Чернобыль. Страницы жизни и любви

“Let’s go home.”

“We’ll go, my beloved, but in the morning, and we’ll go to the children.”

Staggering, he went down the corridor. We arrived in the room of the matron, where his coat and trainers were. He began to break the door.

“My sweetheart, my darling, don’t do that, it will cause them problems.”

I embraced him, and suddenly he turned to me and in his eyes was a call. He looked at me and sought support. He had gone away from me. I cried out and embraced him. He went limp in my arms. I told him how much I loved him and that everything would be okay.

“Hold on, it will all pass. We’ll be together, you and I.”

I took him into the corridor. He lay on the trolley. The matron came along. I kissed his hand.

“Don’t move. You have to fight. I love you and can’t live without you!”

I cried out, wept, held him with all my strength. I couldn’t let him go.

“I need you, I need you. I can’t live without you. I love you.”

He held me by the hand. He said quietly, but audibly,

“I promise, I promise.”

“Then put your arm around my neck and we’ll go into the room and you will lie down and sleep but in the morning everything will be alright.”

He got up, we went to the ward and I laid him down and gave him an injection. He stroked my face and held my hand. He loved me so much. He went to sleep. The whole evening he was throwing up violently and jumping up. We walked in the corridor all the time. After four at night he became more or less calm. I was with him and rejoiced in every instant we spent together. I was terrified of the coming morning: I was told that cancer victims generally die between five and six in the morning. I sat with him. He had asked me to lie by him and I was with him. God, how happy I was to be beside you, to touch you, to feel your breath, to love and be near you. Time went by: five in the morning. Six, seven…we had survived the night. I proudly announced to a friend of Sergei on the phone: “We survived the night.” I also told the doctor that we had made it. The doctor looked at me and said.

“I don’t expect there will be any more nights like that.”

Then I didn’t understand the terrible meaning of her words.

He was smiling, lying there so happily. I had to go until the evening. I spread out clean linen for him. He lay there and I put headphones on him and he listened to music.

They linked him up with an oxygen supply: he found breathing difficult. He had cheered up immensely. He was so happy. I asked him:

“Are you sure that you can manage without me? Maybe I shouldn’t go?”

“I won’t manage, but you’d better go. You have things to do. Only you can do these things.”

“I will come at four o’clock.”

“No, come at five.”

“Okay, I’ll decide for myself.”

He smiled, stroked my face and held my hand. We felt very happy. We were a united whole and nothing could tear us apart.

I got ready to go. He joked: he gave me the oxygen mask to try and then said:

“Have you got any chewing gum?”

I said I had.

“Then chew on it!” He laughed. And in his striking eyes were only life and laughter!

“I love you, I’m going.”

It was difficult to leave him. I was afraid to go. Coming out of the ward, I looked through the window. He lay happily and calmly. Somewhere flashed the thought that I would never see him alive again, but I drove it out of my mind.

My Sergei could not die. We had survived the terrible night and now everything would be okay.

I had asked a friend of Sergei to come round: I was very tired and wanted to get driving. I thought that I would see to the business and then get some sleep. But I had so much to do, it was all a blur, and soon it was time to go to the hospital. I popped home to pick up a pillow for Sergei and some surgical spirit for the injections.

For some reason my heart was aching. I came home at twenty to four. I went up to the seventh floor. My mother, who was in tears, opened the door for me.

“Sergei is dead.”

“When?”

I rushed to the telephone, but the receiver was hanging off the cradle. The voice in the receiver was familiar, although I didn’t recognize who it was and only understood that it was a female voice.

I ran downstairs and I wasn’t crying – something inside me had broken. Downstairs, I simply howled and screamed. Sergei was dead!!!

Igor was waiting for me, and got into the car without a word and we rushed to the hospital. I was crying, howling and screaming. What he had gone through, the poor thing. He had had such a hard time. I was afraid that I would go crazy. Sergei had died without me and I would never forgive myself for abandoning him!

It was difficult to get anywhere. There was a traffic jam. But Igor was great. He did everything he could. Earlier in the day, when we had been driving somewhere on business, I had told him that when I saw Sergei, I would lie to him, telling him that he would have a flat in two weeks but I did not have the time, and I had been counting on it to bring him back to life. Everything had collapsed. I couldn’t bear it and my heart was breaking, my brain was melting. I jumped out of the car, ran to the hospital. I was running up to the fifth floor, stumbling. People were sitting in the corridor, and some guy wanted to stop me but I didn’t see anyone or anything. I was going to him, my darling, my only one. I was afraid that they would take him away without me.

