More than three decades ago, long before he was the Israel Prize laureate of today, renowned Hadassah trauma specialist Prof. Avi Rivkind saved Gabi Elbaz’s life after she was critically injured in a terror attack. Fast forward 32 years, and today both patient and physician are professors at Hadassah — saving lives!

In August 1995, a suicide bomber detonated a massive explosive device, killing five people and injuring one hundred. A young woman — Gabi Elbaz — was one of those critically wounded in one of the worst terror attacks Jerusalem had known.

Gabi was so severely injured that first responders thought there was no point in taking her to the hospital. In fact, she heard the rescue forces saying: “She’s already dead, there’s nothing to fight for.”

At the very last moment, they detected a faint sign of life. She was evacuated to Hadassah, where a large medical team fought for her life and performed a firstofitskind surgery that saved her.

Prof. Avi Rivkind led the team and fought for her life in every possible way. He promised her family, who sat outside the operating room shattered emotionally: “She will not die. We will fight for her.”

Today, Prof. Gabi Elbaz is a senior cardiac interventionalist in Hadassah’s cardiology department, saving lives herself in the very hospital where her own life was saved.

Prof. Rivkind, who received the Israel Prize last week, meets her in the hospital corridors and remembers every single second of those critical moments when her life hung by a thread.

 “Avi doesn’t even know what an inspiration he was for me,” says Prof. Elbaz — in that fragile, emotional moment when he approached my family and, with one sentence, gave them back their breath and their hope. 

“Since then, as a doctor, I do everything so that my patients come out alive from the catheterization lab. I am here to save and to heal. And even if it’s a very severe cardiac case and the patient may not survive, I will do everything in my power to ensure the family has a humane and complete closure.”