. Looking for a place to sleep. BUT... For a very brief time in a country filled with death and sadness, There had been music. There had been hope. She came home to the man. She loved him desperately. She sometimes loves him still. She had his child but he left. Sometimes though, after all this time...she can hear the words to this song and remember. Remember when she was part of a moment and part of a love that didn't last. And she cries.