Night, thickening over the city, seemed to anticipate a tragedy. Heavy clouds crawled across the sky, as if bearing the weight of unfulfilled hopes and broken fates. The car slid over the wet asphalt like a ghost, leaving behind a trail of headlights and silence pierced by anxiety. Roman sat behind the wheel, gripping it as if his life depended on it. Every bump in the road echoed through his spine like a sledgehammer blow—not a physical one, but a spiritual strike, as if fate itself reminded him: nothing would be easy. Silence hung in the car, broken only by Sonya’s uneven breathing beside him. She leaned back in her seat as if trying to escape pain, fear, and herself. Her hand rested on her belly—huge, as if holding not just a child but a whole world that could collapse at any moment. In her eyes, fixed on the gray, lifeless sky outside the window, there was no light. Only longing. Deep, all-encompassing, like a winter wind piercing to the bone. Not fear. Not pain. But precisely longing—the kind that comes when a person already knows it’s all over but still hopes a miracle will happen.
“Roma…” her voice was thinner than spiderweb, weaker than the whisper of wind through autumn leaves. “Listen to me. Please.”
He nodded without taking his eyes off the road, but his entire being—every cell, every nerve—was on alert. He felt what was coming was not a request but a sentence.
“Promise me…” she swallowed as if trying to swallow not only saliva but fear itself. “If something goes wrong… don’t blame her. Our girl. She didn’t do anything. She was just born. Just came into the world. And you… you must love her. For me. For both of us.”
Roman clenched his teeth. The knuckles on his hands whitened as if holding onto the last straw in a raging ocean. He wanted to scream that everything would be fine, that she would survive, that they would be together—he, Sonya, and their daughter—in the house he was building for them, with a nursery, dolls, and dreams. But the doctor’s words, spoken six months ago, stabbed his memory like a knife: “Pregnancy with your diagnosis is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber. The chance is one in six. And this is no joke. This is death.” He remembered how Sonya’s hands trembled when she heard the diagnosis. How she looked at him—not with despair, but with a plea. “I want this, Roma. I want to be a mother. I want our love to remain in this world. I want something to remain after us.” He couldn’t say “no.” Not because he was weak. But because he loved. Boundlessly. Completely. And he believed—not in medicine, not in chances, but in her. In her strength, in her light, in her faith that love is stronger than death.
“Sonya,” he whispered, his voice trembling, “we will come home. All three of us. I swear. I won’t let you go. No matter what.”
He spoke bravely, but inside everything was cracking. Each word was an attempt to patch the cracks in his soul that grew with every minute.
When they arrived at the emergency room, rain lashed against the windows as if the sky was crying for them. He helped her out, supporting her arm, feeling her trembling—not from cold, but from premonition. She turned to him, pressed her forehead to his chest, and then whispered:
“I love you, Roma. More than life. More than anything in the world. I believe in you. You’ll manage. You’re stronger than you think.”
That embrace lasted only a few seconds, but it burned into his memory like the last light before eternal darkness. Then she was taken away on a stretcher, and he remained standing in the rain, drenched not by water but by the coldness of loneliness. Half an hour later, a doctor appeared—an elderly man with a face carved from stone, with eyes in which everything but fatigue had long since died.
“The situation is critical,” he said without preamble, without pity. “Your wife’s blood clotting is almost completely failing. We’re fighting, but the chances… are few. Very few. All that remains is to believe. Although, honestly, in our profession miracles don’t happen.”
Roman sank onto the steps at the entrance to the maternity hospital as if his legs refused to hold him. The cold of the stone seeped through his trousers, but he felt nothing. Time slowed, stretched, became sticky like resin. He jumped up, paced back and forth, clenched his fists, hit his head against the wall mentally, prayed—not to a god he didn’t know, but to anything that might hear him: stars, fate, the universe itself. “Bring her back. Take me instead, just bring her back.” He was ready to give everything—money, business, life—just for her to survive.
And then, as if from nowhere, Svetlana appeared. She had known his wife since university, was her friend, worked as a nurse in the children’s ward. She had short dark hair, tired eyes, and the smell of chlorine mixed with anxiety. She sat down beside him, not asking but knowing.
“How is she?”
He only shook his head. His face was a mask of pain.
“Very bad,” he whispered.
Svetlana sighed—not pityingly but irritably—and suddenly said:
“Selfish. She knew what she was risking. Knew she might leave. And you? Your parents? Are you just pawns in her game?”
Roman turned sharply. Something primal flared in his eyes—rage, pain, disbelief. How dare she? How could she speak like that about Sonya—the woman for whom he was ready to move mountains? But grief stunned him. He found no words. Decided it was just fatigue, the cynicism doctors develop to survive.
“Let’s get out of here,” Svetlana said, taking his hand. “Sitting here is slowly driving you mad. Let’s go. Drink. Wait it out.”
