Anatoly Lvovich slowly leaned back against the back of his massive leather chair. It wasn’t just a piece of furniture—it was a gift, the most expensive and coveted one, that his only daughter, Elena, had given him two years earlier. Back then, her eyes shining, she insisted that this exact model was praised by the country’s leading orthopedists for those forced to spend long hours at a desk. He had been deeply touched by that tender care. Now, though, even the most carefully engineered German ergonomics could not offer a shred of comfort, because opposite him, curled up into herself, sat his daughter—the living embodiment of his own youth, just as vivid, just as unyielding.
Elena sat with her arms tightly crossed over her chest, as if trying to shield herself from his words. Her foot tapped a nervous, uneven beat against the patterned parquet. In moments like this she reminded him painfully of himself—the same steel resolve in her eyes, the same stubbornness etched into every feature. The air in the study had grown thick and heavy, as if filled with lead.
“You know,” he said at last, his voice muffled as it broke the crushing silence, “your condemning look won’t change my decision. I cannot approve of your choice. Working as a doctor in some backwoods village is not your path.”
“You just don’t want to hear me,” she exhaled, hurt ringing in her voice. “It’s like we’re speaking different languages, like we always stand on opposite shores.”
The man regretfully ran a hand over his face.
“A fine nod to eternal antagonists! But if we’re invoking the classics, remember how Bazarov met his end—blood poisoning after a dissection! And after that you fault me for not wanting a similar fate for you?”
Elena only lifted her gaze to the ceiling in reply, pointedly showing how flimsy that argument sounded to her.
With sorrow, Anatoly thought how alike they were despite all their differences. Not only in their looks, but in that inner core, that unbending will. Even as a little girl, when Lena wanted something, she’d press her lips together and look at him from under her brows, refusing to back down.
He blamed only himself. After that terrible day when they lost Irina—Lena was only five—he, mad with grief, tried to compensate for the irreparable loss with boundless, all-consuming love. He spoiled her, but, to his relief, it didn’t turn her into a pampered, frivolous creature. She grew up sensitive, intelligent, and incredibly driven. Only her latest decision would not let him rest, poisoning every day. Instead of taking over the family business, she had chosen the path of an ordinary physician.
Their business, founded by her grandfather, was tied to medicine as well—they produced high-precision equipment for hospitals and clinics, and not long ago had launched a successful chain of aesthetic medicine centers. But Elena, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, declared she had no intention of fixing noses and tightening jawlines for those who could afford it. Her calling was real help—the kind she considered meaningful.
“You refuse to see the obvious,” he tried again to reach her. “It’s easy to talk about a lofty calling when you’ve been raised in luxury, with the best universities and no limits. A doctor’s work is backbreaking labor that few people truly value.”
Her nostrils flared with indignation.
“First you do everything so I’ll have a choice—and now you reproach me for having it?” Her hands flew up in a silent question. “I’m not going to some wilderness without signal or civilization! They’ll assign me to an ordinary district hospital!”
“And what if that hospital turns out to be in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometers from anything?” Anatoly’s voice rose; he was barely restraining himself from getting up.
Elena drew a tense breath and let her gaze wander around the office. Her eyes slid over the portraits of great figures on the walls and paused for a moment on the black-and-white image of Steve Jobs. Then she turned sharply back to her father.
“Do you know what Steve Jobs said when he realized his time was running out?”
“What exactly?” the man asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily.
“He said that with age comes a simple truth: a thirty-dollar watch shows the same time as a three-hundred-thousand-dollar chronometer. It doesn’t matter what car you drive—the road is the same. And you can feel endlessly lonely both in a tiny apartment and in the largest mansion,” she fired off in one breath.
“And your point is?”
“That people live everywhere. In big cities and in small villages. And I want to be where my help can make a difference!” Her voice rang with warm, sincere notes. “Or do you think someone who arrives at the hospital in a beat-up old car doesn’t deserve quality medical care?”
