For three days I lived with my friends in Moscow. They kept saying: Take the pot, take the plate, take whatever you need. I made turkey soup for six. For six of our boys. Firemen. From the same shift. They were all on duty that night: Bashuk, Kibenok, Titenok, Pravik, Tischura. I went to the store and bought them toothpaste and toothbrushes and soap. They didn’t have any of that at the hospital. I bought them little towels. Looking back, I’m surprised by my friends: they were afraid, of course, how could they not be, there were rumors already, but still they kept saying: Take whatever you need, take it! How is he? How are they all? Will they live? Live. [She is silent.] I met a lot of good people then, I don’t remember all of them. I remember an old woman janitor, who taught me: “There are sicknesses that can’t be cured. You just have to sit and watch them.”
Early in the morning I go to the market, then to my friends’ place, where I make the soup. I have to grate everything and grind it. Someone said, “Bring me some apple juice.” So I come with six half-liter cans, always for six! I race to the hospital, then I sit there until evening. In the evening, I go back across the city. How much longer could I have kept that up? After three days they told me I could stay in the dorm for medical workers, it’s on hospital grounds. God, how wonderful!
“But there’s no kitchen. How am I going to cook?”
“You don’t need to cook anymore. They can’t digest the food.”
He started to change—every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks—at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film . . . the color of his face . . . his body . . . blue . . . red . . . gray-brown. And it’s all so very mine! It’s impossible to describe! It’s impossible to write down! And even to get over. The only thing that saved me was it happened so fast; there wasn’t any time to think, there wasn’t any time to cry.
I loved him! I had no idea how much! We’d just gotten married. We’re walking down the street—he’d grab my hands and whirl me around. And kiss me, kiss me. People are walking by and smiling.
It was a hospital for people with serious radiation poisoning. Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.
On the very first day in the dormitory they measured me with a dosimeter. My clothes, bag, purse, shoes—they were all “hot.” And they took that all away from me right there. Even my underthings. The only thing they left was my money. In exchange they gave me a hospital robe—a size 56—and some size 43 slippers. They said they’d return the clothes, maybe, or maybe they wouldn’t, since they might not be possible to “launder” at this point. That is how I looked when I came to visit him. I frightened him. “Woman, what’s wrong with you?” But I was still able to make him some soup. I boiled the water in a glass jar, and then I threw pieces of chicken in there—tiny, tiny pieces. Then someone gave me her pot, I think it was the cleaning woman or the guard. Someone else gave me a cutting board, for chopping my parsley. I couldn’t go to the market in my hospital robe, people would bring me the vegetables. But it was all useless, he couldn’t even drink anything. He couldn’t even swallow a raw egg. But I wanted to get something tasty! As if it mattered. I ran to the post office. “Girls,” I told them, “I need to call my parents in Ivano-Frankovsk right away! My husband is dying.” They understood right away where I was from and who my husband was, and they connected me. My father, sister, and brother flew out that very day to Moscow. They brought me my things. And money. It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: “You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it.”
I’m sitting with him in the room, he opens his eyes. “Is it day or night?”
“It’s nine at night.”
“Open the window! They’re going to set off the fireworks!”
I opened the window. We’re on the eighth floor, and the whole city’s there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air.
“Look at that!” I said.
“I told you I’d show you Moscow. And I told you I’d always give you flowers on holidays . . .”
I look over, and he’s getting three carnations from under his pillow. He gave the nurse money, and she bought them.
I run over to him and I kiss him.
“My love! My one and only!”
He starts growling. “What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!”
They wouldn’t let me hug him. But I . . . I lifted him and sat him up. I made his bed. I placed the thermometer. I picked up and brought back the sanitation dish. I stayed up with him all night.
It’s a good thing that it was in the hallway, not the room, that my head started spinning, I grabbed onto the windowsill. A doctor was walking by, he took me by the arm. And then suddenly: “Are you pregnant?”
“No, no!” I was so scared someone would hear us.
“Don’t lie,” he sighed.
The next day I get called to the head doctor’s office.
“Why did you lie to me?” she says.
“There was no other way. If I’d told you, you’d send me home. It was a sacred lie!”
“What have you done?”
“But I was with him . . .”
I’ll be grateful to Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova my whole life. My whole life! Other wives also came, but they weren’t allowed in. Their mothers were with me. Volodya Pravik’s mother kept begging God: “Take me instead.” An American professor, Dr. Gale—he’s the one who did the bone marrow operation—tried to comfort me. There’s a tiny ray of hope, he said, not much, but a little. Such a powerful organism, such a strong guy! They called for all his relatives. Two of his sisters came from Belarus, his brother from Leningrad, he was in the army there. The younger one, Natasha, she was fourteen, she was very scared and cried a lot. But her bone marrow was the best fit. [Silent.] Now I can talk about this. Before I couldn’t. I didn’t talk about it for ten years. [Silent.]
When he found out they’d be taking the bone marrow from his little sister, he flat-out refused. “I’d rather die. She’s so small. Don’t touch her.” His older sister Lyuda was twenty-eight, she was a nurse herself, she knew what she was getting into. “As long as he lives,” she said. I watched the operation. They were lying next to each other on the tables. There was a big window onto the operating room. It took two hours. When they were done, Lyuda was worse off than he was, she had eighteen punctures in her chest, it was very difficult for her to come out from under the anesthesia. Now she’s sick, she’s an invalid. She was a strong, pretty girl. She never got married. So then I was running from one room to the other, from his room to hers. He wasn’t in an ordinary room anymore, he was in a special bio-chamber, behind a transparent curtain. No one was allowed inside.
They have instruments there, so that without going through the curtain they can give him shots, place the catheter. The curtains are held together by Velcro, and I’ve learned to use them. But I push them aside and go inside to him. There was a little chair next to his bed. He got so bad that I couldn’t leave him now even for a second. He was calling me constantly: “Lyusya, where are you? Lyusya!” He called and called. The other bio-chambers, where our boys were, were being tended to by soldiers, because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn’t ask. But he—he—every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead. It was like a sledgehammer to my brain.
He was producing stool 25 to 30 times a day. With blood and mucous. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there’d be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: “It’s convenient, you don’t need a comb.” Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him all twenty-four hours. I couldn’t spare a minute. [Long silence.] My brother came and he got scared. “I won’t let you in there!” But my father said to him: “You think you can stop her? She’ll go through the window! She’ll get up through the fire escape!”