Читать книгу Claws of Mercy - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 8

The creepy giggling was in his ears. The workers couldn’t be joking like this, could they? They don’t seem to care about jokes. Everyone was swamped with work. Everyone had frightened faces. A block at the construction site had indeed fallen. Ruslan expected all his bones to be shattered, but it turned out that he had only abrasions. The rubble had been cleared away, but the bandages from the first aid kit were not enough to stop the bleeding.

“Wait, we’ll get you to the hospital,” Dima wailed over him.

His buddy’s voice was overlapped by someone’s whistling whisper. A winged shadow loomed over Dima.

“It will crush you too,” Ruslan wanted to shout, but only wheezes came out of his mouth. Somehow he was sure that the winged creature that had collapsed the block was a girl. He must have imagined it. Dima was still fussing over him, giving some urgent orders and calling on his phone. Ruslan’s consciousness was falling into darkness. Probably he was going to die now, and the winged figure he saw was an angel from hell.

Ruslan woke up in bed, covered with a thin blanket. The first sensation was the needle of a syringe frozen in his skin. The nurse’s manicured hands were giving him an injection. Fingernails covered in red nail polish were pulling back the plunger. The syringe seemed to fill with blood.

Apparently he wasn’t being injected with a dose of anesthetic, but blood was being drawn from his vein for analysis. Ruslan lifted his head from the pillow and thought he was dreaming. Next to his bunk was that mysterious brunette in a nurse’s uniform. She appeared even more beautiful up close. Her face was as pale as a ghost’s. Her black eyeliner and eyelashes seemed painted on. Her lips, thickly painted with scarlet lipstick, somehow reminded hime of beautiful vampires rising from their coffins at night. It was night, by the way. The blinds on the hospital windows were raised, and the moon was visible behind them.

“Don’t move!” The beauty warned.

Ruslan noticed her shapely breasts heaving under her uniform and thought that it would be a pleasure to be treated under her supervision. Just think of it! He was glad he’d come to the hospital because she was here. He used to be scared as hell of hospitals, syringes and various surgical instruments. And now there’s a crazy thought in his head that he’ll be pleased even if a stranger cuts him open alive for the sake of experimentation.

“That’s it!” She removed the syringe, which had no blood in it.

He couldn’t have been dreaming, could he? Or did he hit his head too hard when he fell?

“I was going to give you a medicine dropper, but I can see you’re coming around. You just need to get some rest.”

The beauty’s voice flowed like music. Ruslan could barely make out the words. In any case, he didn’t understand much about medical terms. More than listening, he liked to look at the nurse. She was as graceful as a model and more beautiful than all the superstars put together. What stars, she was more beautiful than the Olympic goddesses! There was something Asian about her features. One of his classmates often said that Asian women were the most beautiful. Ruslan hadn’t shared his opinion before, but now it was as if he had fallen in love.

“You remind me of a fox demon,” Ruslan said, remembering some of the doramas he had watched in his student days.

The beauty took no offense.

“Call me Tamara.”

“Tamara?” Ruslan was surprised to hear a typical Russian name. He was ready to hear something exotic.

“And the last name?”

“Just Tamara,” she smiled. The nametag on her uniform was blank.

“I’m Ruslan.”

“I know.”

“How is it?”

“I had to fill out your admission form. Your friend brought you and your papers.”

“He is my colleague,” Ruslan corrected.

“Colleagues are usually friends.”

“It is not always,” Ruslan remembered the sullen construction workers from the oligarch’s lands. You couldn’t get a friendly word out of them. But they were all his colleagues. Well, at least employees. After all, they worked on the construction of the mansion in the same team. And now he’s in the hospital.

“How are you feeling?” Tamara touched his forehead, checking his temperature. He liked her touch. It’s the same when the night touches you. Tamara’s hand was cold and smooth as marble.

“I feel strange,” Ruslan admitted to her, “as if I were already dead.

He wouldn’t say that to a doctor. Tamara didn’t panic. She studied the patient with her eyes, not with her instruments.

“Would you like to listen to my heart or take a cardiogram?” Ruslan joked.

“No,” Tamara answered seriously. “You’re healthy. You’ll be discharged in three days.”

“Healthy people don’t go to hospital. And why do you speak about three days?”

“No one stays longer than three days.”

“This hospital is magic!”

Tamara waved her black mascara eyelashes to hide her eyes for a moment. It made it seem like she was hiding something.

“Do they heal all the sick here in three days?” Ruslan kept up with her.

Tamara sat down on a low stool next to the bunk and made a sign to keep quiet.