I flew into the ward, pulled off the blanket and what I saw, slew me for good: he was laying there, happy and blessed. He was bringing peace, and I kneeled before him, kissed him and his hands and whispered words of love to him. I knew that he could hear me, that he was with me. He was lying motionlessly, with his eyes open and his mouth open.

I am kneeling before him, crying, kissing him, his hands, holding his hands in mine…The feeling which I was going through is impossible to describe with words: it is a wild pain, which transfixes and holds your soul and your consciousness in its grip. I was an animal, mortally wounded, which sees its mate, its other half, murdered and torn apart with its own eyes; it fights, howls and is exhausted with pain, but cannot do anything… Something similar was probably happening with me. I wanted to die. The pain was killing me. I was looking dully, as if it were someone else, and not me observing us from the outside.

My mind refused to believe in the fact that the most terrible thing had happened. I am talking to him and I know that he can hear me. His eyes see me, he is with me here, but I will never hear his voice again. His hand will squeeze mine for the last time. I will kiss him and listen to the last processes taking place in his system. He is going away from me. I remained here completely alone. Here, kneeling before him and holding his hand, palm upon palm, I understood that along with him, real female happiness was also leaving. The happiness of a woman, who was loved by her beloved. I was everything to him; no one and nothing could replace me in his life. He was proud of me and admired me. I was his ideal woman, his ideal mistress, wife, mother of his children, businesswoman, human being; all these things he loved in me, the whole of me with my positive attributes and my shortcomings. His faith in me was my guiding star.

At that minute I understood that, from being the happiest woman on earth, I had become a lonely, beaten woman with a broken destiny. Where could I find strength? How to rise up again? My joy, help me, don’t leave me in this nightmare. I cannot, I cannot stay here without your warmth. Life stopped at that moment. He had existed, and everything had existed, and then he was no longer, and all life vanished with him. I was orphaned. Kneeling in front of him, holding his hand, I realized my helplessness. I don’t know how to describe what one feels, but sorrow is a terrible, strong feeling, a kind of madness. I was lifted up by the shoulders and asked to leave; I took off Sergei’s crucifix, which the doctor and I had put on him, and I put it on myself. I kissed Sergei and could not leave him…

When I came back to his ward again, I was stopped. There was a doctor and nurses there. I stood in the corridor, as if mad, and sorrow was overflowing in me. I did not want to leave and I did not have any strength to bear it. Everything was destroyed. I am incapable without him, this is a prison sentence. The pain was hellish, I was burning in that pain.

I went with them, and he was wrapped in sheets and taken to the morgue on a trolley. I went with him to be next to him until the very end. I was following the trolley and going mad with the thought that I would be leaving him here, that I would remain alone without him and he would never be with me. Everything had turned upside down in my head. Misfortune. My legs barely carried me. Tears fogged my eyes.

The nurse opened the morgue and parked the trolley by the door. I held his hand while they bound them up. They gave me a few minutes to say goodbye to him. I kissed him, as if I were crazy, and said something to him, words which, it seemed to me, I hadn’t managed to tell him before now.

I just managed to walk out of there. I walked away from the morgue and sat down. I don’t remember very well, but the nurses lifted me, I was either howling or crying. They took me to the hospital. I went into his ward, lay on his bed. I wanted to catch a bit of his last smell. The warmth that remained. I didn’t know what to do, I had just died along with him. The only thing that remained of me was my flesh, but there was no me, just as there was no him.

I left the ward, and they said something to me. They told me how he had died. I listened. He died in his friend’s arms. He was waiting for me, looking at the clock all the time and saying: “Natasha will come at five.” I got back at ten past four, but it was too late. He had died at twenty to four. His friend had helped him get to the toilet. They had come back. Sergei had sat on the bed and his heart had stopped. The heart of this amazing person – an incomparable father, a beloved one, a darling one, the most precious person to me, just stopped. His soul achieved peace, the tormenting pain had gone. You are at peace, my joy. But this peace had killed me, torn me apart. I didn’t know how to survive it, or what had to happen so that I could breathe a little.

I was standing by the window in the corridor, and a doctor was standing nearby. I was looking at the snow, which was falling on the earth. Against the background of the yellow light from the streetlamp, the snow was somewhat heavy, rough and unpleasant. It was falling, and I was watching without a word. Silence.

“You know, it will be easier for me to live from now on, I had one guardian angel, and now there will be Sergei there with me. I will be very happy: now he will be near me and with me all the time.”