“I know how you are.”
“How am I?”
“You’re rationally irrational.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you get hopeful even when there’s no hope.”
I chose to ignore this comment.
“How was she when you left?”
“Coughing. Badly. With a forty-degree fever.”
“Pneumonia?”
“Yes. Probably.”
Symptom #7 on my diagnostic criteria for a leukemia three-monther. Her white blood cells are too beaten up to stand up to a pimple, let alone a type-A flu virus. See above.
“Wasn’t she vaccinated?”
“It’s November, Ivan. There are no vaccinations.”
Which was true. They typically ran out the first week of October—well before winter.
“Don’t tell her anything,” I said.
“About what?” she asked.
“About testing me.”
“You don’t want her to know?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Reasons.”
I know I didn’t have to tell her because I knew she would read the reasons right out of my brain, only to smile once, hug me twice, and then wheel me back out to the Main Room for evening TV hour, which I hated because it made me feel helpless, but I know it made her feel helpful, so I let her. As soon as she dropped me off and her chubby little frame was out of sight, I rolled my way to the drinking fountains, which really was just so that I could pass the Orange Room and see what was happening inside. Polina was asleep in her chair with the bag of drugs dangling above her in its last throes. There was a luminous river of saliva flowing from her lips to her collarbone, which was now chiseled like a Greco-Roman sculpture. Then I forgot all about the drinking fountain and went back to the Main Room to finish watching an episode of Nu, Pogodi! while actually not watching any of it.
DAY 14
The Janis Joplin Day
(Two days until lab results)
The next morning, most of the patients living at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children and I were woken by the sounds of Polina coughing out several of her thoracic organs from her room in the girls’ wing clear across the hospital.
I dressed early and stole some dextromethorphan from one of the supply closets, as well as some individually wrapped honey packets from the cafeteria, wheeled myself to Polina’s room, and slid them under the door. For a moment, the coughing stopped. Then the configuration of shadows spilling from under Polina’s door danced a bit.
“Take the medicine first, then the honey,” I whispered.
“Thanks,” she whispered back. “Water, please?”
“I can’t pass that under the door. Use your spit.”
“I’m out of spit.”
I heard her swallowing, then coughing, then wrestling with the packet of honey.
“You didn’t even ask what it is,” I whispered.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered back. “It can’t make me worse.”
“Okay, I’m going now,” I said.
“Wait. Don’t go.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s talk today.”
“Okay.”
“But not right now. Later. Because I don’t feel good.”
“I’m vaccinated, so yes.”
“Okay. Now you can go.”
I turned my chair around and then:
“Ivan, wait!”
“What?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Yes.”
“There is a record in the second drawer down in the cabinet behind the front desk. Can you get that and slide it under my door too?”
“But you don’t have a record player.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“Natalya?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Wait, Ivan.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“Okay.”
I wheeled my way over to the front desk and pushed my way inside the area I was never supposed to go since the Incident, and then to the cabinet where I dutifully opened the second drawer down and found an old ten-inch record mixed in with about two hundred sheets of medical records and accounting. I dropped it into my lap, rolled back to Polina’s room, and slipped it under her door.
I heard her whisper:
“What would I do without you?”
This question, I realized, was rhetorical, so I simply said:
“You would get it yourself.”
To which Polina laughed acutely, like a belch.
As I rolled back to my room, in the midst of the unique morning light wrestling its way through the barred windows on the Main Room, it occurred to me that the day was November 8, which meant it was the second week of November, which meant that Nurse Natalya no longer worked nights, which meant that Nurse Lyudmila, the only nurse who really instilled a sociopath-like fear in me, was working, which meant that if we were caught together after lights-out, we risked quarantine or worse, which seemed like a ridiculous thing for one dead person and another almost dead person to have to worry about, but a valid concern nevertheless. After breakfast hour, I found Nurse Natalya sterilizing some previously used syringes and made her aware of my dilemma.
“What can be done?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Can’t you tell her that you approved it?”
“Do you like having me be your nurse?”
Another rhetorical question, so I stayed silent.
“Then I can’t,” she said. “You and I both know that Mikhail is pathological about his rules. I only broke them because I could. If Lyudmila wanted, I could be at another hospital. We both know that too.”
“But you’ve worked here ten more years than her.”
“But she’s fucking Mikhail.”
Which was the first time Nurse Natalya admitted that fact in words. Also, Nurse Natalya rarely uses such colorful language.
“Just don’t get caught,” she said, and the conversation was over.
I decided to time my ride to Polina’s room at 11:30 in the P.M., which was typically the time that Mikhail’s family was sleeping deeply enough for him to slip out of his house unnoticed, return to his office, and get lascivious with Nurse Lyudmila. Typically, the wheelchair ride to Polina’s room takes about ninety seconds. Tonight, it took six minutes and eight seconds, due to the ninja-like stealth that I employed while making the trip undetected. There were momentary lapses where the natural excitement of the moment had me rolling at speeds that created an audible hiss, but when this happened, my mother appeared and said, “They probably can’t hear you over Lyudmila’s hideous wailing, but you should still be careful, Ivan.” To which I nodded and lowered my velocity to inaudible levels and held steady all the way to Polina’s door.