“You need to rest.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Shall I give you sleeping pills?”

“No need. I’ve always fallen asleep just fine on my own without any sleeping pills.”

“Then you’re not a nervous person. It’s hard for anyone who’s stressed out at work to fall asleep. Many people in these parts suffered from insomnia, because life here was hard, you had to overexert yourself, and then came eternal sleep.”

It was as if Tamara was composing a local legend for a tourist. With a voice as beautiful as hers, you have to be a singer. When she speaks, it feels like a nightingale trill is wafting through the air.

“I hope this hospital isn’t private?” Ruslan noticed only now that he was alone in the room, as if he were in a suite. It was too luxurious for a hospital. The room has a floor clock in a walnut case, a table with a porcelain set, and even some kind of painting on the wall.

“It is private, of course.”

“I hope my employer pays for my stay.”

Why shouldn’t Vereskovsky pay for his architect’s three-day stay in a fancy hospital? The oligarchs have a lot of money. It will be bad if the employer is greedy and doesn’t want to bear the cost of the accident.

“He won’t have to pay. It’s a charitable institution,” Tamara explained. “The hospital is for anyone who needs emergency care and is out of our reach.”

“Is it for you? You mean for the hospital staff?”

Tamara nodded silently.

“And the treatment is free?”

“They won’t charge you for it,” Tamara replied streamlined. “But you’ll have to take blood for analysis.”

“I don’t like to pay with blood.”

“It’s for the good of science.”

“And you like to joke!”

Tamara smiled back with just her lips.

“I haven’t seen a charitable institution in a long time. No one treats without a medical policy or insurance. I didn’t bring my policy with me when I went to the construction site.”

“We don’t give out bulletins, but we do help you get better.”

“Now you’re not a nurse, you’re a nun who helps out between prayers.”

“There really was a convent in the left wing.”

For some reason Ruslan felt sick at the thought. Where there are monasteries, there are burials. The presence of a monastery nearby indicated that many people had gone straight to the other side of the world from this hospital.

Tamara guessed his thoughts and explained:

“Centuries ago, cholera epidemics and war casualties were treated here. The monastery and the hospital were built at the same time on the donation of the prince, who owned the surrounding lands and thousands of serfs.”

And now the same lands belong to an oligarch! Almost nothing changes over time, except the names. There was one feudal lord, now there’s another.

“Don’t tell me that you also do plastic surgery for free,” Ruslan remembered the oligarch’s wife, who was concerned about her appearance.

“If people need it,” Tamara nodded, “but if it’s not absolutely necessary, a monetary contribution is welcome. However, it is not obligatory.”

“You’re crazy!”

“We just want to help.”

Ruslan thought it was strange that Tamara didn’t specify who exactly she wanted to help: people or someone else. Maybe she was a foreigner and could hardly speak Russian? No, it didn’t sound like that. Her speech is no accent, but the meaning of her words is strange.

The picture in the ornate gilded frame on the wall was also strange. Ruslan looked at it for a long time, but he couldn’t understand what it depicted. It was a complete mess! Pyramids, angels, corpses, clawed hands reaching out of the sand, and some creatures stuck in layers of earth. Such a mix of eras and symbols reminded him of Salvador Dali’s museum.

“I don’t like surrealism,” Ruslan admitted.

“You just don’t understand it,” Tamara glanced at the painting. “Surrealism has a cipher in it, like a rambling dream. Everything that seems abstract actually hints at something complex.”

“It takes a very clever head to understand and decipher it all.”

“And your head is sick,” Tamara teased.

“I just bumped my head. It’ll feel a little sore and then it’ll go away.”

Ruslan felt something like a bump on the back of his head.

“Lie still!” Tamara told him to lie still.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor. It seemed as if an iron robot was treading the floor, not a human being. Was it the doctor?

Tamara shuddered.

“I’ll be right back!” She promised, jumping up from her stool.

“But… wait!” Ruslan wanted to stop her, but he couldn’t get up from the bunk. And the heels of the nurse’s shoes were already clacking in the corridor. She even forgot to close the door of the room. She was in such a hurry. The doctor didn’t even call her. Where was she rushing off to? Who can understand these women? One minute they’re flirting with you, the next they’re running away from you like a monster!

Speaking of monsters! Ruslan noticed an ugly shadow in the corridor. He couldn’t see much from his bunk. He should have propped himself up on his elbows to get a closer look, but he didn’t have the strength. Tamara must have sedated him in time. Sleep was intolerable. Ruslan fell asleep.