Chapter 10 #2
“I just got back. I’ve been away,” she said, and didn’t get up. She was exhausted.
“Back from where?” he asked, keeping a tight grip on his automatic rifle.
He had learned not to trust anyone in three months of fighting.
She could be a sniper or a spy or a double agent.
She looked innocent and didn’t appear to be armed, but he couldn’t trust that either.
She could have a small handgun in her pocket and kill him with it. Everyone was a potential danger.
“I came back from Paris,” she said quietly, and he asked to see her papers. She got up and handed them to him, and he glanced over them, and then handed them back.
“What were you doing in Paris?” he asked, curious now. She was a pretty girl.
“Working. I’m a dancer. I lived here for most of my life, at the ballet school.
It’s gone now, or very damaged.” Then she thought of something.
“Where do I join the civilian volunteers? I want to sign up today.” The story sounded so smooth that he didn’t believe her.
She had an innocent look about her, and he didn’t know whether to trust her or not.
He had learned in the past three months to trust no one. The people who did often wound up dead.
“Why do you want to join the volunteers?” he asked, keeping a good grip on his AK-47, and a finger lightly on the trigger.
“Same reason you’re doing what you’re doing. I want to defend my country.” He nodded. They all did. The men between eighteen and sixty had been obliged to stay, and couldn’t leave the country. The women were free to do what they wanted, and many were fighting alongside the men.
He told her where she could sign up. There was a tent in Mariinsky Park.
It had been her favorite park as a child, in the heart of the city.
They used to go there on holidays with the ballet school.
It was one of the city’s oldest parks, located next to Mariinsky Palace and the Parliament.
The palace was the official residence of the president.
There was even a lover’s bridge. “You have to take two weeks of training,” the soldier told her, which she knew.
“They’ll give you a weapon, and teach you how to use it. ” He frowned as he said it.
“You don’t approve of women defending their country?”
“You can get hurt,” he said.
“So can you, but you’re still doing it.”
“Women shouldn’t be handling weapons,” he said, still frowning at her. He looked fierce.
“As long as the Russians are still shooting us, we should have the right to defend ourselves and shoot back.” He smiled at her answer.
“I guess you have a point,” he said. “I’ll walk you over there if you want, so you’ll be there in the morning.
I’m going that way anyway, and you shouldn’t be out alone at this hour.
You could get hurt.” She picked up her bag off the ground, and he walked along beside her, like a big watchdog.
He was just being careful. They walked for about half an hour.
She asked him where he was from, and he said Mariupol, which silenced her for a few minutes, thinking about the destruction there.
It was the most damaged of all the cities.
“My father says there’s nothing left. He’s staying with his sister in Kherson. They’re fighting there too.”
“I’d rather just stay in Kyiv,” she said quietly, as they reached their destination. Someone had put a bench there and some battered garden chairs.
“Just wait here, they come in early. I’m on night patrol. You’ll be okay now. I’m going back to the barracks.”
“Thank you,” she said. She realized that he had been protecting her as they walked along.
Kyiv was a dangerous city now, which it hadn’t been before.
The dangers didn’t just fall from the skies in the form of bombs.
They were on the ground too. But she was still glad she had come home.
She belonged here now. Everything about it felt right.
—
In the shelter where they had been living ever since their building had been bombed, Petro and Oxana had a small corner to themselves.
People tried to give each other privacy as much as possible, which was very limited.
It was a big room with a lot of people in it, half a dozen children, and one of the recent arrivals had a new baby.
Her apartment building had been bombed only two weeks before while she was in the hospital.
She and her husband had two other children, and they’d brought their cat with them.
Food was so scarce that it had almost run out now.
Each family living in the shelter kept their food supply to themselves.
They tried to eat as discreetly as possible.
There was almost no food left in Kyiv, or any of the other cities.
The Russians had cut off all food supplies and humanitarian aid.
No medicine had gotten through, no food, no water, none of the blankets or sleeping bags or anything sent by the relief organizations.
A Red Cross truck had been shot up only days before, and everything in it stolen by Russian soldiers before it ever got to the city.
They were just as hungry as the civilians trapped in the cities, and willing to kill for food.
The newborn cried constantly because its mother had so little milk.
Another mother with a six-month-old she was still nursing produced more milk, and she nursed the newborn after her own child, and had enough milk for both.
People did whatever they could to help each other stay alive.
And an infant was a sacred gift loved by all.
Oxana had been careful to make sure that Petro got as much of their limited food supplies as she could provide him.
She’d traded someone a blanket for the potato she’d been saving for him.
They cooked over a small fire outside the shelter.
She had no spare water to make soup. They had some rainwater saved up, so she boiled the potato and mashed it for him, and added some spices she had brought from their kitchen.
She had a small handful of lentils she had cooked for him too.
And she found a small chocolate bar in a pocket, left over from Christmas.
It wasn’t enough to keep a big man alive, but they were both hanging on.
Oxana had given him all the food the day before, and she’d bought an egg for him from a woman who had a chicken, and fried it for him for breakfast. Oxana had only eaten a small piece of stale bread the day before that she’d been saving.
Petro was distracted now and vague, and he didn’t notice what she’d been eating.
Some days she didn’t eat at all, and told him she’d eaten while she was cooking.
She was younger and stronger than he was, and she didn’t want to lose him to starvation.
His skin was a pasty color. They both slept more than before, drowsy from the lack of food.
After Oxana made Petro’s breakfast, she went back inside to their sleeping bags to lie down.
If she didn’t move much, she didn’t notice how weak she was.
They’d given up their walks two weeks before.
She couldn’t walk farther than to the corner and back.
Now she couldn’t even get that far, and Petro never left the bomb shelter.
He took a breath of air outside, and then went back inside to sleep.
He lay down next to her after he ate the egg, and held her hand.
It was ice cold. He put another blanket on her.
She was cold all the time, and so was he.
They both slept for a long time, and when he woke up, she was still asleep.
He kissed her on the cheek, and she didn’t wake up.
She was lying too still and was too pale.
He shook her gently then to make sure she was all right, and he couldn’t rouse her.
He shook her harder, and realized she wasn’t sleeping, she was unconscious.
He slapped her face gently, then harder and called her name, as tears sprang to his eyes.
He was fully awake then and focused on her.
He felt for the artery in her neck. She had a pulse, but she was dying.
He was sure of it. There was a hospital three blocks away.
He rushed outside and saw no ambulances anywhere in sight.
And then he went back in and picked her up in his arms. He was shocked by how light she was.
She felt weightless as he carried her outside.
He nearly stumbled and could hardly catch his breath, but he knew he had to get her to the hospital before she died.
If it killed him to get her there, they would die together, which was what they had always said they wanted.
But he wanted to try to bring her back and save her.
He staggered down the street carrying her, and nearly dropped her twice.
He kept a death grip on her and wouldn’t let go.
She made no sound and never regained consciousness while he carried her.
He leaned against a wall a few times to recoup his strength.
He didn’t see a soul on the street to help him.
It was a sacred mission to get Oxana to the hospital.
It took every ounce of the strength he no longer had.
He checked her pulse again whenever he stopped.
She still had a pulse but she looked like she was barely breathing, and she was paler than she had been when he left the shelter.
He was lurching crazily when he finally got to the door of the hospital.
Two orderlies were outside smoking a cigarette on their break.
They were sharing it as though it were an illicit drug.
They had bought it from someone who had been hoarding a carton since the war broke out.