A quiet evening in the children’s ward of the hospital resembled a library more than a medical facility. Outside the window, dusk was slowly gathering, tinting the sky in shades of lilac, and in the corridors there reigned an almost meditative silence, broken only occasionally by the soft steps of a nurse or the muffled crying of an infant from a distant room. It seemed that nothing foretold a storm. But the calm shift, like a fragile glass vase, shattered in an instant the moment hurried footsteps and desperate voices sounded at the entrance to the emergency room.
An ambulance had brought in a little patient with a fever that refused to yield to ordinary remedies. In the year-and-a-half-old baby, the mercury column stubbornly refused to drop below thirty-nine degrees, and all the fever reducers tried at home gave only the illusion of relief, brief and deceitful. As soon as their grip loosened, the fever returned with renewed force, menacingly approaching the fateful mark of forty degrees, beyond which the unknown began.
The young woman, the child’s mother, stood like an embodiment of grief; her large sky-blue eyes seemed to have taken in the entire world’s ocean of tears. Such bottomless torment sloshed in them that it was unbearable to look at her. Her thin, delicate fingers were unconsciously twisting together, and her lips, silently whispering pleas, trembled finely as if from cold. Her gaze did not move from the tiny, limp body wrapped in a blanket, its chest convulsively rising and falling in quick, shallow jerks as it tried to catch air.
— Do something! I beg you, please! — what burst from her chest was not a scream, but a torn, frenzied moan in which last hope and despair sounded at the same time.
Without losing a single second, they rushed the child into the sterile intensive care room; the heavy door slammed shut, becoming an insurmountable barrier between the mother and her child. At the threshold, two orderlies, trying to be as tactful as possible, held back the sobbing woman, whose body arched in a silent scream. The full arsenal of modern medicine was put into action: IVs, injections, an oxygen mask. The situation was made worse by the fact that on the way to the ward the little boy began having convulsions, making the doctors’ hearts clench even tighter.
After forty minutes, which felt like an eternity, the exhausted doctor Veronika stepped out into the deserted corridor, pulling the damp mask from her face and removing her cap, freeing her dark chestnut hair. She felt squeezed dry, like a lemon. From the wall to which she seemed to have grown, the same young woman detached herself like a shadow and rushed toward her, as if on her last breath.
— Doctor, I beg you, what’s wrong with him? How is my little boy? Is he alive? — In her wide eyes, along with grief and fear, a tiny spark of hope flashed, so fragile that a single careless word could snuff it out. Veronika instinctively recoiled under the onslaught of that despair.
— Please, calm down. The worst is over. Your child is all right, the crisis has passed. His temperature has dropped and for now is holding within normal limits. We’ll observe his condition in intensive care for a bit longer and then transfer him to a regular room, room four. Go there, pull yourself together. Your little boy will be with you very soon.
— But what was it? Why such a terrible fever? What is wrong with his health? — The woman would not let her go, clutching at the sleeve of her coat with thin, cold fingers in which all her maternal anxiety had frozen.
— Please, don’t worry so much. A child’s body is a mystery; sometimes it reacts like this to viruses. As soon as we get the results of all the tests, the picture will become clearer. For now, go and wait. Wait for your son, — Veronika gently but firmly freed her arm from the tenacious grip.
She trudged wearily to the doctors’ room and dropped heavily onto the chair in front of the computer to fill out the medical record of the little patient. Her body ached, and in her head pulsed one obsessive thought — about a cup of coffee, thick, black, scaldingly bitter, that could give her at least a drop of energy. She imagined its tart aroma so vividly that she almost physically felt its taste on her tongue, and that gave her strength. No, first she had to finish the paperwork, she couldn’t relax — a new emergency call could come at any moment.
Suddenly the door to the doctors’ room flew open with a bang, hitting the wall, and her husband Denis burst into the room. The disposable gown thrown over his shoulders flapped behind him, making him look like a large, agitated bird that had broken free of its chain. Seeing Veronika, he froze in place, as if he had collided with an invisible but solid wall.
