Chapter 4 #3
“In name only,” he reminded her. She had decided years before to stop sleeping with him when she had an affair herself. After years of anger and bitterness, he was numb to any feelings for her.
“Well, if I’m right, I always thought you should have married a doctor.” He had no interest in a social life with her, only in their son and his own job.
“I married you, and I’m still married to you.
All we owe each other now is respect, and to not humiliate each other.
I never have, nor have you. So let’s let it go at that.
” He left her at the apartment and drove back to the hospital.
Sasha was back in her own department by then, delivering a baby for a woman who had lost her husband to the war two days before.
She cried through the whole delivery, called his name when the baby was born, and then lay with the baby in her arms, sobbing, but she smiled through her tears when she gazed at her daughter.
The subject of Iryna came up that night when Anton and Sasha met at her apartment at midnight. Her ugly little building was the only one left standing on her block, which gave it an eerie feeling, walking past all the burnt-out buildings on her way home.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with Iryna today,” he said as he sat down on the couch and poured himself a glass of wine.
Some days he drank Scotch when he’d had a particularly rough day.
Every day was rough now, and all Sasha had at her apartment was wine, for him.
She drank very little herself, except at celebrations.
But right now, they were on call all the time, and they could be pulled back to the hospital at any moment.
Anton knew the wine would have dissipated from his blood by the time he went back to the operating room if he was called in.
“Was she very angry?” Sasha asked him, tired after her day. Every day was emotionally draining now.
“No, she liked you. She thought you were perfect for me. Would you like to prove that?” he said, and leaned over and kissed her.
He forgot about Iryna then. “How can we be in this hell, with so many people dying, losing the people they love and their homes? War is insanity. I hope someone stops this before they kill half the people in Ukraine, and drive the other half into Poland.” He kissed Sasha again then, and they went to bed to make love, to try to forget the horrors they saw so many times every day.
Even Iryna faded into the mists compared to that.
But it unnerved him that the two women had met.
He’d had a shock when he saw them together.
At first he thought Iryna had had him followed and had come to the hospital to confront Sasha and raise hell.
But it wasn’t that. It was just sheer coincidence to an amazing degree.
Chance. Or kismet. And Iryna had an uncanny intuition about the women he was attracted to.
It wasn’t the first time she had guessed correctly, although he never admitted it to her.
—
The subject came up again when he went home to shower and change after spending the night with Sasha. Iryna arrived from the shelter where she had spent the night, right after he got home.
“Where did you spend the night?” she asked him.
She didn’t really care, but part of her objected to his independence, and the freedom he had with an important job while she was bored, and another part of her was indifferent to what he did.
Their anger was a habit now, and the only emotion they still shared.
“At the hospital,” he answered curtly, “with a patient.”
“I don’t believe you, but it doesn’t matter. Are you going to marry her?” she inquired.
“I’m married to you,” he said coldly.
“You don’t need to be. That could be changed.” For a price. He knew her well too.
“I’ll let you know,” he said vaguely, wondering how severe the bomb damage would be today.
Mariupol was still being battered to death.
There was fighting in two suburbs of Kyiv, Irpin and Vorzel.
Kherson, Kharkiv, and Sumy were being hammered by Russian missiles, but the Russian convoy of tanks had made no further progress advancing toward Kyiv.
Every Ukrainian in the country was determined not to let the Russians take their capital and was willing to fight to the death for it, and many had.
Despite the hardship conditions for both armies, the Ukrainian forces hadn’t given up a millimeter so far.
“You should leave Kyiv,” Anton said to her, sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of strong coffee.
He had a long day ahead. “It’s going to get worse, Iryna, a lot worse.
Neither side is giving in, they’re both going to be butchered.
The Russian military high command is furious.
We’re putting up a better fight than they expected.
They’ll punish us for it severely, city by city.
Mariupol is already almost completely destroyed.
I’d rather know you’re safely in Madrid with Danilo.
” He didn’t wish her ill, and worried about her. They just weren’t in love anymore.
“I love our son, but I want to stay in our home here as long as I can,” Iryna said sadly, still clinging to the past and the advantages of their marriage that meant nothing now in their shattered world.
“You could be killed here,” he said, “and we may not get along, but I don’t want that to happen.
He may seem grown up at twenty-five, but Danilo still needs you.
” Anton didn’t pretend to love Iryna anymore, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her.
He wanted her to be safe. No one was safe in Ukraine now.
There was nowhere on earth more dangerous to be.
“This could go on for a long time. Longer than anyone thought at first. There’s no end in sight. ”
“I’m not going to live in a student apartment with our son. He won’t like it either. He can barely sit through dinner with me, let alone live with me in close quarters.”
“I want you out of here before the buildings in our neighborhood start coming down, and they will. They are targeting military bases and residential neighborhoods all over the country, hospitals, schools, churches, anywhere there might be shelter. They’re even destroying our historic monuments.
They want us and our culture erased from the face of the earth, and they’re getting there.
At least think about it,” Anton said. But he knew she wouldn’t.
Iryna was a stubborn woman. Anton knew that about her.
He used to respect it, but now it was just a burden for both of them.
He wanted time alone with Sasha, without having to make excuses to Iryna.
And what he said to her was true. She wasn’t safe in their home, and soon she might not be able to leave at all.
He wanted her safe and their son needed her.
The Russians weren’t respecting the humanitarian corridors, and they were killing the people in them who were trying to escape, as swiftly and with as much determination as they were killing everyone else.
People were horrified. Children, old people, women, they were killing them all.
And Anton didn’t want Danilo to lose his mother.
Nor did he think it right to just let her take unreasonable risks, which were becoming more dangerous by the day.
But she still seemed determined to stay.
—
Anton proved his point three days later, after a vicious night of missiles shot into the Kyiv area.
Their apartment building exploded, burned, and collapsed, taking everything they owned with it.
He and Iryna spent half a day going through the rubble and found almost nothing still intact enough to save.
The building, the apartments, and all their contents were destroyed.
It ended the argument with Iryna. She had nowhere to stay now, except the shelters she went to at night when she was alone, which was most of the time.
Anton preferred sheltering in the basement of the hospital with his coworkers and Sasha.
Once the air raids started, he couldn’t get home to Iryna.
It was impossible to move around the city with bombs falling all night.
“I won’t argue with you,” Iryna said to him, after they went through the debris together.
The beautiful antique candlesticks in their dining room had melted.
Everything of quality and value, including valuable art, had been destroyed.
He was less attached to material things than she was, but they both cried when they saw how little was left, and they’d lost all their photographs.
What they had left barely filled one small box, hardly bigger than a shoebox. The rest was gone.
“I’ll get you a ticket,” Anton said, “from here to Poland by train, and you can get to Spain from there.”
He texted their son that morning, and said that his mother would be coming in the next day or two, and to get the apartment ready. He didn’t tell him why. Iryna could tell him in person that all the souvenirs and trophies of his boyhood were gone.
“Where will you be today?” he asked her.