III
The Drive Back
Was silent.
But also not uncomfortable. Silently cathartic, in fact.
I looked at Nurse Natalya’s face long enough to realize that while her eyes were on the road, her head was a merry-go-round with me, and Polina, and Mikhail, and her husband, and my mother, whose name is apparently Yulia, spinning around in exhausting little circles. I saw all our absurd faces flicker through her eyes.
I, on the other hand, thought about the mating rituals of penguins, and the pros and cons of circumcision, and how antibiotics have only been around for less than one hundred years, and how awful it must have been for men to get a dose of the clap in the 1800s, and how early hominids could survive the cold in Siberia before modern technology, and anything else that could keep me from thinking about the last one hundred hours of my own life.
Fortunately, by the time I ran out of thoughts, we pulled back into the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. And, almost as soon as I saw its off-white painted brick façade and heard the random sounds of nurses barking and the occasional mutant howl through the open windows, I began to feel gravely ill myself. But ill in the sweetest sense. I breathed through that wave of ill and looked around at the forested, partially manicured open air and didn’t want to throw up all over it. This meant that for the first time in my life, I preferred the outside to the inside.
Nurse Natalya, still silent, pulled out my chair and then pulled me out of her car and dropped me into it. She wheeled me back up the dirt path to the big brown double doors, which, for me, meant being immersed in every memory that could ever haunt me, and for Natalya it must have meant something completely different, because her clip was too brisk, and there was something alarming about the waves of intensity radiating from her loose skin as she plowed through those brown doors. When we broke the seal, the intensity didn’t abate. She pushed my chair through the hallway, past Miss Kristina’s desk—“Morning, Natalya,” she said—and on through the linoleum she wheeled me, at least twice as fast as the fastest she ever pushed before, and then through the Main Room, where the gingers were building a castle from hospital pillows, and Dennis undulated like a human timepiece, and Alex smeared chocolate all over his face, and a couple of heart-hole kids sat somberly avoiding any escalation in heart rate, and on past the Red Room, where no one was left to die, and then through to the girls’ wing, and right up to Polina’s door, which she opened, and then wheeled me inside and shut the door behind me, at which point I said, “Natalya?” but of course she didn’t respond because she was too absorbed in the process of rummaging underneath Polina’s bed and squeezing more of her physical body through the space between the floor and the bed frame than the space would allow for her and then almost lifting the bed right from the floor as she thrust and thrashed on until she pulled out the suitcase, my suitcase, the escape pod that Polina had built for me, which she then plopped onto my lap.
“Say yes, and we’re gone,” Nurse Natalya said. “But it has to come from you.”
“Where will I go?”
“With me.”
“In your home.”
“In my home.”
“And Mikhail?”
“I will worry about Mikhail.”
The room bent and spun while my heart started jamming the blood that remained in my veins (what I didn’t give to Polina) into the farthest parts of my body, like my fingers, nubs, and earlobes. Then I wondered why I was so afraid. And as if she could read the prose across my eyes, Nurse Natalya said:
“It’s because your life will be yours. Which means your misery will be yours too. It won’t belong to Lyudmila, or Mikhail, or the state.”
And I knew she was right. It was something my mother (my imaginary one) would have said if she were still here. This, however, came from a real person, which made it problematic.
“Ivan, if you want to give them custody of your misery, I—”
“No.”
It shot out of me.
“What?” Nurse Natalya asked.
“I said no.”
“No what?”
“Do you have a TV?”
“Ivan, it’s 2005. Everyone has a TV.”
“And borscht?”
“Every Sunday.”
“Okay.”
And with an agility that was not congruent with her age or athleticism, Natalya got behind me and started pushing, and I quickly secured my suitcase, which almost fell from my lap due to the sudden acceleration. Once she started pushing, she didn’t stop. She kept pushing. She pushed me back through the Main Room, through my carnival of friendly mutants, through the foyer past Miss Kristina’s desk—“Bye, Natalya; Bye, Ivan”—through the big heavy brown double doors, through the front seat of her car, through the seventeen miles of road leading to her small apartment in downtown Mazyr, onto a street called Vostok, and through the charming front red door of her apartment, through her adequately but elderly decorated living room, and then dining room, and finally into a guest room, which appeared to be my room, because it was already set up for me, equipped with a large bookcase filled with volumes of Russian, and also French, and also American literature, and various textbooks ranging in topics from medicine to quantum physics, and the walls had posters of things like celestial events, and James Joyce, and Franz Kafka, and then she said, “I expected you would be here someday, just didn’t know which one,” and then I used my index finger to motion for her to come to me, because I wouldn’t have been able to use words, and when her face got close, I kissed her. Then I asked her for a few minutes so that I could pull out this notebook and write down what just happened, which is what I’m doing right now.
