SWNOVELS Snow: Chapter 8
The reward for work done is the opportunity to do more.
Jonas Salk
The next morning feels strangely normal.
I come down to the kitchen and eat kasha and tvorog with Mila, until Mama stumbles into the kitchen in her marabou robe, with her hair up in rollers.
I think Mama’s idol must be Myrna Loy. Even when she’s lounging around the house, Mama still puts on lipstick. Her slippers have kitten heels and little puffs of fur at the toes. She’s wrapped a pink floral scarf around her rollers.
“You want kasha, Mama?” Mila says.
“God, no,” Mama says, wrinkling her nose at our half-eaten bowls of soggy cereal. She fills her coffee mug instead and lights a cigarette. This has been her breakfast for as long as I’ve known her.
While Mama is drinking her coffee, I slip out of the kitchen and find her purse in the hallway closet. I take out all her credit cards and her bankbook, too. For good measure, I also steal her ID. Mama doesn’t drive, and I don’t want to risk her being able to open a new line of credit somehow.
She’s going to be furious when she finds out, but I can’t risk her sweet-talking Papa into the same mess as before. I know she has accounts at several stores, which I assume are already maxed out. That kind of debt doesn’t concern me—at least it’s not going to get any of us killed.
Once I’ve cut up all the cards, I shower and dress in clean, simple, professional clothing. I’m ready to go.
But I find myself in an odd position. I need to be available in case Krupin calls. However, I don’t know if or when he’s actually going to contact me.
So I end up wandering around the house, feeling anxious and out of sorts. Having spent the last six years in constant study, I’m not used to free time.
I don’t even have Mila to hang around with, because she’s got her own classes to attend.
I think about calling up some old friends, but I didn’t keep in touch very well while I was so enmeshed in schoolwork. Besides, they’d ask me what I’m doing now, at which hospital I plan to do my practical work, and how my family’s faring. I can’t answer any of those questions.
I spend a few hours prowling around the house, trying to tidy up some of the mess that’s been accumulating since we ran out of money to pay the cleaning ladies. It’s easy enough to pick up the books and blankets scattered around the living room, and then to dust the tabletops and the mantle. But when I try to wash the floor in the kitchen, which obviously hasn’t been touched in a couple of months, I run into a roadblock.
I have no idea where a mop or broom might be. I go searching through the various closets of the house, finding nothing. Did the cleaning ladies always bring their own mops? Do we even own one?
Finding a bucket and sponge, I figure I can do the kitchen floor by hand. But what sort of soap should I use? And how do you dry the floor after?
Also, I’ll have to change clothes again . . . crawling around on the floor in slacks and a blouse isn’t going to work.
God, I really am spoiled. I don’t know the first thing about keeping house. At university I lived in the dorms, where the only task we had to do was tidy our own rooms. I’ve never mopped a floor or scrubbed a toilet in my life.
While I’m fretting over my ineptitude, my mother wanders back down into the kitchen to make herself a piece of bread and butter. She slices into a fresh baguette, scattering crumbs across the countertop that I only just wiped down. She butters the bread, leaving the dirty knife next to the sink. Then she takes a large bite of bread as she leaves, dropping more crumbs on the floor.
I stare at the mess she left.
What am I doing?
I’m never going to be able to keep our house in shape all on my own.
I throw the sponge back in the bucket and stalk out of the kitchen. Climbing the stairs to my room, I haul out a stack of textbooks from my suitcase. I find my notes from my internship in trauma, and I start brushing up on intubation, blood transfusions, sutures, and stabilizing care.
I didn’t come back home to be a maid. There’s really only one thing I can do to help my family. I’m not any good at cleaning, anyway. But I am a good doctor. Or I will be . . . I’m sure of it.
It’s strangely calming, reading notes about the aftermath of mayhem. This is where I’ve been most comfortable the last few years. This is where I feel at home—revising. However, I’m reminded that while I may technically be a doctor now, my practical experience is limited. In the normal course of things, I would have started a two-year probationary period at a hospital, where I’d be paid a salary, but I’d still essentially be in training.
I have some experience with real-life patients, but perhaps not as much as I lead Krupin to believe. In truth, I’m still green as grass.
Maybe he won’t call for a few weeks, anyway.
After all, how much trouble can his men be getting into on a daily basis?