“I’m just trying to protect you, Lena!” His voice cracked. “Let those who have no other options do that kind of work! I raised you for a completely different life!”
“But it’s my life, and only I get to decide what to do with it!” Elena sprang from the chair. “I will go wherever I’m assigned. That’s my final decision.”
She lifted her chin and strode out of the office without looking back. Anatoly watched her go with a lost expression, then dropped his head into his hands. She refused to understand the role social status, background, and connections played in this world. Born with a silver spoon, she strove so stubbornly to cast it aside—without even imagining what it meant to live without it.
His gaze fell on a photograph in a silver frame: little Lena in a sunny yellow dress, laughing carelessly.
“If only she had to live in real backwoods for a while—just a bit—she would understand and realize her mistake,” he muttered softly.
And at that very second a thought was born. Swift as lightning—and just as blinding. Anatoly snatched up his phone and, without hesitation, dialed.
“Denis, hi. How are you?”
“Getting by,” came a cheerful voice. “Everything’s set up, largely thanks to your support.”
“Listen, I have a question. Do you still have influence over the placement of med school graduates? My daughter just got her diploma—burning with desire to save the world.”
“No problem!” The man on the line perked up. “Where do you want to place her? A capital clinic? Or maybe our research center?”
“In a village,” Anatoly said clearly. “The most remote, most godforsaken spot you can find on the map.”
Silence reigned for a beat on the other end. Then Denis broke it with a muffled chuckle.
“Very funny, Tolik. Okay, enough—seriously, where are we assigning Elena?”
“I’ve never been more serious,” the businessman said evenly. “Send her to a village.”
It was from that brief phone conversation that the story began—one that would forever change several lives.
When Anatoly decided to send his daughter to a remote village, he cherished the hope that harsh reality would quickly cool her fervor. He was sure that once Elena learned her placement, she wouldn’t even pack. But driven by the desire to prove her father wrong, she showed remarkable resolve. Soon enough she was on her way to the village of Zarechnoye, where a modest position awaited her at the local outpatient clinic.
The trip to that place, forgotten by the wider world, took her an entire day. She stared out the car window at endless fields and deep forests, and the thought stirred in her that a bear might indeed step out of the thicket any moment—thus justifying the cliché about the sticks.
They assigned the young doctor a small but sturdy brick house with a neat triangular roof. Right next to it, almost flush, stood another house—old, wooden, its windows nailed shut, obviously abandoned many years ago. It looked so decrepit and forlorn that it seemed one more strong gust and it would collapse like a house of cards.
At first, Elena was enchanted by her new life. It seemed that here, far from the city’s eternal racket and rush, even the air was different—clean, transparent, drinkable like fresh spring water. But soon enough she ran into difficulties.
The locals greeted the outsider with a pricey foreign car with deep suspicion. Tractor drivers, milkmaids, and farmers whispered that if she sold such a car, she could provide for the whole village for years. No one could understand why a well-groomed, educated girl from the big city had come to their backwater. They expected some trick and were in no hurry to open up, testing the newcomer for strength.
But mustering all her will, Elena threw herself into the work. She received patients and treated each with maximum attention and care. Fresh from the institute, she had not yet grown that protective shell of cynicism and burnout. To her there were no trifles—every person mattered. With equal dedication she pulled a splinter from the carpenter’s finger, tended scraped children’s knees, and spent hours listening to elderly women’s complaints about blood pressure and aching joints.
About a month passed, and Elena gradually became one of their own. The villagers accepted the kind, responsive girl. And that was when the real, inexplicable problem began.
Elena started sleeping badly. At night she distinctly heard strange sounds: muffled footsteps, floorboards creaking, a plaintive, drawn-out dog’s howl somewhere far away. She even got up and, arming herself with a flashlight, cautiously paced through the house—but found nothing and no one. Noticing her pallor and dark circles, one of her regulars, an elderly woman named Glafira Petrovna, shook her head anxiously.