— Denis? What are you doing here? Has something happened? With Gleb? — Veronika looked at her bewildered husband, trying to read the answer on his face. — Why are you silent? You stormed in like a hurricane, and now you just stand there, speechless. — She automatically stood up and, by professional habit, adjusted the stethoscope hanging around her neck like a cold metal sting.
Denis took a few hesitant steps toward her, ran his long fingers through his unruly hair and sharply swept it back, trying to put at least some semblance of composure on his face.
— I… I didn’t know you were on shift today.
— How would you know what shift I’m working? You’re never home. You vanish like a ghost, — she said tiredly, without reproach, simply stating a fact.
— Yes, that’s the kind of job I have, you know that. I just got a call from… It doesn’t matter. Tell me, about an hour ago you admitted a boy, Skvortsov Roman. What’s with him? — His voice came out sharp, almost official.
— And what do you have to do with this child? Is he involved in some case of yours? — Veronika frowned.
And at that moment, a tall, searing wave of suspicion crashed over her, stealing her breath. The truth, ugly and unseemly, stood before her in all its nakedness. She bit her lower lip until it hurt, not taking her eyes off her husband’s embarrassed face. The air in the room suddenly became thick and heavy, impossible to breathe, and inside, deep in her chest, a real fire flared up, devouring everything in its path.
Veronika noticed how Denis’s expression was slowly but surely changing from bewildered to guilty-angry. He, like a seasoned fighter, was instinctively shifting to defense, preparing for an attack.
— I think I’m starting to understand. Just don’t you dare tell me he’s the son of a colleague or your best friend. Is he your son? — Her voice sounded quiet, but there was no question in it, only a bitter statement.
— Yes. I… I should have told you everything a long time ago. But I didn’t know how to find the words. I’ll explain everything, just listen to me.
— Perfect, it seems we have time. — Suddenly her legs stopped holding her, turned cottony and unsteady, like those of a rag doll. Veronika collapsed onto the chair again, put her hands on the desk before her and laced her fingers into a tight lock, the knuckles standing out white under the skin from tension. Her gaze, hard and relentless, pinned Denis in place.
He anxiously scanned the room, found an old, shabby couch by the wall and sank down on its edge as if his strength had finally left him.
— It happened three years ago. I was at Yegorov’s anniversary. You were on duty then, you didn’t turn down the shift. And there… well, I spent that night with his sister. We drank a lot, I relaxed, lost my head. I don’t even understand how it happened. Although, what am I saying? Of course I understand. I simply allowed it to happen. And then, a few weeks later, she came to my office and told me she was expecting a child. I didn’t live a double life, Ver. I swear. My family has always been you and our Gleb. But I couldn’t… couldn’t just turn my back on my son. — He lifted his eyes to her, expecting a torrent of resentment, shouting, bitter tears in response, but Veronika kept an icy silence, and that silence was more frightening than any reproach.
— Forgive me, I know I’m not the only one like this in the whole world. I’m just an ordinary, weak man. And I know perfectly well what you’re feeling right now. I am endlessly sorry. Forgive me, — he repeated that word as if it were a lifebuoy.
— With your kind of job, it turns out to be very convenient. An investigator, forever on the road, on assignments, on stakeouts. Tell your wife “night shift,” and you yourself go to another woman, to another son. — Veronika let out a strange sound, something between a sob and a bitter, crumpled laugh.
— Ver, don’t, please, don’t do this, — he asked quietly, almost in a whisper.
— And how should I, Denis? Give you my blessing? Cheer Gleb up with the news that he has a little brother sixteen years younger than him? How, tell me? How are we supposed to live now? — Her lips twisted in an ugly, painful grimace.
— Tell me, how is he? The child. — Denis finally realized that this grimace was just an attempt to hold back the tears bursting to the surface, a dam ready to collapse at any second.
— Right now his condition has stabilized. The fever has dropped, the doctors are continuing to monitor him. — Her voice once again became even, professionally impassive, just as a doctor’s voice at a patient’s bedside should be.