Barely have I comforted myself with this thought, when the cellphone Krupin gave me begins to buzz from atop the nightstand. It has a sharp, insistent sound, like a wasp trapped in a glass.
I snatch it up, afraid to let it ring for even a minute.
“Hello?” I say.
“I’m texting you an address,” a strange voice says. “Come down now.”
“Okay. But what do I—“
Before I can finish my question, the person on the other end of the line hangs up.
A moment later, the phone pings as a text message arrives.
712A Prospekt Kosmonavtov
It’s too far to walk—and the person on the phone said to come right away. So I pull on my boots, grab my coat, and hurry outside. I jog over to the nearest cross-street and flag down a cab.
The driver takes me to a pawnshop at the southeast corner of Admiralteysky.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I ask him.
“You said Kosmonavtov, right?” the driver says. “That’s 712 A.” He points to the number painted above the pawnshop door.
“Alright, thanks.”
I hand him a couple of bills.
“You want me to wait?” he says. He looks a little concerned, dropping me off at a place I’ve clearly never been in this seedy neighborhood.
“No,” I tell him. “I’m good.”
Actually, my heart is racing. As I push through the swinging door, a buzzer sounds overhead, making me jump. A bored-looking girl with thick black eyeliner and her hair in bunches looks up from behind the counter.
“They’re back there,” she says, pointing past a glass case of fake watches and rings from failed engagements.
“Thank you,” I say. My voice is a squeak. The girl raises her eyebrows at me, then goes back to playing on her phone.
I weave my way through the crowded shelves of merchandise, heading in the direction indicated. I find a plain metal door, nearly hidden behind a shelf of car stereos. I notice a security camera mounted over the door, pointing directly at me. I turn the knob, letting myself into a dark hallway.
I can hear men’s voices and the sounds of somebody cursing. I follow the noise to a surprisingly large room, which looks almost like an office or call center. If so, it’s a space not currently in use—the rows of desks and computer monitors have been pushed back against the walls, leaving an empty space in the middle of the room.
Three men stand in the middle of this empty space. One is the gangster from Papa’s restaurant—the one with the gold tooth. The other two I’ve never seen before. One is portly, with a heavy silver chain and a cross pendant around his neck. The other is young, skinny, and missing half the sleeve off his leather jacket. He’s got a nasty slash down his arm, cutting diagonally from the shoulder down across the bicep, bisecting a tattoo of the double-headed eagle from the Federation coat of arms.
Blood has run all down his arm, coating his right hand like a shiny, wet glove, and then spattering down onto the floor.
One of his friends, the one with the silver chain, is just pulling over a desk chair so the wounded man can sit down.
“There you are,” gold tooth says to me. “Took you long enough.”
I stare at the three men. I can see there’s blood drying on the knuckles of the other two as well. I don’t think it’s from helping their friend.
“Come on,” gold tooth says impatiently. “Fix him up.”
“With . . . what?” I ask.
“Here,” the guy with the silver chain says. He throws me a black duffle bag. It lands at my feet with a thud. I unzip the top, finding a jumble of medical gear, as if someone ran down the shelves of a pharmacy, knocking things into the bag at random.
I find a suture kit, but nothing to clean the wound.
“There’s no antiseptic,” I say.
“Antiseptic?” silver chain says blankly.
“Yes. To clean the wound. We usually use povidone-iodine, chlorhexidine, or sodium hypochlorite.”
“Oh, right. Here,” silver chain says. He reaches inside his jacket, pulling out a flask. Unscrewing the top, he pours a liberal slug of clear liquor down his friend’s arm.
The injured man yelps. “Zalupa konskaya!” he shouts, trying to shove silver chain away.
“Calm down, you baby,” silver chain says unperturbed.
He holds up the flask to me in a cheers motion.
“Vodka cures all,” he says.
Well, he’s not wrong. We don’t use alcohol to disinfect, because it can damage exposed tissue. But it will minimize bacterial growth and wash debris from the wound.
I step a little closer so I can examine the gash.
I’ve given stitches before. This cut is much nastier. It’s uneven and jagged, so deep that I can see exposed muscle and even a glint of bone at the bottom. That tattoo is certainly not going to recover. Not that it was a very good tattoo to begin with.
The skinny guy is pale from the pain of the “disinfectant.” Plus he’s lost a fair bit of blood. Not enough to need a transfusion, I don’t think. But enough that he’s probably not feeling too good.
