Ekaterina Dmitrievna stood by the fresh grave, framed by a gray autumn sky and the bleak landscape of the cemetery. Yellow leaves swirled around her, torn from the trees by the cold wind and restlessly flying over the wet earth. It had been raining for several hours straight, but the woman didn’t notice how soaked her black jacket had become—it seemed no storm could be worse than the grief that clenched her soul. The cemetery was almost deserted—only she was there among the stone monuments and the silence broken only by gusts of wind and the occasional raindrop. She came here every day while her husband was at work because she could no longer endure his attempts to comfort her, his helpless embraces and words that life must go on. Those words hurt more than any reproach.
Mechanically straightening the small granite monument, Ekaterina knelt down right in the mud, not feeling the cold or the pain in her legs. Bowing her head, she whispered:
— Svetočka, my girl… Why didn’t I protect you? I would have given my life just to keep you alive. Why couldn’t I stop you then?
Tears ran down her cheeks and fell onto the cold marble surface, mixing with the rain. A year and three months had passed since they found the body of her only daughter, but the pain had not lessened. On the contrary, it grew stronger every day, eating away at her soul from the inside like a fire that couldn’t be extinguished. Time seemed it should have softened the wound at least a little, but instead, it had made it deeper, incurable.
It all began three years ago when Sveta started to change. At first, it was barely noticeable—strange notes in a diary that Ekaterina accidentally noticed on the table, quiet quarrels in the hallway when her daughter came home later and later. Then new friends appeared, about whom Sveta stubbornly refused to talk, and that disturbing gleam in her eyes that made her parents’ chests grow cold. They tried to talk to her, ask questions, listen, beg—but the harder they tried, the farther their daughter drifted away.
— Mom, leave me alone! — Sveta shouted, slamming the door to her room. — I’m already an adult!
— Seventeen years old is not adult! — Ekaterina replied, standing outside the door, feeling her heart break with helplessness.
Valery Ivanovich, a respected city hospital doctor who had saved hundreds of lives, felt utterly helpless for the first time in his life. He remembered that terrible evening when they had to call an ambulance—Sveta was lying on the floor in her room, convulsing in pain, and Katya couldn’t even hold her in her arms.
— What’s wrong with her? — Ekaterina cried while the doctors examined Sveta.
— Overdose, — Valery’s colleague said quietly. — She needs immediate intensive care.
They spent that night in the hospital corridor, praying, holding onto each other, hoping. Sveta survived, but something in her eyes changed forever. She became even more withdrawn, even more aggressive. The warmth her soul once radiated disappeared without a trace.
— We have to isolate her, — Valery told his wife, standing in the kitchen after the doctors stabilized their daughter’s condition. — Otherwise, we will lose her completely.
— She’s not a criminal! — Ekaterina sobbed, clutching a tear-soaked handkerchief. — She’s our daughter, our only girl!
— That’s why we have to save her. At any cost.
The house arrest lasted three torturous months. Sveta screamed, cried, begged, promised to change, but the parents were adamant. They installed bars on the windows, changed the locks, took turns watching her. Valery called clinics at night, looking for the best specialists, reading medical literature on addiction. Ekaterina didn’t sleep, listening to every rustle in the hallway, every breath of her daughter.
— I hate you! — Sveta shouted. — You destroyed my life! I’ll never forgive you!
Those words still echoed in Ekaterina’s ears, causing unbearable pain. But that fateful night, they failed to keep watch. Valery dozed off in the chair by the door; Ekaterina took sleeping pills from nervous exhaustion. A quiet click of the front door—and Sveta disappeared forever, leaving only a note: “Don’t look for me. I’m no longer your daughter.”
The search lasted eight long years. Police, private detectives, calls to classmates, ads in newspapers and online, appeals on television—it was all in vain. Sveta seemed to have vanished into thin air. Then, when hope almost faded, terrible news came: the body was found near an abandoned warehouse on the city outskirts.
In the sorrowful morgue room, Valery studied the pathologist’s report with trembling hands, while Ekaterina wept, clutching the last photo of their daughter—a school graduation, Sveta smiling in a white dress.
— Overdose, — Valery whispered. — She… she died of an overdose.
A year passed since the funeral. Ekaterina lived on autopilot—getting up, washing dishes, cooking meals no one ate, suddenly breaking down in tears in the middle of the day. She could stand by the stove for an hour, forgetting to turn off the burner, or find herself sitting in Sveta’s room, whose things they still couldn’t bring themselves to sort through.
Valery frowned at work, made mistakes he had never made before. He asked their neighbor Antonina Stepanovna to check on his wife; he himself called home every two hours, afraid Katya might harm herself.
— Katya, hang in there, — he said every evening, hugging his wife. — We have to live on. Sveta wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.