Denis exhaled in relief, and that short, barely audible breath did not escape Veronika’s attention. In her soul, next to the fire of anger, smoldered a tiny but sharp spark of hurt. She could not recall him ever so clearly, so physically noticeably worrying about their own son, Gleb, during his childhood illnesses. Or perhaps time had erased those memories? Or maybe her husband had simply grown up and only now, with the appearance of this second little boy, matured into real, deep fatherhood.
Anger, hurt, utter confusion — all of it, like a snowball, rolled around inside her, gaining weight and speed, striving to burst out and tear her apart from within. As a doctor, she knew that stories like this happened in almost every third family, but she turned out to be absolutely unprepared to accept this truth when it stepped into her own home.
Veronika got up and on unsteady, cottony legs walked over to the old coffee maker in the corner of the room, turning her back to her husband. She pressed the button, and the hissing, bubbling sound of heating water filling the reservoir drowned out all other sounds in the world, creating a temporary sound curtain. When the machine finally fell silent, giving a victorious click, she turned around, already about to automatically offer a cup of coffee to Denis as well. But there was no one else in the room but her. He had disappeared as quietly and suddenly as he had appeared. Only the familiar, soothing, slightly bitter aroma of freshly brewed coffee tickled her nose.
Veronika returned to the desk with the steaming cup, pushing aside the unfinished medical record. “So what has actually happened? Your husband cheated — what a novelty, the world’s gone mad. But your world hasn’t collapsed, Veronika. Everyone is alive, everyone is breathing. Other women somehow live with this for years, find the strength, which means you can too,” she repeated silently to herself, taking a small sip of the scalding liquid. The bitterness of the coffee strangely harmonized with the bitterness in her soul.
Before going home, she stopped by room four on her way and paused at the transparent glass in the wall. The boy was asleep, his arms flung to the sides, with white indentations from the IV lines on his thin wrists. His breathing was even and deep, his face peaceful. His mother, that same young woman, had also dozed off, her head resting on her hands folded at the edge of the bed. “She’s very beautiful,” Veronika noted silently. “And how am I supposed to live with this? How am I supposed to share one man between two families?” She slowly stepped away from the window, feeling like an outsider at this celebration of someone else’s, yet so fragile, life.
“So this is how it happens. One wrong step, one night — and the old family is gone. And your husband has a son, a new love, a new reality. Gleb, it turns out, has a grandmother in another city, Denis has a young woman and a long-awaited son, and I… I’m left alone, on the sidelines of their shared life. Completely alone. Or not completely? But I can’t resign myself to a life in a permanent triangle, in a state of hanging uncertainty. Some people can, I don’t judge them, but I can’t. We had such a good, strong family…” — these thoughts rang in her head like an obsessive tune.
Lost in heavy, oppressive reflections, Veronika walked to her car and drove home. The apartment greeted her with a ringing, echoing emptiness. The silence was so dense you could almost touch it. Denis was not there. She absolutely did not feel like eating, and cooking dinner now, in this silence, seemed a pointless activity devoid of any logic. She automatically put the kettle on the stove, just to somehow break the silence. And at that moment a Skype call notification lit up on her phone screen. “Gleb!” — her heart skipped a beat. She took a deep, steadying breath, mustering all her will, and pressed the answer button.
— Hi, Mom. Dad’s not home again? Are you two all right? You look… not so great, — her son said right away, without preamble; his voice, already grown-up and velvety, was full of concern.
— Everything’s fine, sweetheart, I’m just very tired. I just got back from work. And you? How are you? How’s Grandma? Nothing hurts? Your exams are soon, are you studying? — she tried to make her voice sound even and cheerful.
— Wow, that’s a lot of questions at once. Grandma and I are totally fine, everything’s great. Here, she wants to talk to you herself, — the camera jerked for a split second, and Veronika saw her mother in the background. And in that moment she wanted so much to be there, next to them, to lean against her warm motherly shoulder, to tell her everything, to cry out all the accumulated pain…
— Hello, darling. You look like you’re completely worn out. You really ought to go on vacation, honestly, go somewhere and rest.
They talked for another ten minutes, discussing trivial little things — the weather, neighbors, TV series — everything except what was really tormenting Veronika at that moment.
— Mom, maybe you could come visit us after my exams? — she tried to smile, but the smile came out crooked and strained.
