There are always differences between the rich and the poor, the kind and the evil, the educated and the uneducated. All this becomes irrelevant when a person enters the emergency room. Ambulance services are open to everyone. Everyone there is simply a patient.
Yet, even here, some manage to secure better conditions for themselves.
Lev Alexandrovich Bessonov was one of such people. His room was private and equipped to the highest standard. He had his own sink, bathroom with a shower, refrigerator, electric kettle, and television. The care of the nurses in his room was also of the highest level.
However, despite the comfort, Lev Alexandrovich felt no joy, understanding that his days were numbered. The disease had reached its final stage and was relentlessly undermining his health. But what pained him more was the realization that everything he had earned through hard work and knowledge could end up in the hands of strangers.
He planned to leave part of his estate to the local orphanage and the remaining part to his distant cousins. He had almost no connection with them, but they were still family. He also planned to leave a piece to his household staff and driver. Lev Alexandrovich had no closer heirs. His wife had passed away three years ago.
They had survived a severe tragedy. The grief was so strong that she could not recover after the disappearance of their only daughter.
This had happened more than twenty years ago. Then Lev, his wife Lena, and their six-year-old daughter Yulia were returning from their country house. They spent their weekends there and not only. The country house had a small garden that fed them and even allowed them to earn a little from selling the produce.
They were returning home by commuter train. They were so tired that day that they didn’t notice they had fallen asleep. When they woke up, Yulia was no longer there. Of course, they raised the alarm and contacted the police. But all efforts were in vain. The girl disappeared. For several years, Lev Alexandrovich tried to convince his wife to have another child. Lena always said that she already had a child and did not want another. She could not find the strength to take this step. Lena continued to live in the past and didn’t care about the present, let alone dream about the future.
Lev tried to drown his inner pain by dedicating himself to work. He was a physicist by education, spoke several languages. This allowed him to teach and translate technical texts, and it brought in a decent income. After a few years, he became the head of a department and then the director of one of the institutes. He often traveled abroad to conferences, interacting with scientists from different countries. All this became his salvation from everything that was happening in the family.
Lena did the opposite. She quit her job, and handed over household duties to the staff. She immersed herself in religion and spent a lot of time on it. But alas, it brought her no comfort. Her heart couldn’t take it, and she passed away.
After her death, Lev Alexandrovich continued his scientific work and lived on as best he could. So it would have continued if not for one “but.”
Years went by, he worked a lot and earned a lot. His wealth multiplied, and he never thought about why he needed it. All this seemed to him merely obligatory attributes of status.
But a series of events finally made him think about a will. After all, he had a lot of wealth. After two heart attacks, he was left disabled. Only after losing his health did he realize that he had almost no time left to live. It began to dawn on him that everything he had accumulated was meaningless. The second heart attack was especially serious…
“Hello, how is our patient today?” asked his nurse, entering the room with a duty smile on her face. “Ready for breakfast? Today we have delicious cottage cheese casserole with fruits and stewed fish with mashed potatoes.”
Lev Alexandrovich gazed out the window with melancholy.
“What the hell, breakfast. Just let me die already,” he thought, but aloud he said something else:
“Thank you, Natasha. I think I’ll just have some tea, if you’ll allow me.” “No, that’s not acceptable,” Natasha replied with a good-natured reproof. “You need to gain strength, you really need to eat something.”
Lev Sergeevich felt embarrassed and, not wanting to appear like a spoiled rich man, quickly said:
“Let it be the casserole then.”
The nurse was pleased that she had convinced him to eat, and hurried off.
Bessonov sighed heavily again, pondering what all these years meant if he didn’t even have heirs. This thought troubled him.
“It’s a pity one cannot go to the grave ahead of time,” he thought.
To distract himself, he asked the nurse to turn on the TV. The news only intensified his melancholy.
“Why can’t you sleep?” Natasha asked. “You need rest, but you continue to think about something.”
By the end of the day, Lev Alexandrovich finally fell asleep. In his dream, he saw his wife walking through a blooming field and calling him to follow her.
“Perhaps it’s time to join her,” he thought in his dream.
But then, at the edge of the field, his daughter Yulia appeared, reaching out her hands and trying to pull him to her. He bent down, took her hand, and felt the warmth of a child’s palm.