“Child, you fuss over us all the time, but you’ve run yourself ragged!” she scolded, eyeing Elena appraisingly. “Your face is waxy—no blood left in you at all!”
Elena smiled gratefully.
“Thank you for worrying, Granny Glasha,” she said, covering a yawn with her hand. “It’s just something bothers me at night—I can’t fall asleep. It’s unnerving, being alone in the house.”
The old woman narrowed her shrewd, all-seeing eyes.
“You’re living beside a bad house, that one with the windows boarded up. It belonged to the last feldsher. Notice how close it stands to yours? They built yours later, on the same plot. Folks wouldn’t decide to live in the old one,” she said, eager to share the local legend.
“What’s wrong with it? Was he a bad medic?”
“No, he worked like the rest,” Glafira waved her dried hand. “The trouble came later. A black grief fell on him—his wife went into the forest to pick berries and never came back. We searched the whole place—no trace. He took to drink from sorrow, and then… took his own life. And when they opened the house, they found such a thing… Turned out he’d been the one to take his wife’s life. They said she wanted to run off to the city, to leave him, and he struck her in a quarrel—didn’t realize his strength. Couldn’t live with the guilt. Left a note—confessed to it all. They say his soul never found peace, still wanders there. Folks hear footsteps, and some even see a light in the windows… Only who’d go check?”
Elena was a woman of science; she didn’t believe in the supernatural. All those tales of water sprites, wood goblins, and house spirits the locals had already served her only made her smile. But Granny Glasha’s story made her shiver. She had heard footsteps distinctly, and it hadn’t occurred to her their source might be next door.
Elena’s days were always packed, and anxious thoughts of ghosts quickly dissipated. That day a tractor driver badly cut his hand—she had to stitch it. Some kids came in with suspected ringworm—too much cuddling with stray kittens. And the mountain of paperwork never went away. When she got home, she barely had time to fix a simple dinner and was about to go to bed when…
Right behind the wall came a clear, drawn-out creak.
Her drowsiness vanished at once; her eyes flew open. She froze, listening, and realized—Granny Glasha had been right. She’d been looking in the wrong place. The sounds weren’t coming from her house but from the other one, the one pressed up against her bedroom wall. Carefully, trying not to make a noise, Elena lifted the edge of the curtain and peeked out the window. She barely stifled a cry and jerked back, pressing herself to the wall.
There, in the gap between the boards, a shadow flickered for an instant.
Everything fell silent, and then came a sharp, deafening bang—bam!—followed by something she hadn’t imagined she’d hear: a short, muffled cry. Ice-cold gooseflesh raced down her spine.
“No way—I’m definitely not going in there,” she whispered aloud, trying to calm her pounding heart. “Rule number one of any sensible person: don’t go alone at night to check strange noises in an abandoned house. I’ll wait till morning.”
The next day was her day off. Sunlight dispelled the night’s fears, making them ghostly and absurd. Summoning her courage, she headed decisively to the neighboring plot. Sleepless nights had become a real problem—something had to be done.
The house met her with ringing, tomb-like silence. Elena stepped inside and was enveloped by the smell of dust, damp, and something else—sweet and unpleasant. She switched on her phone’s flashlight; the beam cut through the gloom—scraped-up walls, a tilted old stove, an overturned stool, a rough wooden table…
At first it seemed just an ordinary abandoned house, one of many.
But the further she went, the stronger her sense grew that someone was using the place. The dust didn’t lie everywhere. She noticed signs of a meal—scattered berry pits, apple cores, corn husks, and eggshells. Then her eyes fell on some rags, stained with dark, dried patches that looked like blood.
“All right, that’s enough for one day,” she muttered and began edging back toward the door.
At that very moment came that same long, eerie creak.
Then a quick, light patter—like small, bare feet moving across the floor, trying not to be noticed.
Elena had already pictured the feldsher’s ghost hurrying to meet his colleague. She spun around, ready to bolt. But another deafening creak directly overhead made her flinch and stumble in panic in the half-light.
