Layan Hamadin shielded her face when Dr. Clifford Sheckter walked into her dark hospital room in California for the first time last August.
The room on the pediatric floor at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center had been decorated for her arrival, just around her 14th birthday, and was filled with gifts of clothing and blankets. Layan had traveled from half a world away for treatment of the burn scars that tethered her neck and face together and immobilized her chin. Nearly a year had passed since the day missiles rained down on the school in the Gaza Strip where her family was sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war after their hometown of Beit Hanoun was destroyed.
As Layan’s mother encouraged her to engage with the surgeon, her spirited younger sister, Wardra Hamadin, walked up to Sheckter and tugged on his retractable hospital ID badge. It quickly snapped back onto his chest, sending the 5-year-old into a fit of giggles. Layan joined in on the laughter, shedding her timid demeanor.
She weighed just 44 pounds that day, severely malnourished and suffering from giardia — a parasitic infection common in refugee camps. She hadn’t been able to get the treatment she needed back in Gaza, and so the second- and third-degree burns on her face, neck, arms and legs had healed through repeated wound care instead of the necessary surgical intervention.
Layan was among the last few children evacuated from Gaza to the United States by the nonprofit HEAL Palestine for medical treatment, arriving in the Bay Area less than two weeks before the Trump administration halted visas from her home country. She recently began the trek home after a series of surgeries and procedures, performed by Sheckter, and will continue treatment in Egypt until it’s safe for her to return to Gaza, where her father and six other siblings remain.
That first meeting between Sheckter and Layan helped bring back a 14-year memory for the surgeon, who is Jewish, of the last time he was in Israel in the city of Sderot, across the heavily secured border from Beit Hanoun. As a 26-year-old, he looked out at the wall separating where he stood from Gaza and wondered — would he ever meet someone from the other side. He had just gotten his answer.
“When you think of the broader context of the world right now, there’s a lot of Islamophobia, there’s antisemitism and these things are both growing at the same time,” Sheckter said in an interview. “At least here in San Jose, to be able to have a Jewish surgeon and a Palestinian Muslim girl injured in war, for those things to come together and to have a good outcome, it feels really good.”
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the two-and-a-half-year conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas, according to the latest estimates from Gaza’s Health Ministry. The war has fueled a humanitarian crisis in Gaza as concerns of a widespread scarcity of food grow, and medical supplies and care cannot keep up with the more than 172,000 injured, according to estimates by the World Health Organization.
During an interview earlier this year, Layan and her mother, Mai Hamadin, spoke about life back in Gaza and the journey that took them halfway around the world to a place where they didn’t speak the language, but found a community in Santa Clara County that supported them along the way.
Sheckter’s treatment, which included the use of a high-intensity carbon dioxide laser and other reconstructive surgical techniques, gave Layan full range of motion in her neck and stopped the intense itching. Major burns like Layan’s often need lifelong care.
“When I was in Gaza, the injuries were very painful and it used to hurt a lot,” Layan said in an interview through a translator. “When I came here and started the treatment, the pain was less than before.”
She doesn’t like to talk about the day of the bombing — when she remembers, she gets nightmares — but Mai said it happened when her daughter was playing with friends, some of whom were killed.
Before the war, Mai said their family of 10 lived in a big house where they raised geese, ducks and chickens in the yard. She spoke fondly of her neighbors, whose children went to school with Layan. When the war came, she said, that was also gone. Many of those neighbors now live in tents in other cities across Gaza.
“We grow up there, we find ourselves in this part of the world and we are used to it,” Mai said through a translator. “To take us out of our home, it’s really harsh. The hardest thing is to be without a home.”
Sheckter first learned about Layan in the fall of 2024 from his colleague Dr. Cherine Abu-Eid, an anesthesiologist at Valley Medical Center who had been doing volunteer work with HEAL Palestine. As the head of the hospital’s renowned burn unit, which is one of three regional burn centers between Los Angeles and the Oregon border, Sheckter wanted to help Layan, but questions remained about how.
The public hospital, which is operated by Santa Clara County, wouldn’t be able to provide free care to someone from outside the country. But the Valley Health Foundation, the hospital’s philanthropic arm, agreed to underwrite some of the cost. Other local organizations also eventually chipped in when money started to run dry.
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Toward the end of the Biden administration, Sheckter filled out his part of the humanitarian visa application for Layan. But after Trump took office, months passed without an answer as the visa remained in what he described as “purgatory.” Then in the spring of 2025, they finally got word: the visa had been approved.
Layan arrived at San Francisco International Airport several months later with two other Palestinian children evacuated by HEAL Palestine who’d receive medical care at different Bay Area hospitals.
The nonprofit, which was founded in 2024, eventually brought 63 kids injured in the war to the U.S. until the visa program was paused. They have continued evacuating children to other countries like Spain, Mexico and Portugal. Steve Sosebee, the co-founder of HEAL Palestine, said there are more than 10,000 children who still need to be evacuated from Gaza for medical care.
Abu-Eid, the anesthesiologist, was among those who greeted Layan at the airport, calling it an “overwhelmingly emotional day.” She held Layan’s tiny hand as they entered the hospital for the first time.
“It helped for her to know that I’m from the same place she’s from originally,” Abu-Eid said. “I speak the language. I understand the culture. It was easier to connect with her.”
Once she was settled, Abu-Eid asked her what food she could bring her to eat. Layan described some fried chicken she had seen in advertisements and eventually the anesthesiologist realized she was talking about KFC.
“In Gaza, there was no meat and there wasn’t a lot of food, especially after the war,” Layan said when asked why she picked KFC as her first American meal.
Over the course of Layan’s treatment, Abu-Eid grew close with the Hamadins. She helped create a plan to relieve Layan’s anxiety of what was ahead. The 14-year-old has blossomed during her time in the U.S., Abu-Eid said, gaining self-confidence and writing her own poetry. Layan now wants to become a burn surgeon, helping her own community back in Gaza.
“She’s so in awe of Dr. Sheckter,” Abu-Eid said. “She wants to be just like him.”
Sheckter feels the significance of the last nine months, watching Layan grow from a young girl who was scared to look at him that first day to “exuding the confidence and joy that you would expect a 14-year-old to have.” Layan and Mai’s decision to put their trust in him has been “very meaningful” as he gets to be part of their healing story.
Sheckter remains steadfast in his beliefs as a Jewish man who supports the existence of Israel, but the experience has elevated his “frustration for people’s inability to connect.”
“Kids are kids, humans are humans and it’s just so horrible that wherever people are in the world they have to be divided by walls and that people, especially kids, are subjected to politics around them that have nothing to do with themselves,” Sheckter said. “Children are the purest thing we have in society and they deserve every opportunity and chance to succeed and have the best care possible.”
While Layan is on her way home, her treatment serves as a test case to show what’s possible when the public healthcare system and hospital foundation come together to act as a steward for providing humanitarian care, Sheckter said.
For Layan’s mother Mai, the politics surrounding the war ultimately mattered less than what Sheckter did for her daughter.
“He’s a good doctor,” Mai said. “He’s taking care of Layan and treating her. I’m thankful to him that he’s a good person. It doesn’t matter whatever background he’s coming from, I’m always going to appreciate his help.”
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