He followed her like a blind man, like a puppet. They bought cheap brandy at a kiosk near the hospital, sat on a bench in a square where the wind rustled leaves and plastic bags. Svetlana poured brandy into plastic cups. He drank greedily, tasting nothing, only the burning in his throat that momentarily muffled the pain. She talked about trifles—children in the ward, colleagues, the weather. Her voice was steady, like medicine. And he clung to that voice like a lifeline.
He woke up on his couch, still in the clothes from yesterday. His head was splitting. His mouth dry. The first thing he did was grab his phone. The number for the nurse’s station. The nurse’s voice: “Condition stable. Severe.” It was not good news. It was the calm before the storm. He jumped up, rushed out of the apartment like a bullet. At the hospital, Svetlana met him again.
“I arranged it,” she whispered. “They’ll let you see her. But only through the glass. Not allowed in the ward.”
She led him through endless corridors past screams, groans, the smell of medicine and death. And there—glass partition. Behind it—Sonya. But this was not her. This was a ghost. Pale as chalk, bluish, with a face stretched from suffering. Tubes, wires, drips—she was entangled in them like a spider. The monitor showed a flat line. The heart was beating. For now. But Roman understood: this was not a fight. This was goodbye.
A day later—a call. The same voice. The same office. The same doctor who did not look him in the eye.
“I am very sorry. We did everything possible. The bleeding was unstoppable. Neither your wife nor the child survived.”
The words stabbed like a knife. The world went dark. The air disappeared. He jumped up, overturned a chair, lunged at the doctor, grabbed his coat, shouting:
“You lie! I would have paid anything! Everything! You could have saved her! Why did you do nothing?!”
Orderlies dragged him away. The doctor adjusted his coat, said wearily:
“Money is powerless here. Absolutely.”
Svetlana took care of everything. The funeral. The coffin. The cemetery. The relatives. She moved like a machine—collected, precise, cold-blooded. Roman sat in their empty apartment, where every object screamed Sonya—her scarf on the hook, a cup on the table, perfume on the shelf. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t cry. Only stared into emptiness.
Then, one of those endless evenings, a memory surfaced. A long-ago quarrel. He left, slamming the door. Got drunk at a bar. There—Svetlana. She listened, comforted, pressed close. And then… then they ended up at her place. Betrayal. The only one. Which he regretted every day. Sonya never knew. He couldn’t tell her. And now—this secret lay on his soul like a second coffin.
At the cemetery, he couldn’t look at Sonya in the coffin. He wanted to remember her alive. Laughing. With wrinkles near her eyes. When the earth knocked on the lid, he turned and walked away.
“Roma! The memorial!” Svetlana called after him.
“I’m not going,” he said firmly.
At the gates—a girl. About eight years old. Torn jacket. Dirty hands. Eyes like embers.
“Uncle!” she shouted, grabbing his sleeve. “Demand the cameras! In the maternity hospital! They’ll show you! Listen!”
He recoiled. Gave her some money. Left.
Grief became his fuel. He threw himself into work like into an abyss. The construction business—once a job, now a meaning. He worked eighteen hours a day, drove subordinates hard, signed contracts like a madman. The company tripled. Money flowed like a river. But he felt neither joy nor pride. Only emptiness. He rarely came home. More often—to Svetlana. Her apartment was foreign. Without memories. Without ghosts. She silently cooked, sat nearby. It was convenient. Too convenient.
Unnoticed, like drops of water eroding stone, her things began to fill his home—the home that once belonged only to him and Sonya. At first, it was a toothbrush, carefully placed next to his. Then a robe hung on a hook where only her scarf had hung before. Then a whole suitcase she left “for a couple of days” but never took back. Little things, seemingly innocent, like part of the natural flow of life. But each one was like a nail hammered into the coffin of their past.
One day, returning from work, Roman saw the photo of Sonya—the very one that stood on the living room table, greeting his mornings every day—now hidden on a shelf in the cabinet, behind folders with documents, as if unnecessary, forgotten. He froze. A lump rose in his throat. He wanted to scream, tear the photo out of the darkness, and put it back where it belonged—in the center, in the light. But he was silent. Just nodded as if everything was fine. Because speaking meant remembering. And remembering was painful. So it was easier that way.
Almost a year passed.
Time, it seemed, should have healed the wounds. But instead, it built an icy wall between him and reality. Svetlana became more insistent. Her voice—once quiet, soothing—now sounded like a command.
“Roma, maybe we should sell this house?” she asked, sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea as if discussing the weather. “There are too many… memories here. Heavy ones. Let’s start fresh. Buy an apartment downtown, with panoramic windows, with a view of the city. And maybe it’s time to legalize our relationship? What do you think?”
He looked at her, and a strange feeling grew in his chest—not anger, not irritation, but a dull, animal rejection. As if something in her—her manner, her gaze, her very aura—had become alien. He didn’t want a new life. He wanted to get back what was taken from him. He didn’t love Svetlana. Never did. She was not love, but a shelter from the storm—warm, convenient, but fake. She was a living painkiller, a remedy that dulls the pain but does not heal the wound.