Her foot caught the overturned stool; she lost her balance and crashed hard onto the filthy wooden floor. The phone flew from her hand, struck a board, the screen went dark, and the device skittered off into a corner. She swore under her breath and tried to get up, but a sharp pain in her ankle made her cry out. She’d pulled a ligament. Tears sprang from the pain, fright, and the sting of her own foolishness. How humiliating and stupid—breaking into a stranger’s house, injuring her ankle, and likely smashing her phone.
“Do you need help?” came a small, almost soundless voice.
Elena froze; her heart plummeted into her heels, then leapt back into her throat. She stared into the darkness and, unable to stand, crawled backward toward the precious doorway.
“Who… is there?” she whispered, her voice trembling.
And then, just as she braced to see something inexplicable and terrible, a boy stepped into a shaft of light filtering through the cracks in the boarded windows.
“Good Lord!” burst from her. “You’re a child!”
A thin, frail boy of eight or ten, dressed in old, torn, filthy clothes, stood there, peering timidly at her. His light, almost flaxen hair was tousled and web-streaked, as if he’d just crawled out of a hiding place. Pale-brown eyes looked at her from under his brows, with a mute question and guarded wariness.
“Are you hurt?” he repeated, not daring to come closer.
Elena was stunned. Though the child was clearly as frightened as she was, his first impulse was to offer help.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, not taking her eyes off him.
“Living,” he said dully, a shadow of defiance flickering in his gaze.
“Alone?” she couldn’t believe her ears.
He only shrugged his narrow shoulders.
“I used to live with my mom, in another village. Two years ago she got very sick and… they took me to an orphanage. It’s not far.”
He waved vaguely toward the forest. Then he came toward her decisively.
“Let me help you.”
Only then did Elena notice the boy could barely stand himself. One leg was tightly wrapped in dirty rags, a dark stain seeping through.
“What happened to your leg?” she nodded at it.
“I tried to catch fish in the river so I could eat. The rock was slick and sharp. I cut myself, and for two days I could hardly walk,” he explained simply.
Her own problems vanished from her mind. She forgot the sprain. Elena got up, bracing against the wall, and limped the boy to her house. She sat him on a chair and pulled out her formidable first-aid kit. She treated the deep, infected wound on his leg. Then she told him—he said his name was Stepan, but asked her to call him Styopa—to wash off the grime of many days. She found an old tracksuit; it hung on him, but it was clean and warm. Finally, she sat him at the table. Watching the hungry child devour her potato casserole with a wolfish appetite, she gently asked:
“Styopa, why did you run away from the orphanage?”
He sniffled and lowered his eyes to his plate.
“It’s… bad there. Better alone. Not long ago a family took me in, but then… they sent me back. Now everyone says I’m ‘defective.’ They say people only return kids when the kids are bad and it’s their fault. They think I’m the one who’s not right, you know? But I didn’t do anything…,” his voice quivered. “They had a son, and he kept blaming me for everything. Said I hit him, said I broke their things, but it wasn’t true… And they believed him—their own child. And they returned me like an unwanted thing.”
Elena’s heart clenched. She was shocked by the cruelty and injustice of a world that had shown a child its ugliest face so early.
“And how long have you been living here alone?”
“I don’t know… Maybe two weeks, maybe more,” Styopa said thoughtfully. “In the day I stay inside so no one sees me, and at night I go looking for food. Everyone’s afraid of this house; no one comes in. I take fruit from gardens, eggs from coops. That’s how I live.”
Elena was at a loss. She didn’t know what to do next. As if reading her thoughts, the boy lifted pleading eyes to her.
“You won’t send me back, will you? Please don’t take me there! I’ll just run away again!”
His voice broke into a high, frightened note. In that moment Elena’s heart yielded, fully and irrevocably. She smiled softly, reached out, and gently stroked his hair, still damp from washing.
“No, Styopa, I won’t hand you over anywhere,” she said firmly, confidently. “You’re staying with me now.”