I was about to knock, but the door opened up before my knuckle ever had a chance to hit the wood, revealing a wigless Polina.
“Come in. You’re late. I almost went to sleep.”
“It’s because Lyudmila is working.”
“So?”
“So, she hates me. And probably you too. She hates everybody, except for Mikhail, who she fucks, and most probably she is fucking him right now.”
“You know about that?”
“Of course I know. You know about that?”
“They don’t even try to hide it.”
“True.”
“I’m going to play some music.”
This is when I noticed that Polina had a pile of records spread over her bed, which she was sifting through.
“Playing music is exactly what we should not be doing at this particular moment if we don’t want to be quarantined.”
“I will play it low,” she said. “And like you said, she’s fucking Mikhail.”
At which point, Mother arrived to say, “I�
��m all for setting the right mood on this date, but you need to be the voice of reason in this situation.”
“Very low,” I said.
That was the first time I didn’t listen to my mother.
Eventually, Polina settled on a record, placed it delicately on the turntable, and set the needle. Someone started singing, but I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.
“Is this Floyd Pink?” I asked because it was the only name of a singer that I could recall in my head at that particular moment.
To which Polina seized, rolling off her bed, heaving in a manner that was consistent with both a grand mal seizure and a full-bodied cackle. I couldn’t decide which until she started talking.
“Ivan, what is wrong with you?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“For a thousand reasons.”
“For example?”
“Well, first, it’s Pink Floyd.”
She overemphasized the order of the words, which felt condescending.
“Second,” she said, “this is Janis Joplin, who couldn’t be more different from Pink Floyd. Third, I feel like you are a baby boy who was raised by wolves and for whom I bear the sole responsibility of providing a basic musical education.”
I think Polina expected me to smile, and when I didn’t, I think that she realized that I had, in fact, grown up with wolves, and maybe that had been an approximately traumatizing event.
“Janis Joplin died from choking on her own vomit,” she said, presumably to change the subject.
“Natalya got all these records for you?”
“Yes. I love records the way you love books.”
“But not the one in Miss Kristina’s desk. Natalya didn’t give that one to you?”
“No, you got that one for me.”
“Then how did you know it would be there?”
“You already know how I knew.”
“Because you’re a tat?”*
“I prefer vor v zakonye.”*
“I thought you quit.”
“I did after walking in on my mother flagellating herself in front of a statue of Saint Francis because she thought it was her fault.”
“Was it her fault?”
“Freud would suggest my father. But you should be all caught up on that topic after your own pilfering stunt.”
“Why the relapse?”
“I’m not sure it qualifies as a relapse. When I die, they will come clean out my room and find the stash, and then everyone gets everything back.”
Polina pondered for a moment, then continued:
“Also, it’s fun.”
Freud would also call this rationalization, though I had to admit it was persuasive.
“What’s in your stash so far?” I asked.
“Just the record, which technically you stole. And this, which I found in Mikhail’s top drawer.”
She tossed me a condom, which I immediately threw to some corner of the room.
“And Dead Souls.”
“You can have that too.”
Polina produced my copy of Dead Souls from beneath her mattress and pitched it at me.
“Merci,” I said.
“There is another perk to my filching.”
“What?”
“I know what’s inside of every drawer, corner, crack, shelf, cupboard, locker, and closet in this hospital.”
“For example?”
“There’s a small marijuana plant hidden inside of the utility closet. I think Nurse Elena is a closet botanist. Literally. There is a colorful assortment of blindfolds and nipple clamps inside Mikhail’s desk, third drawer down from the top on the left. There are at least three keys hidden under three different rugs, though I’m not sure what (if any) locks they open, though if I start to feel better, I intend to try them on every lock I can find.”
“Could be fun.”
“There is one bottle of vodka taped to the inside of the laundry chute, and there are two more hidden behind the wall of cabbage cans in the food closet. There are about six unscratched lottery tickets hidden behind the cheap Van Gogh in the Main Room and a framed picture of a family hidden beneath the toy crate, which I believe features the ginger twins as infants.”
“They have a family?”
“Had a family. Should I keep going?”
“Sure.”
“There are about fifty chocolate bars hidden inside of Alex’s bottom drawer, presumably put there by Nurse Natalya because Alex loves chocolate bars like you love books and I love records. There are a bunch of old pictures of Dennis and his mom when Dennis was a baby, underneath his pillowcase, presumably put there by Nurse Natalya, because Dennis loves his mom like Alex loves chocolate and you love books. There are also about twenty signed baseballs inside your top drawer. But I haven’t figured those out. Where did you get them?”
