The 14-year-old boy with sandy brown hair and hazel green eyes was propped up on piles of pillows. Nurses changed the damp dressings on his legs, meant to cool his high fever.
Through the haze of pain-killers, Ivan Labovic watched his unexpected visitors with childlike curiosity. He could not speak because of the tube in his mouth - one of 12 going into his body - but looked sideways to say "No" and blinked his eyes to say "Yes" in response to Dr Nenad Markovic's questions.
Ivan's brave determination to communicate was all the more moving because he is dying; his stomach, liver, pancreas and spleen torn apart in bombing of the Kosovo capital, Pristina, on March 30th. He has undergone four major operations, the latest on April 12th, and is not expected to survive.
"The wall of his stomach is destroyed," Dr Markovic explained. Peritonitis, infection of the stomach cavity, has set in.
What sort of questions can you ask a dying 14-year-old? It seemed obscene to disturb him, yet his eyes begged for contact. Did he prefer the Red Star or Partisan football team, someone ventured, and the shadow of a smile crossed Ivan's face when he blinked "Yes" to Red Star. Does he have a sister? He blinked "Yes". More than one? "No." A brother? "No"
Ivan was the only conscious patient in his row of beds at the Military Medical Academy (known by its initials, VMA) south-east of Belgrade. The authorities brought us to the 1,200-bed VMA yesterday, considered Yugoslavia's best hospital, to see some of the 16 civilian patients who were wounded, and some of the heavy material damage caused, when NATO bombed a military building across the street from the hospital early yesterday.
There were civilian wounded from the bombings of areas in Cuprija and Aleksinac among them. The man from Aleksinac was wracked with convulsions.
"He is already brain-dead. He does not have a chance," Dr Markovic said. There was one soldier in the row of six war wounded. "He doesn't have a chance either. It is doubtful any of these patients will live, despite our state-of-the-art technology."
No wonder the dying boy was so eager to see normal, healthy people. Then a correspondent from Brazil asked this war's impossible question: before the war started, did Ivan Labovic have any Albanian friends at his school back in Pristina?
A look of desperate confusion flooded Ivan's face. His eyes darted around the ward and I thought for a moment he might cry. "Leave him alone," someone pleaded. As we walked away, Ivan raised his right hand, only a few inches and with great effort, to say goodbye.
Gen Prof Dr Aco Jovicic, the director of the VMA, told us that half of the hospital's 1,000 patients are military men or their families, the other half civilians with no military connections.
Although the military academy was founded in 1844, the futuristic metal, glass and granite medical centre was built in 1981 by a US construction company. It was originally intended to care for military families from the entire former Yugoslavia.
Several hundred windows were blown out of the hospital when NATO bombed military buildings within 50 metres of it at 3.30 a.m. yesterday.
From the ground-floor entry to 13th-floor wards, we saw broken glass and fallen ceiling and insulation panels. Yugoslav authorities claimed that the target - corrugated steel warehouses across the street from the hospital - once housed military vehicles.
"Those who did the bombing knew that these facilities were empty," Gen Jovicic said angrily. "They also knew that this institution was working full time, and that it had sick people from all over the country."
When NATO bombed the Federal and Serbian interior ministries in Belgrade's city centre on April 3rd, Serbs were shocked because the alliance took the risk of harming maternity patients in an adjacent hospital.
Col Dr Radoslav Svicevic demanded to know if the attack so close to the VMA hospital was "worth the risk?"
"Is an ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia worth risking a world war for?" he asked.
Radisav Milosavlevic, a 74-year-old coronary patient whose bed had been next to a window, was severely wounded by glass splinters blown in by the bomb explosions.
Two other coronary patients suffered cardiac arrest, and it was a miracle that Mr Milosavlevic, who underwent brain surgery to remove the glass imbedded in his head, did not suffer a fatal heart attack, doctors said. His head was wrapped in bandages, but we could see the cuts on his face, and the carpet of dagger-like shards around the bed he was moved from.
Bogdan Stupor, a 78-year-old stroke victim on the neurology ward, was in a coma after he, too, was wounded in the head by glass splinters.
Pretty, dark-haired Dragana Krstic was able to speak to us. The 23-year-old shop assistant from Vrdnik in northern Serbia underwent major surgery to remove a 4.5 kilo tumour from her stomach late on Monday.
"I heard a buzzing sound [of aircraft]. I heard two close explosions. It was the third one that broke the glass that hit me," she said. "I was really very scared. Wouldn't you be? You go into surgery and you have an operation and then you wake up to the sound of explosions. I wish the child of the pilot who fired the weapons could go through a day like I did."
Ms Krstic is still waiting to learn whether her stomach tumour was malignant. The glass blown in by yesterday's bombing cut deeply into her neck and left shoulder.
"I feel so badly," she said. "I don't know which hurts more, my stomach, my shoulder, or my heart."