Opening his eyes, Lev Alexandrovich discovered that a night light was on in the room, and a little girl was standing next to him, holding his hand. He clutched at his heart:
“Yulia?”
“No,” replied the little girl. “I’m Lena. There are many rooms here, and I got lost.”
He gathered all his strength and sat up in bed. Before him stood a little girl, strikingly similar to his daughter. “So you’re Lenochka,” he whispered. “And how did you get here?” “I woke up, and mommy wasn’t there,” said the girl. “I took some markers and went to look for her.”
He noticed that she had colorful markers in her hands.
“Oh, so you like to draw?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lena smiled, “I’m good at it. Nurse Tanechka gave me the markers so I wouldn’t be sad.”
“Why were you crying?” he asked anxiously.
“Because…,” the girl limped slightly on her left leg as she walked across the room. “The doctor said it’s going to be like this forever.”
Lev Alexandrovich felt his heart squeeze again.
“My God! Why did this happen?”
“The doctor said I needed a vaccine, but mom didn’t allow it,” she explained.
“I see…,” Bessonov stretched out the conversation. “Can you draw something for me?”
“Of course!” exclaimed Lenochka cheerfully. “Although I only know how to draw mommy.”
She perked up, took a sheet of paper from the nightstand, turned it over, and began to draw her mom. Lev Alexandrovich watched with interest as a woman of indeterminate age with bright yellow hair and blue eyes appeared on the paper. He couldn’t help but smile.
The girl looked at him questioningly, and he hastened to compliment her.
“Your mom is very beautiful, so young.”
“That’s not all,” declared the girl, adding a drawn necklace to the woman’s neck. She diligently drew oval after oval, sticking out her tongue in concentration and furrowing her light brows.
Bessonov smiled again.
“It’s been so long since I felt this way,” he thought to himself.
Meanwhile, Lena was finishing the pendant. When she completed the drawing and turned the sheet toward Bessonov, he suddenly exclaimed:
“Sister!” Panic seized him, his heart raced, and he feared it might be another heart attack. The nurse who rushed in immediately inserted a vial into the IV, connected the system to the needle, and began monitoring the equipment. Only then did she notice the girl in the room.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered sternly. “Go back to your department right now.”
Lena, limping slightly and nearly crying, backed towards the door but dropped her markers and burst into tears.
“What is happening?” The nurse quickly gathered everything from the floor, picked up the girl, and carried her out of the room.
Crying, the girl softly repeated:
“I don’t know, I don’t know…”
“What don’t you know, dear?”
“I don’t know where to go, I got lost.”
The nurse wiped her tears, put her on the floor, and said:
“Stay here. I’ll help the patient and then I’ll take you back to your department.”
Panic had already erupted there—the little patient was missing. Lena’s mom, ignoring the nurses’ pleas, was yelling at someone, and other mothers were anxiously peeking out of the rooms. When the distraught woman saw her daughter in the nurse’s arms, she instantly calmed down, rushed over, and grabbed the child as if they didn’t want to return her. Lenochka, sobbing, clung to her mother’s shoulder.
The next morning, Natalia was pleasantly surprised by the change in her patient. He greeted her with a smile and sparkling eyes.
“Happy to see you in such a good mood, Lev Alexandrovich!” exclaimed the nurse. “Feeling better?”
“Natalya, I’ll tell you more: today is a real celebration for me. Just help me not to spoil it.”
“Lev Alexandrovich, what exactly needs to be done?” Natalya asked with a barely noticeable uncertainty.
“Please find this woman in the children’s department,” he pointed to the drawing made by Lena, and continued. “Yesterday, her daughter, Lenochka, came to see me. She limped, got lost in the corridors and ended up in my room, and then she drew a portrait of her mom. It’s very important for me to meet this woman.”
Natalya looked at the child’s drawing in amazement, which depicted a woman like on all children’s pictures, yet she took it and stepped towards the children’s department.
When Lena’s mother entered the room, holding her daughter in her arms, Lev Alexandrovich was already sitting, surrounded by pillows. She was wearing a colorful hospital gown, and no pendant was visible. She entered and stood silently. He also remained silent and just stared at her face, as if trying to remember something.