“When were you in my room?”
“When you were in your bed.”
“Sleeping?”
“What else?”
“I would have woken up.”
“But you didn’t.”
I felt excited in my pelvic region knowing that Polina was in my room while I slept, despite the fact that I should have felt invaded.
“I think the music is too loud,” I said.
Polina responded by turning the music up by approximately one to two clicks on her turntable.
“You’re going to ruin this.”
Take it, take another little piece of …*
“Enja, the heart-hole girl, has a note in her bottom drawer from her mother, which says that when she comes home, she will be Little Miss Mazyr. Vlad has a toy car with the initials of his great-grandfather on it. Natalya keeps a cuff link of her dead husband in the side pocket of her uniform at all times. I know this because I can pick pockets too. I gave it back, though.”
“It’s entirely possible you will die alone if you don’t turn down the Janet Joplin.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
Her pale face was being danced on by the shadows of my one flailing hand. Something about the dancing light made her jaw and her cheekbones and her temples cut right through her skin, and for the first time, I realized that Polina had probably dropped below the thirty-kilo threshold, which was diagnostic criterion #117 for a leukemia three-monther.
“Let’s talk some more about Mikhail,” she said.
“Only if you turn down the music.”
“The list of his buxom whores runs deep, if you didn’t know.”
She paused, presumably to wait for me to react, and I took her bait out of uncontrollable curiosity, while slowly wheeling myself to the record player.
“How deep?”
“He has pictures that go all the way back to sepia,” she said.
“Sepia?”
“The orange pictures from the ’70s.”
“I’m not surprised.”
I was close enough to the record player to reach out and turn it down, but Polina jumped across the room and slapped my hand, which, to me, was like severing my testicles.
“Relax your tense little face, Ivan,” she said. “We don’t have anything to worry about. I’m sure Lyudmila is currently riding Mikhail on that fake leather couch. Or possibly on the desk? Which—sidebar—disgusts me, since I’ve touched all his drawers.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be going through his drawers.”
“What sort of filthy shit is she whispering in his ear right now?”
I was thoroughly uncomfortable with the content of Polina’s verbiage, and yet I still answered.
“I don’t know.”
“Mickey, Mickey, Mick, Mick. Mmmmmm. Do you think he ever accidentally calls her by his wife’s name? Or, even worse, confuses her with another nurse from his slutty past?”
I was becoming disgusted with Polina, and also this was a rhetorical question, so I stayed silent. Furthermore, it was clear that Polina was entertaining her dying self. It had nothing to do with me.
“Don’t you love this song? F
ind me someone else who sings every word like she’s crying,” Polina said.
“It’s good.”
“Fifty-three pictures of fourteen nurses. That’s how many I found. I could never be that slutty. Not even now with nothing to lose.”
It was exactly when Polina said “slutty” that two other things happened simultaneously (which really just means I’m not sure which came first). The first thing is that it occurred to me that I had been unconsciously clenching my nubs ever since I left my room twenty-three minutes earlier. The second thing is that the metallic doorknob rattled and, just as quickly, swung wide open revealing a figure in a white uniform who happened to be the person who was supposed to be fucking the Director at that particular moment. Six or seven unbearable seconds passed before any of us said a word. This is because it was obvious that Nurse Lyudmila had three things on her mind that were competing for airtime. The first, and most obvious, sounded something like: Back to your room, Ivan, and wait for the consequences to be revealed in the morning once the afterglow of the Director’s recent orgasm has worn off. The second, and slightly less obvious, sounded like: Ivan, what is a comatose reject such as yourself doing in a sexy dead girl’s room after lights-out? And the third appeared to be directed at Polina, and surely said: That desperate, hon? But I acknowledge I could have invented thoughts two and three. Finally, it was Polina, empowered by her recent manic trip, who decided to speak first:
“Nurse Lyudmila, your left stocking is inside out.”
To which Lyudmila, apparently unable to choose from any of the bitchy retorts running through her head, didn’t say a word and instead grabbed the handles of my chair and pulled me out of the room after several collisions with various pieces of furniture and doorframes.
Reader, I fought her with a respectable mutant chivalry. As she aggressively maneuvered me across the linoleum path that separated my room from Polina’s, I grabbed the rim of my left wheel and made a brake pad out of my palm. I may have also made retaliatory comments like Stop infecting my only chair with your slut germs and You know you’re going to bitch hell, right? In response, Lyudmila continued to be speechless (except for her face, which said a gamut of hateful speech) and responded by ramming the wheels of my chair through the friction of my palm, resulting in the topmost layer of my skin being left on the wheel, rendering it impossible for me to resist anymore. This was approximately when Polina’s frail little figure emerged in front of us and then sat down in the doorframe leading into the boys’ wing. Her pale, wigless head reflected the limited light in the hallway, which made her look like a slightly imposing but beautiful monster.
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko Page 15