The sooner I stitch him up, the sooner the bleeding will stop.
“Where’s a sink?” I say. “I need to wash my hands.”
Gold tooth points to the adjoining room, which is a small and filthy bathroom. I scrub my hands with soap, hoping that they’ll end up cleaner than they started, even in this grimy little space.
When I return, I rip open the suture kit. I take up the curved needle and nylon thread.
“I don’t have anesthetic, either,” I warn my patient.
“Vodka works for that, too,” silver chain says. He gives the skinny guy a swig from the flask.
I pinch the edges of the wound together and start sewing.
Giving stitches really is remarkably like sewing fabric. Unfortunately, I was always a crap seamstress. I try to keep my stitches as neat and uniform as possible. It’s not easy, since the skinny guy flinches with every poke.
It takes nearly a hundred stitches to close the gash down his arm. I have to loop and knot each one to be sure the wound won’t reopen. Because it’s nylon thread, it won’t dissolve automatically like an absorbable suture.
“I’ll have to remove these in a couple of weeks,” I tell the skinny guy.
He grunts. He’s taken enough swallows from silver chain’s flask that he’s finally started to relax and not mind the stitches as much.
He looks down the length of his arm, marveling at my handiwork.
“Kinda cool,” he says. “I look like Frankenstein.”
I cut the last thread with a pair of medical scissors, then stand up.
“He’ll need antibiotics,” I tell gold tooth. “To make sure it doesn’t become infected.”
“Yeah?” gold tooth says. He grabs me around the waist and pulls me toward him. He’s been drinking too, enough that I can smell the vodka on his breath as he breathes into my face. “What do I get?” he says. “For carrying him all the way over here?”
This is exactly what I was afraid of. I offered to be Krupin’s doctor. But these men think I’m his whore.
Without thinking, I swing the scissors up, so the point of the blade jabs against gold tooth’s throat.
“You know what’s right beneath these scissors?” I ask him. “Your carotid artery. It supplies ninety percent of the blood to your brain. So, if I were to jab this blade into your neck, you’d lose consciousness in about seven seconds. You’d have one minute before you bled out—maybe three, if your friends here did their best to apply pressure. But ultimately, you’d exsanguinate like a pig in a slaughterhouse, while experiencing several strokes along the way. If you touch me again, I’m going to do it. No warning, next time.”
It’s completely silent in the room.
The other two men are standing still, waiting to see what gold tooth will do.
So am I.
It’s insane to be threatening this man.
I’ve never talked like that my life—let alone to someone who looks like he strangles puppies for fun.
But I know if I let these men think they can do whatever they want to me, there will be no end to the torment. I have to stop it dead in its tracks, immediately. Or I might as well just bend over for them right now.
I can see the anger in gold tooth’s face. He laughed when I told him off at the restaurant, but he’s not laughing now. His body is tense, his fingers still digging into my hip. I think he’s going to grab my hand, twist the scissors out of my grip, and do god knows what to me as punishment.
Instead, he lets go of my waist and steps back.
“Relax,” he says. “No need to get dramatic. You better watch that mouth though, Princess—one of these days, it’s gonna get you in trouble.”
It already has.
I’m still gripping the scissors so hard that my fingers are going numb.
The tension still hasn’t dissipated. The other two men are standing ready, watching gold tooth for any signal to attack. There’s no gratitude from the skinny Bratva for the fact that I just sewed up his arm—he’s watching me as coldly as the others. He doesn’t relax until gold tooth deliberately turns his back on me, like I’m not even worth looking at.
“You good?” gold tooth says to the skinny kid.
“Yeah,” the kid says.
“Let’s go then.”
The three men walk out of the room without so much as a glance in my direction.
I wait a minute, to make sure they’re actually gone.
Then I sink down in the office chair, my body shaking with relief.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive a week of this, let alone years.
Once I’m sure they’re actually gone, I pick up the duffle bag. I guess this is going to be my doctor’s kit. I’ll have to add to it—hopefully Krupin will give me some money for that.
Already, I’m mentally tallying the equipment I might need.
I’d like a better office, too. But I’m guessing Krupin is going to want treatment on the fly, wherever his men happen to be.
I sigh.
Hopefully I won’t see much worse than stitches.
I don’t even want to think what will happen if someone important dies in my arms.