Ivan Isaenko
June 10, 1987– September 3, 2008
Mazyr, Belarus
Epilogue
There is a ghost that haunts the descendants of Pripyat. It hides inside of every seed and every cell. It resides in the mind where it sneaks up behind every thought and every hope. A tricky spook that dulls the bliss of every birth and every love. Some call it a ticking time bomb, but no one ever knows when the clock is set.
Ivan Isaenko succumbed to his own ghost on September 3, 2008. Six months earlier, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, one of Pripyat’s favorite phantoms. Inevitably, it is hard to overstate the bitterness of this pill given the denouement of Ivan’s story.
Beyond his death we know little of Ivan’s life after the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children with the exception of these few sanguine details. Ivan lived with Natalya Beneshenko for almost nineteen months before losing his fight. Miss Beneshenko retired from the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children shortly after Ivan moved in. We know that in the nineteen months Ivan lived outside of the hospital, he published two short stories, one in the Mazyr Chronicle titled “дважды,”* and another in the Belarus State University literary journal, titled “клерк.”* He also visited the grave of his hero Vladimir Nabokov in Montreux, Switzerland, during a trip to Western Europe. When Ivan passed, Miss Beneshenko buried him in the same cemetery as her husband, next to Polina Pushkin.
There are as many themes in Ivan’s story as there are pages. It is at once a love story, a revelation of the dark legacy of the Soviet experiment, a conversation on medical ethics, a reproach of religious hypocrisy, and an admonition against choosing fear over purpose. But, ultimately, it is simply the story of a single human life, within which so much can be held. We hope the reader can pause to appreciate that fact.
Acknowledgments
Had I not met these people, this book either would have never been published or I wouldn’t have been the guy who wrote it:
Victoria Sanders, you probably don’t realize, but you single-handedly taught me more about how to write a novel than any other person on the planet. I’m so grateful to have you in my corner.
Jen Enderlin, dream editor and co-parent of Ivan Isaenko. I couldn’t ask for a more wonderful person to share this book with.
&nbs
p; Bernadette Baker-Baughman, the supportive spirit who makes me feel perfectly at ease asking the dumbest, most naive questions about this weird new world of publishing.
Linda Stambach, the bold supporter of every pie-in-the-sky dream I’ve had since the age of five.
Shawn and Nicole, best siblings ever.
The OG Circle: Ryan Begley, Bill Kalish, Danny Trout, Matthew Ellish. Who the hell would I be without all of you?
George and Donna Lightsey, my West Coast parents, you’ll never know how grateful I am for the nonstop love and Big Bang night.
Stacey Keating, my soul sister, moral compass, co-founder of Noetic, and the 2,349 other things you are in my life.
Cat White, my first reader and dear friend. Thank you for being the most loyal friend in the world.
Anna Chiles, my teaching partner and constant reminder to be my best self.
Lucy Boulatnikov, my lovely Russian-language checker, so much of you is in this story.
Tania Jabour, my wonderful friend, this book would not have happened if not for Six Flags 2013.
Paul Temple, my broham and possibly the kindest human being alive.
Mike Anderson, for the years of inspiration, encouragement, and epic late-night convos.
Jon Yu and Matt Ortiz, my brothers and fellow Sets.
Many thanks to all my early readers for their feedback and encouragement: Matt Martin, Mike Heyd, Isaac Rivera, Kennadi Yates, Sarah Dear, Ady Sukkar Kayrouz, Isabella Miranda, Samira Kester, Miriam Tullgren, Erin Duarte, Alejandra Torrero, Deborah Kutyla, Daniel Cordello, Jyothsna Konda.
All my teachers for the sum total of what you’ve taught me.
All the sweet, crazy, and earnest High Tech High, Mesa, City, and Grossmont students I’ve ever had the privilege of ranting to about physics and space. I’m a better writer when I see the world through your wild eyes.
