I turned on the night lamp on the shelf next to my bed, waited for a few minutes, and put my finger on the lightbulb. I closed my eyes and let it burn. One. Two. Three. Four. I wanted to scream. How long did it take Nurse Larissa’s friend to feel her skin begin to peel off? How long did it take her to die?
Suddenly, I remembered what Natasha said about the markers. I pulled away my finger. The tip was red, and my first thought was: I will never play piano again. I could be free! But of course I couldn’t, of course Mama would make me practice just the same. I opened the box of Mr. Sketch. Purple-Grape, Orange-Orange, and Blue-Blueberry were missing their caps. I looked under all three beds and every nightstand. The scent of Orange-Orange was already fading. Why, why did I bring the markers when I knew I’d be too busy with patients?
Soon Baba Olya brought me dinner — barley soup, hard-boiled eggs, and bread. Nothing new had happened at the Polyclinika, she reported. Thank God. She said everyone missed me and sent hellos. I wondered whether that included Dr. Pasha, whether he even knew that I was in the hospital.
“What are you having for dinner, Babushka?”
Baba Olya knew as well as I did that aside from her already rampant hypertension, her obesity could cause everything from diabetes to cancer.
“Chicken and rice, Sonechka,” she said. I didn’t believe her.
“Just without the skin, please.” It was painful to watch her eat, even as she reminded me that she and her sisters had a hungry childhood because of the war, and it was immoral not to eat well when food was available and one could afford to.
After I ate, we went to the lounge to watch the evening installment of Felicidade.
“Is it true that one of the nurses here burned alive? Her boyfriend started the fire because he’s a gangster?” I asked Baba Olya during a commercial break.
“Who told you this?”
Maybe the fire was a secret because the secret police were investigating the gangster ring. I didn’t want to give away Nurse Larissa. “I don’t remember. Is it true?”
The shadow from Baba Olya’s painted lashes made her dark blue eyes look violet. I’d always wished my eyes were like hers. “Yes. It’s such a pity. She was a beautiful girl.”
“Why do you say this, Baba? What’s the difference if she was beautiful or ugly? Are you saying she deserved it or didn’t deserve it?”
“I’m not saying either way, Sonya.” She held me tight against her warm side as though I were a fractured limb and she a splint. “No one deserves to die in a fire. But you, you should always be careful around people. Not everyone wishes you well for free. Most people are petty, unkind, jealous. Especially men. Choose well which men you trust. And better yet, don’t trust any.”
I hated when Baba Olya talked like that about men. Like they were carriers of some deadly virus. It made me feel bad for Papa and his papa, Deda Misha.
“By the way, how are you feeling?” Baba Olya said.
“Good.”
“Stomach?”
“Oh.” My stomach felt like a locked elevator with all of them inside — Natasha, Liza, Dr. Pasha, Nurse Larissa, and her dead friend — plummeting down through the earth. “Nauseous.” If I thought about them enough, I could probably make myself sick. For real this time.
Later, when Baba Olya tucked me into bed, I noticed Liza and Natasha glaring at her crisp white doctor’s coat. I felt safe in the proximity of her warm, powdered neck as she kissed me good night, proud to be her granddaughter, though so far I was nothing of interest myself. Not even to the doctors.
“Sweet dreams, girls,” Baba Olya said and turned off the lights.
About a half hour after she left, Natasha and Liza began whispering in the dark. One of them turned on the lights. I kept my eyes closed. Somebody yanked my hair.
“Get up, stinky.” Natasha was pulling me out of bed.
I scrambled out.
“Go stand by the wall,” Liza commanded from her bed and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself.
“What happened?” I said. The wall was icy cold.
Natasha marched to my nightstand and took out the Mr. Sketch box. She examined the markers for a while, sniffing them like a babushka at a fish market. The night snuck in through the windowpane cracks and poked me with its chilly fingers. Natasha settled on Pink-Melon, Magenta-Raspberry, Yellow-Lemon, and Dark-Green-Apple.
She drew feverishly, virulently, shifting my gown around for better reach. Red contusions appeared on my arms and chest, pink scars veined my legs. My thighs and shoulders were covered with lemon liver spots. Dark green flecks, resembling zelyonka—the green iodine used to treat chicken pox — dotted my whole body. On my forehead she drew a raspberry medical cross.
“That’s better.” Natasha looked me over with satisfaction. “At least now you don’t reek so much.” She opened the window, threw out the caps, and turned off the lights.
“And remember, it’ll hurt to lie down because of your rash and burns. So you better be standing there in the morning,” one of them added.
And I stood. My sinuses were stuffed, my skin goose-bumped. I was a little hungry, too. Part of me wanted to cry, yet another part realized that, in a way, I’d gotten what I’d asked for: I was finally a true patient. I now deserved to be in the Big Hospital.
How late was it? Baba Olya would be reading a book in bed, her white fluffy cat, Kelly, purring next to her. I missed my bed, set up in the glassed-in balcony among the cucumber and tomato pots. I liked so many things about Baba Olya’s apartment. The vanity dressing table in her bedroom with a multitude of little boxes in the drawers, each containing gold jewelry and treasures she’d collected on her travels. Also the medical instruments she used for everything. She raked the soil in the pots with curved dental picks, decorated cakes (which she shouldn’t have been eating) by pushing the cream through a syringe without a needle, opened letters with a scalpel, and plucked her eyebrows with a pair of surgical pincers. The first thing I always did when I arrived for the summer was to comb the apartment for new medical tools in whatever novel use they had found. This year, her bedroom curtains were held back with towel clamps. I suddenly missed all of it.
What time was it in Alaska? I’d heard that in the summer the sun never set there, and moose roamed the streets. I imagined Papa lying in bed on a daylight night, unable to fall asleep and thinking of me. I thought of Mama, too, alone in rainy Magadan and without hot water, playing piano in the empty arts college.
I was about to climb back under the covers when a sharp moan came from Liza’s bed. I held my breath. Another moan. Liza thrashed on her side and curled into a ball. I waited. Then Natasha moaned.
I tiptoed to Liza’s bed and bent to her: her breath smelled like spoiled peaches. Was she in pain or pretending? Then I saw a dark liquid spreading all over her sheets. I turned on the lights. The sheets were streaked with red and pink. Blood! I saw clumps of blood cells here and there, congregating in little pools.
“Are you okay?” I said. I tried to lift the sheet to look for a possible wound, but Liza was wrapped in a tight ball, her eyes shut, her knees clutched to her stomach. I could not move or unclasp her.
She cried out again, and I jumped back. Somewhere a door banged. Light footsteps tapped by our room. Maybe it was Nurse Larissa, or someone else who would know what to do.
I opened the door. A figure in white stood by the window at the end of the dark, empty hallway.
“Nurse Larissa,” I yelled.
Without turning around, the figure disappeared through the side door. I ran barefoot on the cold floor. Bed creaks and coughs emanated from other sickrooms. The TV in the empty nurses’ station reported the news in angry monotone.