— Don’t tell me what Sveta would want! — Ekaterina pushed him away. — You don’t know! No one knows!
In the evenings, they hardly spoke. He tried to hug his wife, but she indifferently pushed him away, going to the bedroom or sitting by the window with a photo of their daughter. Valery persuaded Ekaterina every day to hold on for their family’s sake but understood he was losing her too.
That October day, it seemed fate itself was sending signs. First, they brought in a patient…
Valery was finishing his day shift in his office. On the table stood a glass water carafe; in the cabinet was a can of stew—the lunch he never got to eat. Work absorbed him completely; it was the only way not to think about the loss. Nurse Vera rushed into the ward with a worried face:
— Valery Ivanovich, they brought a new one… Young woman, in critical condition. And Igor Vadimovich refuses to treat her.
— What do you mean refuses? — Valery frowned, lifting his head from medical charts.
— He says the homeless woman is taking up space. She should go to another hospital. Beds are for real patients.
Valery clenched his fists. Igor Vadimovich, whom everyone called Koschei behind his back, had appeared at the hospital six months ago thanks to his influential relatives. Cynical, indifferent, he saw medicine as a way to make money, not a vocation. For him, patients were divided into profitable and unprofitable.
— Where is he now? — Valery asked, standing up.
— In the smoking room, as usual.
Valery found Igor near the service entrance. He was carelessly finishing a pricey cigarette, looking at his new phone and clearly enjoying his idleness.
— Igor Vadimovich, we have a patient who needs urgent help.
— Oh, you mean that one… — Igor grimaced as if from a bad smell. — Listen, Valery Ivanovich, I’m not obligated to treat every tramp. I’m up to my neck in work already. Let her go to the social hospital.
— Are you a doctor or an indifferent bureaucrat? — Valery sharply asked, feeling blood boil. — Does the Hippocratic oath mean anything to you?
— Don’t lecture me on morals, — Igor waved him off. — I know my job. And my job is to treat those who can pay.
— Then you’re not a doctor. You’re a merchant.
— Whatever you say, — shrugged Igor and left, leaving Valery alone with his outrage.
Valery headed to the emergency room. The young woman lay on a stretcher, feverish, her face pale and gaunt. Dirty clothes, tangled hair, but something familiar in her features made Valery’s heart painfully clench.
— What’s her name? — he asked the nurse.
— No documents. Found near the station. Says her name is Sveta.
Valery froze. Sveta. Like his daughter.
— Take her to the operating room immediately, — he said, pulling himself together. — Prepare everything necessary.
The operation lasted four hours. Sweat blinded his eyes, colleagues handed instruments, tension filled the operating room. Valery worked thinking that every life is priceless, that people cannot be divided into worthy and unworthy of help. He thought of his Sveta, of how somewhere someone might have refused to help his daughter.
After the long, exhausting surgery, Valery went out to the hospital’s courtyard to catch his breath. The autumn air was soaked with moisture and cold, but he didn’t feel it—his thoughts were still there, on the operating table, where they fought for a stranger’s life. The workday officially ended, but he did not want to go home. There awaited emptiness, silence, heavy memories. The house had become a place of grief where every object reminded him of Sveta. He was afraid to open the door, afraid to hear echoes of the past.
Through the sparse autumn rain flickered a lonely street lamp, casting a yellowish glow on the wet asphalt. In this ghostly light, he noticed a small figure—a child cautiously approaching him. It was a girl about six years old, in torn sandals ridiculously large for her feet and a worn-out dress, too long and clearly not her size. She came straight to him, boldly and decisively, as if she knew he could help her.
— Uncle doctor, — she said without preamble, looking directly into his eyes. — Please buy my blood.
Valery at first didn’t understand what she said. He was stunned, then gently smiled, though his heart clenched with pain.
— What did you say, little one? — he asked, trying to speak softly.
— Grandma said they buy blood for five hundred rubles at the hospital, — the girl continued. — We have no money at all at home. I need to buy food and medicine for Grandma.
Her voice sounded calm, as if offering her blood for food was the most normal thing. Valery crouched down to be at her eye level.
— Little one, that’s not how it works, — he said quietly, almost whispering. — Children don’t sell blood. You can’t do that. But I’m a doctor. Maybe I can help somehow?
The girl, named Alya, trustingly sat next to him on the wet bench and told him about her difficult childhood. About how her mother died long ago when Alya was very small. About how her grandmother got sick, could no longer work as a cleaner, and the neighbor shopkeeper stopped giving food on credit. “I wanted to help,” she simply said, and that was enough for Valery to decide: he could not just leave.
— Will you show me where you live? — he asked. — I’m a doctor. Maybe I can help your grandmother. Just let me change clothes first.