Anatoly Lvovich drove along the rutted dirt road, taking in the endless fields and groves sliding past the window. His daughter had suddenly fallen off the radar. Her phone had been silent for over a week. Naturally he was worried and, unable to wait any longer, set out to check on her himself. Deep down he still hoped she’d come to her senses and return home, admitting he’d been right. But the days passed, and that didn’t happen. He had managed to conjure up any number of dire scenarios; the reality, however, held a far more unexpected surprise.
Finding Elena right away didn’t work. He stopped by the local shop and asked the saleswoman where to find the new doctor.
“Our Lenočka?” the woman beamed. “She’s in the fifth house with the blue roof. Lives there with her little brother. And if you’re going to her, tell her—it’s bread and salt from Maria. Thanks to her, my back stopped hurting!”
She handed the stunned businessman a bundle of homemade jam and pies.
“With what brother?” Anatoly asked, puzzled.
“With the younger one, Styopa,” she tossed over her shoulder, already turning to another customer.
Holding the unexpected gifts, Anatoly hurried to the house she’d named. He found the house with the blue roof, found his daughter—and found that out-of-nowhere “little brother.”
The boy sat beneath a spreading bird cherry tree, carefully gathering fallen berries into a basket.
“Elena!” the man couldn’t help himself. “Care to explain when I suddenly acquired a son?”
Elena greeted her father warmly, without a hint of reproach. She sat him at the table, poured tea, and told the whole story of Styopa.
“So there wouldn’t be awkward questions, I told everyone he’s my kid brother,” she explained, looking fondly at the boy who was sorting berries for compote. “He’s a treasure—helps a lot, tries his best. A kind, sensitive child.”
“But this is illegal,” Anatoly shook his head. “You’re obliged to inform child services, the orphanage.”
“If you do that, Papa, I’ll adopt him myself,” his daughter flared. “I checked on that orphanage. They didn’t even notice he was missing, can you believe it? They don’t care in the least that a child has disappeared!”
“But it’s not your responsibility! You can’t drag every destitute person into your home!”
“Why not? If I can help, then I should!”
Angry at his daughter and her obstinacy, he was ready to turn around and leave. She was alive and well—be grateful for that. Fate, however, decided otherwise: his expensive SUV died on him completely. He had to stay a while with his daughter and her unexpected “little brother.” And it was those forced holidays that became the turning point in Anatoly’s own life. He saw with his own eyes how life flowed in that village. He understood what sincere, warm, responsive people surrounded his daughter. Once, Styopa took Anatoly fishing. The businessman realized with surprise that in his endless chase for success he hadn’t held a fishing rod in thirty years, though as a youth it had been his favorite pastime. The local handyfolk repaired the car, but for some reason he no longer wanted to leave.
Anatoly stayed one more day. Then another. And another.
He grew attached to the place—and to the boy with the clear, trusting eyes. In the end, he threw up his hands and began the process of obtaining official guardianship over Styopa.
“Otherwise there’ll be no one to go fishing with me…” he grumbled, trying to hide his embarrassment when the happy boy hugged his neck and, for the first time, called him Dad.
At that moment Elena quietly brushed a tear from her lashes.
Years passed. Grown up and brilliantly educated, Stepan joined the family business with joy and enthusiasm, becoming Anatoly’s worthy successor and right-hand man. Elena, having walked the path from ordinary physician to chief of a major hospital, achieved everything herself—through her own work and talent. Yet they returned to Zarechnoye again and again, all together. Because it was there, in the hush of fields and the whisper of forests, in the simple, sincere hearts of the locals, that their own hearts found that very peace and the true, enduring joy you can’t buy for any money. And every evening, sitting on the porch of their old house with the blue roof, they watched the sun set, painting the sky in gold and crimson, and they knew—the real wealth of life lies not in the thickness of a wallet, but in the depth of human relationships and the quiet happiness of being needed by someone who truly needs you.