When the first hostages are freed by Hamas in Gaza, and flown by helicopter to the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, finally back in Israel, Dr. Michal Steinman will She will go up to the sixth floor, slide open the glass door, and see them reunited with their closest relatives after more than 700 days in captivity.

“It's a privilege,” says the head nurse. "These are the moments that, when I'm 70 or 80, I'll remember. These are two or three moments. They symbolize so many values: as a nurse, as a mother, as a woman, as an Israeli."

Twenty live hostages are scheduled to be released under the terms of the recently reached agreement between Israel and Hamas. Several of them will be brought to this hospital.

This will be the third time the hostage unit has been operational. The BBC visited the unit on Saturday, when the medical team learned the identities of the hostages they would be treating.

“There is no such field as captivity medicine, and we are inventing it,” Dr. Steinman told the BBC.

Staff have learned two big lessons from the two previous hostage releases, in November 2023 and January this year, she says.

The first is to be “a medical detective,” to try to understand what happened during those long days and nights of captivity.

With previous hostages, often emaciated, chained, and beaten, “they had things in their blood tests, in their enzymes, that we couldn't understand.”

They have also learned that symptoms may not present themselves until days or weeks later.

“Captivity does things to your body that your body remembers. You see all these layers. It takes time to see what happened to their bodies, to their bodies. souls,” he said.

“We are still caring for the hostages who returned in January and February, and every week we discover new things.”

The other lesson is that you have to take your time. There are a lot of professionals from different disciplines: nutritionists, social workers, mental health specialists, along with the full panoply of medical personnel.

But there's also a "do not disturb" sign on the door of each released hostage's private room. It's deliberately made to feel like a hotel, with welcome packs, soft furnishings, and dim lighting to accompany the hospital bed and monitors. An extra single bed is set up for those hostages who don't want to be alone at night, so a partner or family member can sleep next to them. Their next of kin will also have their own room directly across the hall from the hostage's.

"You know, the medical staff is task-oriented. There's a schedule," says Dr. Steinman. "Here you have to give them a lot more space. You have to decide what's urgent and what can wait two more days. You have to be humble and flexible, without abdicating your medical responsibility."

Among those responsibilities is determining what the hostages (some of whom may have lost more than half their body weight in captivity) can eat and how quickly.

Their physical recovery is only part of the story. Karina Shwartz is the director of social work at Rabin Medical Center, another key member of the team, with responsibility not only for the hostages but also for their immediate families. They need to learn their own delicate calibration of family dynamics: when to speak and when not to, she says.

“The most important thing is what we don't say,” she says. “Because if we're sitting in the room and someone tells us something very difficult about how they almost died in captivity, and we stay silent—it's a very loud silence.”

But at the same time, there's a need to restrain oneself. "We can't talk about two years in a week. The hostages need space and time. They also need quiet. We have to listen. Hear their story."

The hostage return unit staff emphasize that their work doesn't end when the hostages return home. Medical and psychological rehabilitation will continue, and the hostages must also be prepared, says Shwartz, for the moment “when the real world kicks in.”

The message she and her team try to instill in the hostages and their families is that everyone will want to see them. For two years they've been public figures.

“Everyone will want to be our friend. We tell them: It's okay to say no. It's safe to say no.”

For now, the nervous anticipation among the staff at the hospital is palpable.

“You should see my WhatsApp messages,” says Steinman, a very Israeli director of nursing with her nose ring and multiple tattoos.

She says that almost all of her 1,700 nurses across the medical complex have volunteered to work extra shifts in the unit.

“You regain hope,” he says. "Working here makes you realize that life and human beings are good. You realize the strength of the human spirit.”

And yet, she says, the greatest pleasure will be when that job is over.

This is the third time they've opened the unit, but she longs for the moment when “we close this place down and say mission accomplished.”