When I regained consciousness, feeling deep pain in my cheek, I saw a thin face hovering in front of me. It was Yura’s, and he was giving me another slap in the face. This morning everyone seemed to be conspiring to beat us without permission.
“Do you hear me?” he shouts.
Yes, I hear his voice, but somewhere far away from here. He applies his sweater to your chest, feels your pulse.
“What happened?”
“It was me…” I pause, not able to continue. Yura frowns, but abstains from further inquiries. “Is she dead?”
“No, she’s still breathing,” he answers. “It is a miracle that she is still alive. I called an ambulance; they are going to be here in a minute.”
“It’s my fault,” I say almost inaudibly. “I always wanted to live without her.”
“Keep quiet, you’ll tell everything later,” he smiles understandingly. “Now you’re wasting her strength.”
And he took me by the hand and kept holding it in the ambulance car and in the hospital.
They’re rolling us somewhere on the gurney. There is a narrow, endless corridor, shabby walls and a row of lamps floating along the ceiling. You might probably know, this hospital corridor reminds me of human life – no one can see where it ends, no one can remember where it begins, no one can be told what it is. In the operating theater doctors are hanging over us like flat, white shadows, dividing us with a screen, so that I can no longer see you with my eyes. I know as soon as I fall asleep I will never wake up again. I fight to keep my eyes wide open with all the feeble strength that remains in us, seeking to stay in this world a little longer, but the desire to sleep is so excessive and so abnormal.
I’m slowly waking up after anesthesia. A small hospital room with a clean window; it is snowing outside. I am very happy to see the light of the day.
“Do you feel nauseous?” a hospital attendant asks.
I shake my head and then ask him faintly, “Is my sister okay?”
“Everything is all right,” a familiar voice says, and Yura appears before the window.
“I’ll see about telling her everything, so please leave us alone,” he addresses the hospital attendant who places his palms one against the other, in front of his chest, takes a deep breath and immediately goes out.
“Your sister… she is recovering after the surgery. The screwdriver pierced her lung, and she lost a lot of blood. But don’t worry, her heart was not affected… for it is located on the right side of her body,” he speaks as if to himself.
I nod silently in response. Where did all those nice, sweet words, the integral part of his repertoire, go? He is so serious – frighteningly serious!
“I have good news for you,” he starts almost whispering. “I found a doctor who is capable of performing separation surgery. A big dream of yours is coming true, finally. But I don’t think we should wake Hope up. She needs a rest; you will tell her later.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded with shock, deafened by internal roaring. Can it be that we shall be hived off, split up in two halves, so that each one will become an independent person? I am so scared, Hope. Now when I am so close to the goal, I am so terribly scared!
“You are so cold! You must be absolutely freezing. Let me cover you,” Yura says and puts a blanket over us. His eyes are red; I think he’s just tired. Only now do I understand that for the first time in my life I am watching him in a white robe, his white robe.
“You look so tired, you need to rest and recover because you are doing too much,” I tell him, but he doesn’t move. “Hey, you must be going. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah, right, see you,” he says, clumsily backing to the door. “Oh, no, wait a minute.”
He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and comes up to our bed.
“Here, it dropped out of your pocket. I’ll put it on the bedside table.”
Then he leaves us alone for the evening.
Shortly after, I reach out to the bedside table and take the drawing. Dampness and time have made it worn, blurred, faded, reminding me of a smudgy blot. No one can tell now how many people it depicts and whether they are beautiful or ugly… but I think everything’s beautiful that is done through the human heart and soul, that makes our inner world visible, that gives us a chance to look at ourselves from the outside in – everything is beautiful, even us. But this life isn’t endless; we need to hurry, to have the time to do great things, to put the most important things into words, too. How much I love you, Hope! I am so sorry I didn’t tell you this before. I will surely do so, as soon as you wake up… so that I can, at last, fall asleep.
But before that I need to tell you so many things. Very soon, there will be no “us”. There will only be “you” and “me”, separately, and nevertheless, we will never stop being one whole. You in Me and Me in You. My God, it’s so cold. You look happy while asleep and I can’t stop thinking about how cold I am. Why is it so chilly here? I just can’t get warm like in the hospital when they plunged us into icy water…
I shiver all over with fear and shame, but I can neither leave, nor go inside; my feet are groaning and buzzing as if nailed to the hospital floor. For many hours I’ve been standing behind the door and listening eagerly, catching every word spilled from her lips. Yura is sitting on a near window sill, his face turned away, and only the reflection in the window reveals that he is crying – crying because of his inability to do anything. Today he lied for the first time in his life, for he couldn’t summon the courage to tell the truth: Hope is already gone, and Faith will be the last to die. But so far… Yura has asked me to stay with Faith until she falls asleep… forever. And I can’t say no.
Eventually, the voice behind the door falls silent, having finished the retelling of the story already told. I go inside and close the door behind me.
“You’re in time,” Faith says to me.
I take out an orange and hand it to her, wishing her a happy new year.
“Thank you,” she answers politely and puts the orange on the bedside table. “We will eat it together when Hope wakes up.”
I nod and give a silly smile.
“You were right, it is always the right time to do the right thing, not once in a lifetime, but always before it’s too late,” she says, peering into the blackness outside the window. “You know what is amusing? All I did before was try to shorten our lives, but now the only thing I think about is how to make them longer. There is so much to live for: life is amazing and full of miracles; too bad I didn’t notice it before, and good that I understand it a little better now. Maybe you should write about it, to remind everyone.”
And, turning her face to me, she declares:
“Please, tell them my story, will you? Don’t say no; I’m asking you. I believe in you like you believed in me once. Help people to find hope and never lose faith, so that they can see how wonderful life is.”
For now I don’t really understand why I came to them – not because I needed help – actually, the right to help someone is something you need to deserve – but did I need their help? Her request is a chance for me to start writing again. I will achieve so much later.
“We will tell you everything as it was. Perhaps, Hope won’t mind. I’m going to ask her when she wakes up.”