‘I remember that cigarette,’ I said, fondly.
‘It played a part,’ she said, ‘in saving your life. There’s an irony there, perhaps. As a medical practitioner I spend much of my working life telling people not to smoke. I spend a lot of time telling them that. Almost as much time as I spend telling them not to drink. But in this case…’
‘That cigarette saved my life?’ I said.
‘It relaxed your muscles. Your friend, Mr Nuclear Reactor, your friend Leo-as-in-Tolstoy, his muscles were tensed tight. The shrapnel cut through him like snapping harpstrings. He went to pieces.’ She chuckled, and then stopped herself. ‘If you see what I mean. You, though, you were relaxed. Sometimes people come into the hospital here having fallen from, say, a high building. Adults, but also, sometimes, babies. The babies have a greater chance of surviving, because they don’t tense themselves in anticipation of the impact. They don’t know any better. They hit the ground as soft sacks, and so don’t shatter.’
‘I believe I have heard something of the like,’ I said.
‘Your muscles were slack, so some of the shrapnel passed straight through without causing too much damage. Pieces went through your legs, and arms, and there is a hole through your stomach and out the other side. It was a good job that none of the pieces had a trajectory that intersected your spine. A piece got stuck in your ribs, and another inside your head, but we were able to get both of those pieces out.’
I looked at my own left hand. I was wearing a stigmata. Turning the hand over, I saw the matching scar on the back. I flexed my fingers; they were stiff, and a little sore, but they worked.
‘Is this how a grenade works?’ I said, amazed.
She looked at me. Her face was a series of regular curves, regularly arranged, but there was a professional blankness in her expression that reduced what might otherwise have been beauty. ‘Weren’t you in the army?’
‘I was in the army,’ I said, with another internal wrench of memorialising regurgitation.
‘Then you should know how a grenade works. It is usually a fatal device, a grenade. Don’t misunderstand me. But, luckily for you, you were relaxed. And luckily you were blown into the pool, which extinguished and cooled your burns. You were partially in the pool. And a quantity of water had been blown about. There was much water in the air, and it rained back down upon you. So you didn’t burn.’
‘Thrice lucky,’ I said.
‘More than thrice. Your face was exposed to the blast, and your skin should have been badly burned. It was, in fact, burned. But your face has been burned before, hasn’t it?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said.
‘Your chin and cheeks, some of your nose and much of your brow is covered with old scar tissue. The scarring indicates what must have been a fairly severe prior burn.’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said again.
‘Scar tissue is in some senses weaker than ordinary tissue; but it has a higher concentration of collagen, which makes it structurally tougher.’
‘I see.’
‘There is, furthermore, another piece of luck here,’ she said.
‘I’ve lost count now,’ I said.
‘The grenade was fairly radioactive. It had been left in a radioactive environment for perhaps a week, and had become itself fairly radioactive.’
I considered this. ‘That’s lucky?’
‘Normally, no. Normally that is no more lucky than smoking a cigarette is healthy. Normally the fact that this grenade was radioactive would be extremely unlucky. You had a fragment of this radioactive grenade stuck inside your skull for two and a half days. We have just operated to remove it. It entered through the left temple — your left, that is — so that’s how we retrieved it; out through the hole it made going in.’
I put my hand up to my head, and felt, on the left side, the enormous fabric excrescence of a surgical dressing, clamped to the side of my skull like an alien facehugger that had missed its target. ‘Don’t fiddle with that,’ said the doctor, severely. ‘There’s a tap under there.’
‘Tap,’ I said. I am not sure why I added. ‘The American word is [faucet].’
‘That’s as may be. Our tap is designed to relieve intercranial pressure, and must not be meddled with.’
‘Meddled with,’ I repeated.
‘Comrade Skvorecky,’ said the doctor. ‘Did you know you have cancer?’
‘Cancer,’ I said, as if leafing through the medical textbook of my memory. Most of the pages were blank. But I remembered this: ‘Because I was in Chernobyl?’
‘No no. Judging by its growth, I would say you have had cancer growing inside your brain for several years.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I pondered this. It sounded like news, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel any anxiety. ‘I may have known that. I may not. I can’t remember if I knew or not.’
‘Located on the border between the perifrontal lobe and the midbrain. Under normal circumstances I would describe such a growth as inoperable.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Does that mean I am going to die?’
‘Everybody dies, comrade.’
‘True of course,’ I agreed. I felt remarkably placid about this news.
‘You should ask: Am I to die soon?’
‘Am I?’
‘As to that, I can’t say. We took out some of the growth when we were in your skull, but wholly to excise it would require us to remove more brain tissue than would be compatible with your continuing mental function.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said again, passionlessly.
‘On the other hand, the grenade fragment was lodged in such a way as to be, in fact, in contact with the tumour.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said once more.
‘Not oh dear, comrade. The grenade itself had been irradiated by, it seems, a week or more in close proximity to depleted uranium. It was itself therefore radioactive. It therefore itself irradiated the tumour for two days. We’ve taken the shrapnel out now, but there’s little doubt that it has done you good.’
‘Done me good,’ I said, as if testing the word on my tongue. ‘Good.’
‘Cancer cells are more susceptible to radiation than ordinary cells. That, combined with the limited surgical excision, has, I believe, materially lengthened your life expectancy.’
‘To be clear,’ I said. ‘By smoking a cigarette, inside a nuclear facility, whilst having my skull blown up by a radioactive RGD-5 I have extended my life expectancy?’
‘A strange chance, indeed. You have months of convalescence ahead of you, of course. Your shrapnel damage amounts to having been shot in the body and head half a dozen times, in addition to being concussed and burned. I would be concerned about such injuries in a young, healthy man; but in a man of your advanced years and poor health it is much more alarming. How old are you, exactly?’
I thought about this. ‘Old,’ I said.
‘When were you born.’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘You fought in the Great Patriotic War?’
‘I suppose so. I’m sorry but I can’t remember precisely.’
‘Well. There has been a degree of neural damage. It seems to be affecting your left brain — your right side — in particular. There has been additional scarring, and various other forms of superficial damage. But all things considered. All things considered—’
I felt quite remarkably calm. But a memory of standing in the reactor hall at the power plant, trying and failing to persuade ox-like Trofim to put the grenade away, flashed into my mind, and with it came the memory of full-strength anxiety. ‘Chernobyl,’ I cried. ‘It blew up!’