Riva cuts her hand at work on the sharp edge of a bucket, but she avoids going to the doctor, and one day the throbbing wound wakes her up. Someone notices her moaning and calls for the doctor, who finds the infection and tells Riva that she “must operate” (162). Riva is her first surgery ever. Though days pass, the next thing that Riva hears is the camp elder asking about her progress, when it has been “several days since the surgery” (163). The doctor says that “the infection is spreading” and tells the elder that “she needs a hospital” (163). When Helen offers her bread and jam, Riva responds by repeating: “I am going to die,” because she hears that no one is offered such food unless they are on the brink of death (163).

The doctor comforts Riva, telling her that she will find help, and Riva overhears the doctor tell the commandant that she “is going to die without surgery” (163). The doctor tells the commandant about Riva’s poetry, “what her poetry does for the morale of the other girls,” as a plea that she be kept alive and taken to a nearby hospital, instead of Grossrosen (164).