If I missed anyone, you know I love you. Deadlines make for bad memories.…
About the Author
Scott Stambach lives in San Diego, where he teaches physics and astronomy at Grossmont and Mesa Colleges. He also collaborates with Science for Monks, a group of educators and monastics working to establish science programs in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries throughout India. He has written about his experiences working with the monks of the Sera Je College monastery and has published short fiction in several literary journals, including Ecclectica, Stirring, and Convergence. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Foreword
Part One: The Count Up
I. The Anesthetization of Ivan Isaenko
II. Spectrophobia
III. The Day I Came Online
IV. Coma Boy
V. One Day in the Life of Ivan Isaenko
VI. The Children of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children
VII. The Bleeders, the Non-Bleeders, and Polina the Interloper
VIII. The Three-Monthers
IX. The Staff of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children
X. The Jungian Archetypes
XI. Dr. Mikhail Kruk, the Director
XII. My Therapist, Dr. Arkady Yakovlev, M.D.
XIII. My Mother
XIV. The Early Days
XV. Polina’s Chemo Hair
XVI. My Hui
XVII. The Sarcophagus
XVIII. Ivanism
XIX. Polina’s Journal
XX. The Case for Diacetylmorphine
Part Two: The Count Down
Day 21. Hazing and Initiation
Day 20. The Day We Contributed to Max’s Rearing
Day 19. Game Night
Day 18. The Nothing Day
Day 17. Stars and Stairwells
Day 16. The Retroactive Biography of Ivan Isaenko
Day 15. Polina’s Magic School Bus
Day 14. The Janis Joplin Day
Day 13. The Day I Conversed with the Director
Day 12. A Day of Sleep
Days 11 and 10. Crying with Nabokov
Day 9. Blood Brothers
Day 8. The Organic Wonderland (and Other Conversations)
Day 7. дзень я закахаўся ў
Day 6. The Little Green Folders
Day 5. Conversion Disorder
Day 4. Good-Bye, Yellow Brick Road
Day 3. The Suitcase Day
Day 2. The Day of Delirium
Day 1. The Death of Polina Pushkin
Part Three: Farewell Song
I. The Aftermath
II. The Funeral
III. The Drive Back
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF IVAN ISAENKO. Copyright © 2016 by Scott Stambach. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: silhouette of boy © 4x6/iStock; paper texture © Nicoolay/iStock; tissue box © Stuartbur/iStock; red texture © Phloen/Shutterstock; vodka bottle © Photographee.eu/Shutterstock; baseball © David Lee/Shutterstock; books © Catherine MacBridge/Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stambach, Scott, author.
Title: The invisible life of Ivan Isaenko / Scott Stambach.
Description: New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007227 | ISBN 9781250081865 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250081889 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Teenage boys—Fiction. | Teenagers with disabilities—Fiction. | Critically ill children—Fiction. | Children—Hospitals—Fiction. | Belarus—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | GSAFD: Love stories. | Humorous fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T354 I58 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007227
e-ISBN 9781250081889
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: August 2016
* Roughly translates from Russian as “walrus dick.”
* Translates from Russian as “shit eaters”; however, it also carries the connotation of those who are cheap or stingy.
* This note was not written within the body of Ivan’s original text. Rather, it was written in the right-hand margin of this page. Nevertheless, we thought it worth including.
* A famous Russian dessert better known as “bird’s milk cake.”
* Translates from Russian as “devil.”
† Russian slang for “ass.”
* Roughly translated from Russian as “fuck off.”
* Presumably, a mispronunciation of the Russian word shokolad, which means “chocolate.”
* Traditional warm Russian drink made from honey, spices, and jam.
* Popular Russian slang for “dick.”
* Roughly translated from Russian as “shithead.”
* A late-1960s Soviet/Russian animated series produced by Soyuzmultfilm.
† A popular Polish black-and-white TV series based on the book by Janusz Przymano
wski.
* A Russian card game that is popular in post-Soviet states. The object of the game is to get rid of all one’s cards. At the end of the game, the last player with cards in his or her hand is referred to as the fool (durak).
* The satiric 1842 Russian classic by Nikolay Gogol about a man who tries to trick landowners into buying their dead serfs.
* Better known in the West as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
† In the interest of informing the general public, the editors have deemed it important to clarify that there was a spike in the following conditions during the time period in which Ivan was at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children: fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva disease, progeria disease, Dupuytren’s contracture, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Parry-Romberg syndrome, collagen II gene disorder, multiple sclerosis, and most forms of cancer.
* American psychologist (1902–1987). Founder of the humanistic movement.
* Russian for “old hags.”
* Roughly translates from Russian as “beef whistle.” The translators had no idea what to do with this one.
† The name given to the figurehead of the Russian Orthodox Church.
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