Noam and Noa treat Naama, who was injured at the Nova festival

MDA paramedic Noam Weissbuch and EMT and intensive care ambulance driver Noa Shimoni worked a night shift together the night of Friday, October 6. Towards the end of their shift, they were called to go to the south of the country and help treat the wounded. One of the women they treated was Naama Gal, who was wounded by terrorist gunfire at the party in Re’im. For hours, Naama hid in a garbage bin, but the terrorists found her anyway. They shot her at point-blank range, seriously wounding her.

Noam and Noa reached her, treated her and evacuated her in a serious and unstable condition. Noa Shimoni recalls: “We found Naama on October 7 at the entrance to Sderot, in the first hours of the war. She had several gunshot wounds, and her condition was very serious and unstable. She told us only a few sentences and collapsed. At that point, we didn’t know what Naama had gone through before she came to us. We later found out that during the terrible massacre, Naama and her friends hid in a garbage bin. Some of them were murdered and others were wounded and bleeding. During the evacuation to the hospital, we did everything possible to save Naama’s life. I didn’t take my foot off the gas for a moment, otherwise we would have lost her on the way.”

“Naama’s injury was very serious,” confirms paramedic Noam Weissbuch. “I looked at her and knew I would do everything possible to save her life. We sent a report to the MDA call center to update the hospital about her serious injuries, so that the doctors would be prepared, and on the way to the hospital we administered medication to stabilize her condition.”

“After bringing Naama to the hospital, we returned to the area and continued to treat additional casualties. We saw scenes that we will never forget, and all this at tremendous risk to the lives of all the medical teams,” Noam and Noa recall, “but it was still Naama who captured our hearts and minds – a young woman our age, more or less, who just went to a party. For a week we asked ourselves if she had survived the terrible inferno. By chance, we came across a post she published looking for the person who treated her, and we immediately got in touch. Naama’s story has become our point of light in all this darkness. We were very excited to hear that she was not only on her feet, but had recovered and returned home. It’s a real miracle.”

A few days after Naama was released from the hospital, Noam and Noa went to her home in Haifa for an emotional meeting. “At last, we met not in a bloody war environment full of sand and smoke. We had the privilege of being there and treating her,” they said. Naama was excited to meet the MDA team and said: “You are my angels, even a thousand words would not describe how grateful I am to you. Thanks to you, I’m alive. Thank you for saving my life and being there for me.”