The mothers were immediately told to feed their babies and to switch off their cell phones to bring pin-drop silence to the room. Else, the noise would attract the attention of the unknown gunmen who had come, it seemed, to attack the hospital.
Says the second nurse. "We sat in that room for four hours. Heard all the sounds. The sounds of gunfire were very loud. We knew they had come in. We did not open the door or they would have come in. In fact we had no idea what was happening in the rest of the city because we never came out. After four hours the police came. They said don't be scared we are here."
Both nurses recounted, "We told the patients. 'We are here. Don't worry. And they slowly calmed down.'"
A third nurse was on duty at the labour room. One of the emergency doctors brought news to her ward that there had been sudden firing at the CST.
"Then we also started to hear the sounds," she recalls. "But we had a patient in the waiting room. The doctor and I took her into the labour room. Her labour pains had begun. There were four emergency doctors with me. By that time we could hear really loud sounds below. All the patients' relatives also came running up." But they had not a second to consider how dangerous these sounds were because their patient was ready to deliver.
Image: One of the wards at the ante-natal and post-natal wing at the Cama hospital that the terrorists entered on November 26.
Also read: The miracle baby born that horrific night
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The mothers were immediately told to feed their babies and to switch off their cell phones to bring pin-drop silence to the room. Else, the noise would attract the attention of the unknown gunmen who had come, it seemed, to attack the hospital.