And the wound was still bleeding.
The climax came in the deepest night.
They lay in bed, and Roman, half asleep, half in oblivion, wrapped in fatigue and bodily warmth, whispered:
“Sonya…”
The word torn from the depths of his soul.
Svetlana froze. Then suddenly pushed him away with such force he almost fell to the floor. Her face twisted—not from offense but from rage, hatred, something ancient and dark hidden beneath the mask of care.
“Sonya?!” she screamed, her voice breaking into a shriek. “That Sonya of yours again?! Even dead, she stands between us! Your saint, your perfect Sonya! She was a fool! A selfish fool who traded your life for her whim! I was always better! Smarter! More beautiful! I deserve to be in her place! Me!”
Roman looked at her, and in that moment he seemed to wake from a long faint. Before him stood not a friend, not a comforter, not a savior—but a stranger, angry, jealous woman whose heart was filled not with love but with thirst for power, revenge, possession.
And suddenly he remembered everything: her strange words at the maternity hospital entrance, her cynical remarks, her hatred of Sonya, her too-quick entry into his life, her constant presence as if she had been waiting for this moment.
“Get out,” he said quietly but with such icy certainty she fell silent. “Pack your things. And leave. Now. Immediately.”
The door slammed.
Silence.
But it was not the silence of relief. It was emptiness. Deafening, all-consuming. As if the house, freed from lies, had become even more dead. He got into the car, not knowing where, just driving away. And his feet brought him where he hadn’t returned for a whole year—to the gray, gloomy maternity hospital building, lit only by rare windows in the night.
He stood in the drizzling rain, trembling, and suddenly—as a flash—the words of that little girl from the cemetery came back:
“Demand to see the cameras in the maternity hospital. Uncle! Listen!”
Then he considered it nonsense. A child’s fantasy.
But now—after the scene with Svetlana, after her hatred, after her words, after everything—it didn’t sound like nonsense.
It sounded like a warning.
Like a key.
He went around the building, found the service entrance. In a small room, a guard was dozing—elderly, tired, with a face marked by years. Roman put a wad of money on the table.
“I need the records. Last year. Children’s ward.”
The guard hesitated.
“The archive is on the server. Hard to find. And if they find out…”
“Here’s the same amount again if you find it.”
An hour later, they sat in a dusty basement in front of a monitor. On the screen—a grainy black-and-white video.
And there—the doctors. The incubator. And the bundle. His daughter. Alive. Breathing. Moving her little hands.
Roman held his breath.
Hours. Minutes.
And then a figure in a gown and mask enters the frame.
He recognizes the gait.
Svetlana.
He sees her look around. Take his daughter. Put a dead infant in her place. And leave.
His legs gave out.
“Did you… did you see this?” he croaked.
The guard nodded, pale as death.
“Oh God…”
“Call the police. Now.”
Within hours, the management was shocked. Investigators, seeing the footage, immediately began an investigation. By morning, they found documents: Svetlana had registered the girl as a “foundling,” handed her over to an orphanage, received money from the director.
And then they found her—the girl from the cemetery.
Her name was Liza. She was a ward of that very orphanage. She had already been adopted.
When brought in, she said:
“I heard Svetlana talking to the director. They made a deal. I tried to tell… But no one believed. I ran away to find my dad…”
Roman fell to his knees before her.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I didn’t listen.”
He drove to the orphanage like in a dream.
The regional home, on the outskirts, in a gray building with barred windows.
The director met him. Led him to the playroom.
There, on the carpet, sat the girl. Light pigtails. Serious eyes.
She looked up.
Sonya’s eyes.
Roman staggered.
She stood, walked toward him—wobbly like all toddlers. Raised her little hands.
He knelt down. Took her in his arms.
She smelled of childhood. Milk. Trust.
She pressed against his cheek.
And in that moment—the ice that had bound his heart for a year—cracked.
“I’m leaving with her. Now,” he said.
That same day he bought everything—a crib, toys, dresses, teddy bears. The house, empty and cold, began to come alive.
He returned Sonya’s photo to the table.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I was weak.”
A week later, he called the orphanage caregiver—Marina.
“I’m looking for a nanny. Someone she trusts. Someone she knows. That’s you. The salary is five times more.”
She agreed.
Her calm hands, warm voice, kindness—they became part of the new home.
Six months passed.
One evening, after putting his daughter to bed, Roman took Marina’s hand.
“I know part of my heart will always belong to Sonya,” he said. “But it has learned to beat again. Learned to love.”
He opened a velvet box.
“Marry me. Let’s build a real family.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
She nodded.
Life lay ahead.
Not perfect.
Not without pain.
But real.
Built on ruins but filled with light.
Happiness.
And quiet, hard-won hope.