“Excuse me, could you show me your pendant?” he asked.
She removed the necklace and approached closer. Lev Alexandrovich looked at the pendant—a four-leaf clover made of onyx set in silver.
“It’s the one! Exactly! Yulia!”
The woman flinched.
“Actually, I’m Anastasia, but I used to be called Yulia,” she replied. “But that was a long time ago.”
“My girl,” he whispered softly, “you’ve been found!”
Not understanding what was happening, Nastya looked back at her daughter, standing in the middle of the room. The girl pointed at Bessonov and said:
“That’s the grandpa I told you about yesterday.”
Anastasia looked again at Lev Alexandrovich’s face.
“Are you saying I’m your daughter?”
“Probably,” he replied with a tremor in his voice. “Do you remember getting lost?”
“Of course,” Anastasia admitted. “We were on a train, my parents fell asleep, and some musicians and a boy with a puppy were walking through the car. I stood up and followed them for some reason.”
“My God, to lose your own child, to miss an entire life…”
“When we got off the train, they took me to a small room, fed me, and changed my clothes. I saw that my things were gone, and I was afraid they would take the pendant too, so I hid it in my mouth. I’ve kept it all my life.”
“But didn’t you cry, didn’t you miss us?” asked Bessonov.
“Of course, I missed you. But they told me that my parents had died, and I became an orphan.”
“Poor girl…”
“Then I was handed over to sectarians. These people were out of their minds and made us starve and pray. The only useful thing from them was that they taught me to read. At fifteen, they brought me to their leader, and I cleaned his library and read books. He said that the world was ruled by immoral people. He scared me with such talks. Sometimes he said that such a world needed to be destroyed. He argued that it was easier to create a new one than to save and fix the old one. And then… he brainwashed me and convinced me that I should give myself to him…”
“Lord, what a horror!” he exclaimed indignantly.
“I gave birth to a daughter. Sons were taken from their mothers as soon as they stopped breastfeeding, claiming they needed male upbringing. Daughters were left with their mothers until they were fifteen. Children often got sick and died because they weren’t treated and weren’t vaccinated, believing that it deprived the child of divine purity. So they didn’t allow my Lenochka to be vaccinated, and she eventually caught an infection. When they brought us here, she was curled up like from convulsions. We escaped from those who tormented us, ran out of the woods right onto the road. Luckily, they picked us up and brought us here.”
“Could we really have met?” Lev Alexandrovich said with growing hope in his voice. “Do you remember anything?”
“Very vaguely. But I remember mom Lena well. She was beautiful and very kind. Doesn’t she come here?”
“She only visits in my dreams now. She died of grief,” Lev sighed heavily. “That feeling broke her, and now I’m so weakened that I thought I’d die. But now I’ve lost the desire to leave.” He suddenly laughed.
“Lena is your granddaughter, I named her after her grandmother.”
Lev reached out to the girl. The little one looked back at her mom but approached him.
“Well,” announced Bessonov cheerfully, “I need to get well quickly. A little more, and we’ll all go home. Spacious rooms, a garden, and even a small pond are waiting for you.”
Lena, with wide eyes, listened to her grandpa.
“Is there something special about this pendant?” Julia asked timidly, stroking the jewelry.
“It’s an old decoration,” explained Lev Alexandrovich. “It’s been with us since pre-revolutionary times, although it looks simple. Your great-grandmother gave it. She said it was a talisman because it’s with onyx. It’s believed that the stone gives strength. Mom passed it to you when you were sick.”
Gradually, Julia began to realize what was happening.
“It’s strange that Lena wanted to draw me with the pendant. I only put it on here, in the hospital…”
“Without it, we wouldn’t have met,” Lev noted with a smile. “Let’s agree: from this moment, you call me dad, and Lena calls me grandpa. Agreed, my dears?”
Julia and Lena looked at each other and, as if on cue, rushed to embrace him, there was no one closer in their lives.
Lev Alexandrovich took matters into his own hands and paid for Lena’s examination. It turned out that her limp wasn’t treated on a quota, but it was possible to treat it privately. So it was. And just six months later, on Lena’s birthday, no one even remembered how awkwardly she used to walk.
Meanwhile, investigators and the guardianship service were dealing with settling the sectarians in the forest wilderness.