Couriers delivered food once a week: just pizza and mineral water. No luxury was expected by the architects. Dima managed to reacquaint himself with all the couriers.
“They don’t like coming here, but they have to,” he reported. “Their employers send them. It takes a long time to get here, there are no settlements around.”
“Not one! Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It’s strange, why build a hospital where there are no settlements,” Ruslan couldn’t get the facade of the gloomy hospital out of his head. It seemed as if some voice was calling him to go back there.”
“Maybe it was to treat some rare disease that couldn’t be allowed to spread.”
Dima looked longingly after the couriers.
“Now they’ll bring a new batch of food in a week,” he sighed. “We’ll have to stretch our food supplies for seven days.”
“You like to eat.”
“And I like to drink. And I don’t like to mess around in the mud. This construction site is filthy, like a swamp under the ground. One night I even thought I saw clawed hands coming out of the ground. Can you imagine?”
“You must have been drinking.”
“I was just daydreaming about how good it would be to work as a courier instead of sitting on this construction site.”
Ruslan noticed how heavy the couriers’ backpacks were and didn’t envy them. Couriers always reminded him of modern-day peddlers. They, too, went door-to-door and carried their goods with them.
The pizza with slices of sausage was not tasty at all. Ruslan didn’t like mineral water. We should have brought tea bags and a thermos.
“Our oligarch is in no hurry to make sure that we have a decent meal.”
“Well, it’s not an expensive restaurant here,” Dima said philosophically.
“This pizza is making me sick.”
“If you need it, I brought some Allochol for intestinal distress.
Ruslan only grinned wryly. You can’t help bad food with pills. The pizza was definitely not fresh. The slices, wrapped in foil, were covered with mold that he hadn’t noticed a second ago.
“They say everything rots fast in these places. It’s a bad atmosphere.”
“You should not build a mansion in a place like this!”
Did the oligarch not realize that all the works of art he had collected would perish in a bad climate? Or did he buy some perfect equipment to keep the building at the right temperature for storing antiquities. How much money does it take to create the same atmosphere in a private building as in a museum! It seems that Vereskovsky is fabulously rich, but he does everything with a twist. Ruslan could say with certainty that there was no other construction site like this one. Everything is done not as it should be done, but as it is more convenient for the customer.
In general, there was nothing to complain about. Ruslan adored his work. Architecture was not only a job for him, but also a hobby. His favorite occupation helped him to survive. Unloved work often makes people depressed. But with favorite work you feel useful and happy.
But just because someone is building a private Hermitage, you feel an acute sense of injustice. Ruslan himself didn’t even have enough money for a micro-apartment. And living on the corner with elderly relatives is the most difficult ordeal faced by many young adults. Renting a house is also an unacceptable luxury for most young people. Often people work hard, and their wages are barely enough for food and a bus pass.
“When I was a kid,” Ruslan recalled, “my grandparents opened a bank account in my name. They knew how hard it was to live in a dormitory, and they were saving money so that their grandson would have his own apartment when he grew up. And one day, all the savings simply disappeared from the accounts, it was promised to be reimbursed, but there was no compensation. My grandmother liked to repeat that all our money went into the deep pockets of some new Russians. In those days, many people lost all their savings, but out of nowhere, fabulously rich people suddenly appeared.”
“Are you implying that our employer made his money dishonestly?”
“How can you get that kind of wealth honestly? He’s copying Midas. He even commissioned a statue made of solid gold!”
“Maybe he’ll end up like Midas. All dishonest people get screwed in the end, but we have to please him for now if we want to get paychecks and bonuses.”
“Don’t even count on bonuses! He’s got everything on the books for his employees, but the furniture here is probably inlaid with gems.”
“If only someone would want the furniture here. I have the impression that Vereskovsky is building a temple, not a palace.”
“Do you have that impression too?” Ruslan was surprised. He thought he was the only one who looked at a drawing of a palace under construction and compared it to the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal. It looks like a temple and a tomb at the same time.
“I also have a feeling that everything here might collapse like the Tower of Babel or tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Dima confessed.
“Why is that?”
“It is because you work sluggishly. I constantly have to correct your drawings.”
“The atmosphere of this place has a bad effect on me, as if there were some evil here,” Ruslan looked around. There were only Tajiks doing various jobs, and he was expecting ghosts.
“It’s all because of the abandoned hospital and the stories they spread about it. They say that in the old days the hospital was the estate of some nobleman with a bad reputation.”
“Why do you call it abandoned?” Ruslan was indignant. “I’ve seen people going in there myself.”
“If you continue to wear your nerves out with this, you’ll soon find yourself in the hospital, and your position will be given to another architect. There were many of them around here. Vereskovsky is looking for some genius who can combine completely different architectural styles into one building. The only thing I agree with you on is that it was necessary to pay three times the price for such a complex work,” Dima drank mineral water and didn’t grimace. Apparently, he liked it.
Ruslan noticed some winged shadows on the construction site. Probably huge birds flew over the construction site.
“Since high school, when I once went to the hospital,” Ruslan confessed, “the thing I dread the most is hospitals. Forced idleness depresses me, and various medical procedures make me sick.”
Perhaps it was a mistake for him to admit it out loud. It was as if someone had heard his words and taken note.
“My sister was disappointed in doctors, too,” Dima confessed in turn. “She went to them for treatment of teenage acne. They ran her through a bunch of paid tests and prescribed expensive drugs that did not help at all. In the end, the kind doctors consoled her that she could live with acne. And if acne bothers her so much, then let her go to a psychotherapist. How’s that for a situation like that?”
“My mom usually copes with such a situation with the help of gifts. It is worth presenting the attending physicians with a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates, as they will treat your ailments with great compassion. Of course, sometimes there are honest people.”
“But the best way out of illnesses is not to get sick. Therefore, in my spare time I do sports and drink vitamins by the handful.”
Ruslan noticed the strange shadows on the construction site again. It seemed that they were whispering something and giving him strange thoughts about the coming immortality. No wonder. In the shadow of the temple such thoughts should come to mind. And the palace that Vereskovsky is building is exactly like a temple.
Ruslan threw back his head and looked up. There were no birds flying about, neither small nor large. So where do winged shadows come from?
“He’s spotted us!” A nasty hissing voice said.
Dima had just stepped back to throw away the pizza wrappers and empty bottles when something on the construction site suddenly tilted. It seemed as if a crane had suddenly turned, but the chauffeur’s booth in it was empty. Was the rotunda collapsing?
Ruslan looked back at it, but it too stood as still as a monument.
“You saw us!” A nasty voice whispered in Ruslan’s ear.
Suddenly something huge covered the sun. It was no longer a winged shadow, but something rectangular and bulky. A huge block seemed to have fallen off from somewhere. But from where is it? And where will it fall? If it’s right on top of him, it’s too late to run. At the same time there was the sound of falling bricks and an obnoxious giggle. Ruslan felt an unbearable weight on him, and his eyes darkened.
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.
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