It smelled clean and like a hospital, and the medical equipment I saw all seemed to be in good repair. There were rooms lining the corridor, not the large, open ward I expected. Perhaps just for my sake?
The hospital administrator rapped out a question to the admiral, who shook his head in reply. The administrator turned his eyes to me, his look warm and oddly full of compassion. He spoke a few sentences in a gentle voice, and waited for the translator.
"Your father is not well, sir," the translator said, speaking softly.
"He suffers from dementia, the type associated with advanced age. The years have not been gentle to him." The translator paused, waiting for more. Another burst of quiet words, and a guilty, half-apologetic look from the administrator. "His injuries when he arrived in our care so long ago, they were considerable," the translator continued. "You must understand, there are some things that are very difficult to recover from.
Mentally, he is often confused."
The anger again, harder and demanding now. No matter that it might not be my father, the idea that they'd expect me to understand, perhaps even forgive, the unspeakable acts they'd committed.
It took all my self-control to keep my face neutral and composed. I took a deep breath, and said, "Tell him I understand. And I am most grateful that he has warned me, and he has given my father excellent care here. There are some things even the finest medical science cannot cure, I know." Like the sickness in your soul that could allow them to break bones, listen to the screams, and then pretend that it was simply a normal Part of warfare. Nothing personal, you understand.
They were wrong. This was very personal.
The hospital administrator nodded, a ghost of relief crossing his face, so I must have succeeded in keeping my thoughts from my expression.
Ilanovich scowled, but made no comment.
Without further remarks, the administrator pushed open the door. He called out a soft greeting in Russian, then stepped aside, holding the door open with his body to allow us to precede him into the room. Ilanovich motioned me forward.
I stepped into the room.
It was warmer air, distinctly warmer than the hallway outside. I spotted a small space heater in the corner. The walls were blank, clean and pristine. The hospital bed itself looked new, the metal shiny and unmarked. The room smelled of starch and disinfectant. The sheets on the bed were gleaming white, partially covered by a light blue blanket.
The details of the room itself distracted me from focusing on the figure in the bed. Or maybe I was avoiding it. After all these years, the thought of seeing the father I thought long dead was simply too much. I was surprised to find I still harbored a lingering hope that it could be him.
I took another two steps into the room, then moved swiftly to the side of the bed as though jet-propelled. I stood there, looking down at the man, my vision now clouded with unchecked tears.
The face was Caucasian, with pale, thin skin drawn tightly over prominent bones. His eyes were shut. Ragged curls of dark brown and gray were clipped close. The ears stuck out from his head at slightly different angles from each other. The lips were dark and wrinkled, slightly closed over strong, yellow teeth. He was clothed in serviceable yet unremarkable long johns, not a hospital gown.
He was sleeping ― or unconscious. Whichever it was, his breath came in long, shallow gasps. There was no trace of rapid eye movement, nor any other indication that he was dreaming. Only the slight pink flush tinting his cheeks and the regular rise and fall of his chest assured me that he was not dead.
The hospital administrator had entered the room behind my entourage, and now crossed the room to stand on the other side of the bed from me.
Light streamed in from the window, back-lighting him and casting a long shaft of pale yellow on the figure in the bed. The hospital administrator's face was composed, but I could hear the soothing tones in his voice as he touched the man in the bed on the shoulder. A few words ― the equivalent, I assumed, of
"Wake up. You have visitors."
The man came awake instantly. His breathing pattern changed, a sudden, sharp intake of air, followed by a quicker pattern of respiration.
Yet his eyes remained closed, although the muscles in his face tensed slightly.
"Voy cyn." Your son, if my elementary Russian vocabulary served.
Then his eyes snapped open. They were alert with hard, cold intelligence lurking behind them. Dark brown, extra white at the edges of the iris now, almost the same color as my own. He must have seen something in my face, the recognition or confusion, because the expression quickly changed to one far less alert.
I stared at him, trying to see the man I knew only from photographs, inside the weathered husk.
The eyes, those were certainly right. How many times had I heard that my father's eyes were exactly like mine? The build looked right, too.
According to everything Mother had said, my father and I were roughly the same size. We had the same coloring, the same long bones and lanky bodies.
But in him, the dark shock of hair that was the Magruder family trademark had been wavy, flattened out only by a short military haircut and diligent application of greasy hair cream. My mother had laughed at that, at my father's eternal battle with his curls.
There were other differences as well, more in emotional and mental makeup than in physical appearance. According to my mother, my father was far moodier, given to those dark, impenetrable moods that I knew in myself, but also capable of wild, childlike enthusiasm. He had had a certain insouciance and an outgoing, cheerful side to his character that seemed to have passed me over. My uncle, although he had poo-poo'd my mother's description, had finally admitted that there was something to it. My father had, after all, been his younger brother.
How much of the difference had been due to the fact that I had grown up without him? I would never know, and in truth, I might simply have inherited my uncle's temperament rather than my father's.
The silence stretched out, although not comfortably. I had a sense of being observed closely, of being watched and assessed by the man in the bed. For my part, too, I was looking him over, whether trying to convince myself that this was him or trying to allow myself to believe that it could be, I wasn't certain.
Finally, he spoke. "Are you really Matthew?" The voice had a distinct Russian accent, but underneath that, underlying the fluent English words, were traces of United States. It was the voice you would expect of someone who had spent the last forty years in Russia.
I nodded. "Is it really you?" It sounded stupid the moment I said it, but what do you say to a ghost? An imposter ghost, perhaps, but even so my performance had to be believable.
He nodded. "It's been a long time. Pull up a chair, why don't you?"
The farce seemed impossibly mundane. All these years ― pull up a chair? I reeled, trying to maintain my equanimity.
There was a small scuffling in the room, and a chair was produced. I reached out, touched the weathered old hand, felt the loose skin under my fingertips. The skin was warm, almost feverish. I held his hand as I sat down.
The admiral and his two guards moved closer to the bed, as though some unseen barrier had been breached. I glanced away from my father's face and looked at the admiral. "I think we would like some time alone, if that could be arranged." And a smaller audience."
A flash of annoyance across his face, then he nodded. "Of course ― but your father is not as strong as he seems." He glanced across the room at the hospital administrator for confirmation, who supplied it quickly. "I understand sometimes he becomes… confused." He made a small motion to the rest of the crowd, and they followed him out of the room.