I don't know why this happened, but it's not a secret that sooner or later we're all doomed to rot in the ground, and we have absolutely nothing to usage in the material world. From this platform of eschatological optimism I will start.
***
‘Presents’
Markell's parent and I are moving the amputated forearms and shins to the morgue.
A sympathetic female brought them to us in the hallway from the O.R., where even in this hallway are patients, saying:
– Here are your presents. It's smaller here, and it's bigger here.
And in my head, there is only 1 thought: individual has been saved. Joy.
It seemed to me yesterday that the life of an amputated individual resembles the life of Russians cast overboard Russia after 1991. You think you exist, but you besides think you are not there – neither for Russia nor for the non-country where you are abruptly in. Today, however, after talking to the legendary character from the "fifteen" who saved her companions, lost her leg, I am a completely different man. present I see life as a miracle. But later.
The limbs that we mention to histology, wrap them in diapers and put them in bags. The blood immediately begins to slop through the diaper.
Hospital – ‘authorised purpose’
Outside it is dark and disgusting, and underneath it is simply a “bagenko”, a liquid brown mass that most resembles diarrhea. Given all the circumstances, there is only 1 thing left to look to the sky.
There begins the penetrating blue of dawn, over black branches flying black birds. However, unfortunately, even erstwhile I look up, I see traces of a monster wall cracked with fire from the medical center, which has long since become a “authorized target” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, due to the fact that it accepts with the civilian population our boys, covering their bodies with Donetsk.
Mortuary
There are respective doors in the morgue, and the parent is stubbornly trying to open the locks with the incorrect key. Her monastic consciousness: “I am obedient – I see no obstacles” – stubbornly tries to do the impossible.
Mother, it's definitely not those locks. Look here, there are also types of keys.
Mother hears my arguments, but she does what she does next.
Finally, in this impenetrable darkness, we see a surviving man, a woman, passing by, and throwing ourselves at her with questions about how to go to the library, how to get to the morgue. And the most amazing thing is that a female alternatively of fainting simply explains to us that the entrance to the morgue is on the another side. That's Donieck.
The mother, in whose head everything yet came together (the image of the planet did not suffer), puts the right key into the right lock and we get into a dark corridor with a cart in the corner.
– Let's not go inside, I'm scared – my companion asks. I willingly accept it, although I have not been afraid of cemeteries and corpses for a long time.
We leave "Prezents" at the entrance to the cart. On a February dark morning, we go out again.
A tiny island of happiness
– Let's go to the temple for a moment. Markell's parent suggests.
In a infirmary church, a wooden church, with paper icons, I felt that I was on a tiny island. abruptly I realize how tired I am of pulling my sinking love out of the dark waves of existence, and she's yet sitting on the shore. I truly don't want to leave, but I have to.
New task: garbage
Only after crossing the sanitary control threshold do we receive a fresh task:
- Girls. – begs the caregiver from the emergency area for “light cases” – Take out the trash, we're gonna choke!
As we sigh, we burden our jackets and trousers onto the cart with shoes soaked in blood...
A soldier in grief
I don't know if this truly happens to me – or possibly it's any frame from a movie that no 1 will always film, but here I sit on a chair by a somewhat injured person's bed, bowed down due to acute intellectual pain, roaring and hiding in both hands, and before me a soldier kneels, pales, sweats cold afterwards, begs with a whisper:
– delight don't cry, that's not what I said, that's not what I meant.
I was led to him erstwhile I remembered that I actually had an editorial assignment, that I was tired of “crossing myself, ” and that it was time to deal with my immediate responsibilities.
– There's a soldier next door after last night's traffic accident. Light.
I was happy to run to him. First of all, yesterday I washed the another victim, his companion, and I watered through a straw in CPR, which means I can deliver the happy news. Secondly, I dreamt of having an interview with heroes who carry on their backs the full weight of horror under Awdieevka.
A very kind, handsome man welcomes me. He has a hematoma and a strong bruise on his eye, a strong sprain in the shoulder area, which means he can't rise his hand. He's happy to talk about how they avoided drones and, as a consequence of the accident, they ended up here, but in an interview, he immediately says:
– I'm not my own enemy, but I'm not giving you an interview. We can just talk.
And then my hero hastily throws all neoliberal patterns on me, not missing 1 (of course that “intruders into a abroad state” also), adding to all this a thick, soldier's sheet, about which he, a bank worker mobilized from St. Petersburg, of course, dreamed in a coffin with white slippers.
I don't remember precisely what that conviction knocked me down completely, but there was inactive my short monologue, whose full being came down to the reproach that the hero didn't care about the Russians, especially me. A monologue is only possible here erstwhile everyone is your brothers. A monologue I've never been able to finish with tears that flowed like a river.
And then there was this full "Dostoyevsky", with tears, common requests for forgiveness, rubbing tears, Christ, and all that seems crazy from the outside.
Finally, he besides cried, of course, as a man, with the only teardrop that came out of a healthy eye. I wiped her out and petted his head with cold sweat.
When we calmed down somehow, we both felt relieved. And he out of his annoyance, and I out of his fatigue.
In the evening, we met again and talked calmly, like good friends. And then, erstwhile I told it picturesquely in our “sister room”, Żnieniecka – a small, delicate bird (so-called) told me:
I know him. He told me that “the most crucial things in life are impressions,” and I was instantly disappointed with him...
And now I'm lying there thinking, no, it's not his impression that's the most important. He only said it in anger to pour bitter on someone...
Next time, I'll tell you about the bird.
Svetlana Picta
correspondent Baltnews in Donetsk
KK