— You know, I actually wanted to tell you something important, — Gleb suddenly became serious, and Veronika thought with anguish that, apparently, the supply of bad news for today was not yet exhausted. — The guys and I have made plans, and right after exams we’re going to Moldova. We’ve already bought train tickets, it’s all serious. We’re going to work there on the harvest, picking fruit and vegetables. I’ll earn a bit of money, it’s an interesting experience.
— So… you’re not coming home for the holidays? Did I understand you right? — despite herself, whiny, tearful notes crept into her voice, which she hated so much.
— I’ll come, Mom, for sure, just a bit later. Don’t worry so much. Mom, I love you and Dad very much, you know that.
“Well, that’s it, he’s grown up,” Veronika thought with pain. “He has his own life, his own plans, his own roads. And in that life there’s only a modest place somewhere in the background for me.” She knew it would be like that when she let him go to study in another city, to his grandmother. But why now, of all times, when everything else is collapsing? Or maybe it’s even for the best. Now I am completely free! Free to go crazy in this empty apartment, free to sit by the window and wait, free to be jealous and torment myself…” She lowered her head onto her arms folded on the table and finally allowed herself to cry quietly, soundlessly, while the tea in her cup grew cold.
Denis came back late at night. She heard the door creak, heard him walk hesitantly through the hallway, heard how he tried to move without making a sound. Veronika lay pressed to the very edge of the bed, turned toward the wall, but she wasn’t asleep. Her eyes were wide open in the darkness, and in her head, as if on repeat, the same thoughts, questions, scraps of phrases kept spinning. And it was at that moment that a decision came to her, spontaneously, like a revelation. It was so clear and sharp that it pushed everything else aside.
The next morning she went to see the head of the department and placed on his desk the previously written request for an unscheduled vacation, explaining the reason honestly and without embellishment. The elderly doctor looked at her with boundless pity in his eyes, sighed, but did not try to talk her out of it — he had seen too much in his life not to understand. The request was signed without unnecessary words.
She and Denis hardly spoke during those days. They tried to start a conversation, but the words got stuck in the air, collided and crumbled, never reaching the other’s heart. The husband’s excuses crashed against the deaf wall of the wife’s resentment. A week later, Veronika packed only the bare essentials into a travel bag, without thinking of any plans, filled the tank of her little car to the brim and, without saying goodbye, simply set off — to her mother, to her son, to her almost forgotten past. At first she thought of heading south, to the sea, but in May it was still chilly and deserted there. And what would she do alone at a cold, empty seaside? Look for fleeting acquaintances and adventures? That was the one thing she needed least of all right now.
Nervous excitement, mixed with a feeling of strange, almost painful freedom, didn’t let her fall asleep at the wheel even in the middle of the night. “If only I could just keep driving and driving and never arrive anywhere,” she thought, watching the ribbon of asphalt running away beneath the wheels. “So that there would be nothing behind me: neither that woman with her son, nor Denis himself, nor this lie. So that only this gray road remained, these sharp bends, descents into lowlands and climbs up hills, and the endless, endless sky above my head…”
And when, in the trembling, predawn haze suffused with bluish light, the familiar outlines of her hometown appeared ahead, so dear to her that they made her eyes sting, Veronika drew such a deep breath that it felt as if for the first time in many years she had learned to breathe with full lungs. Two whole weeks! Two weeks within the walls of her childhood home, next to her mother and son. Two weeks just to be, not to seem. And everything else — the pain, the betrayal, the uncertainty — she would deal with later. She surely would.
The road, twisting like a thin ribbon, led her upward to the last pass before the city. And when the car, having overcome the climb, rolled out onto a flat lookout, a valley flooded with the first rays of the rising sun opened up to her gaze. Golden light washed over the rooftops, touched the treetops, played in the river’s currents. And in that radiance there was no pain, no resentment, no fear. There was only the road, running toward a new day, and a quiet, calm certainty that every crack in the heart is not a wound but a seam that makes it stronger. And that sometimes, in order to find yourself, you just need to let go of the steering wheel and trust the road, which will lead you by itself to the sea that is waiting ahead.