The house he followed the girl to was on the city outskirts—in an abandoned neighborhood where no one had repaired roofs for a long time, and the walls were covered with mold. The door creaked when Valery entered. Inside, dampness, cold, and the smell of medicine reigned. On an old sagging sofa lay a woman—Taisiya Pavlovna, Alya’s grandmother. She was coughing heavily; her face was pale, her look frightened.
— No, doctor, — she croaked. — There’s no money anyway. Let it be as it is…
— Shh, — Valery said softly, taking out a stethoscope. — I just want to see what’s wrong.
The examination revealed serious problems with the respiratory system and heart function. The doctor immediately realized hospitalization was needed. He called an ambulance, gathered the necessary documents (all they had was kept in a sugar bag), and within an hour Taisiya was in the hospital.
Alya stayed with him.
— You’ll come to my home while Grandma is being treated, — he told the girl. — Okay?
The girl nodded, trustingly taking his hand. That trust, that hopeful childlike look touched Valery deeply.
When they returned home, Ekaterina met them at the door. Seeing the child beside her husband, she froze, her face tensed as if expecting something terrible. But Valery just put the keys on the table and quietly said:
— This is Alya. We need to take care of her. Her grandmother is in the hospital.
Ekaterina silently nodded, trying to smile, but something deep and indescribable flickered in her eyes. When Alya began to eat, Katya quietly took out the family album and opened the page with Sveta’s photo—at seven years old, in a gray dress, with two braids and the same big gray eyes.
— Look, Valera… — she whispered, showing her husband. — She looks just like our Svetočka…
Valery looked long at the photo, then at the girl, and something trembled inside him. Coincidence? Maybe. But coincidences aren’t always accidental.
The next day, Ekaterina left the house alone for the first time in months. She came to the hospital and asked permission to visit Taisiya Pavlovna. The old woman, lying in a drip chamber, looked carefully at the woman.
— Who are you?
— The wife of the doctor treating you. Alya lives with us.
Taisiya thought for a moment, then quietly spoke:
— Sveta… Her name was Sveta. She came to us pregnant, scared, thin. Said her parents kicked her out. We took her in. She gave birth to Alya and died when the girl was four years old. She was sick for a long time…
Ekaterina’s head spun.
— And her last name? What was the last name?
— Sokolova. Sveta Sokolova.
That was her name. That was her daughter. Sveta took her mother’s surname when she left home. All these years they had been searching for her, while she lived in poverty, gave birth, died, leaving behind a daughter they didn’t even suspect existed.
— She often cried at night, — Taisiya continued. — Said she missed her mom. Wanted to ask for forgiveness but was afraid. That her parents wouldn’t forgive her. Before she died, she asked me to tell Alya that she loved her and didn’t want to leave her.
Ekaterina didn’t remember how she got home. She ran trembling all over, cut hair samples preparing for DNA testing. And when the results came back, there was no doubt.
— This is our granddaughter, — she whispered, handing the papers to her husband. — Our Svetočka gave birth to a daughter and died, and we didn’t even know. We lost her twice.
Valery hugged his wife. They cried together—out of grief and at the same time from a new, unexpected hope. Their daughter was dead, but her daughter—their granddaughter—was alive. And now they could do for her what they hadn’t managed for Sveta.
The guardianship paperwork didn’t take long—help came from friends at the hospital, acquaintances who knew Valery and Katya well. Alya got new documents, a new family, a new life. Her name remained the same, but now she had grandparents, a real home, love, and care.
Life in the house began to change. The apartment once again echoed with children’s laughter and questions. Ekaterina sewed dresses, bought toys, enrolled Alya in kindergarten. Valery helped with school preparation, read bedtime stories, taught her to tie bows. They became a family again.
— Grandma Katya, — Alya asked one day, — why do you sometimes cry when you look at my photo with mom?
— Because I love you and your mom very much, — Katya replied, kissing the girl. — And because I’m so sorry I didn’t know you sooner.
— I love you too, — Alya said seriously. — And mom loves me too, right? She’s in heaven now watching us?
— Of course, she does. And she’s very proud of you.
In the evenings, when Alya was already asleep, Ekaterina sat by her bed and whispered, looking at Sveta’s portrait:
— Thank you, Svetočka, for giving us back the meaning of life. Thank you for giving us Alyonočka. Forgive us for not being able to save you. But we will save her, I promise.
Valery embraced his wife. She did not pull away. They stood together, watching the peacefully sleeping child, understanding that their family had become whole again. Not like before, but whole. The pain remained, but alongside it, a new, living love settled.
Outside, rain fell, washing away old pain and bringing hope for new happiness.
Ekaterina no longer went to the cemetery every day. Now she knew: Sveta had forgiven them. And their main task was to give Alya all the love they hadn’t had time to give her mother. To give her the childhood that had been stolen from Sveta.