Chapter 12
For the next two weeks, during alleged peace talks that went nowhere, the enemy stepped up the bombing to an intolerable degree.
The cities that had been cut off from all supplies were choked even further.
Hundreds of people died of starvation. The bombing was relentless, the air raid sirens sounding day and night.
It felt like a descent into a hell no one could have imagined.
Every major city lay in ruins. Nearly seven million people had fled the country.
Twelve million were displaced and homeless and in need of assistance.
The human suffering rose to a level no one had ever seen.
Tatyanna had asked for a change of duty.
She knew she would feel guilty forever for the two men she had killed.
Her arm was healing from the bullet wound, but she knew that her conscience never would.
Even wartime didn’t seem like an adequate excuse to kill a human being, even to avenge Yana and Vlad.
They were still dead whether avenged or not.
The army transferred her to the unit that cleared away the debris of fallen buildings, using enormous dump trucks and cranes to move the rubble.
Tons of debris were removed and occasionally human remains turned up.
It was ugly work but she preferred it to murder, no matter how efficient she had proven to be with a weapon.
She had to protect her sanity and her soul.
She had discovered that she was not a killer and that revenge was not sweet.
—
There had been air raids all night long.
Sasha was so used to them now that they frightened her less than before.
She expected them. They were part of the daily insanity of her life, bombs falling and buildings collapsing and people dying.
And somewhere in between, babies were being born.
It felt like it would go on forever. There was no end in sight.
The war which most people thought would end quickly was showing signs of stretching far into the future, and no one could guess for how long.
She got called to do a delivery at eight o’clock one morning after two more weeks of hell, the worst two weeks of the war.
The enemy had unleashed everything they had on them, in a final enormous push to see if that would do it and the Ukrainians would surrender, but they didn’t.
The war got worse, and more people died, but it did not end.
—
The delivery went smoothly, without event, and a tiny baby girl came into the world with a delicate wail.
The baby made little snuffling sounds as they put her on her mother’s chest, and she looked up at her mother with wonder.
And as she did, Sasha realized that it was quiet outside.
No sounds of ambulances or sirens. The others noticed it too and wondered how long it would last. Was it a truce or an accident?
No one knew. The silence was eerie after four months of the deafening sounds of war.
“The quiet before the storm,” a nurse said, “or they wore themselves out last night.” There had been more bombings than ever.
It was still quiet when they all finished and the mother was taken to a room, and the baby went to the nursery to be cleaned up.
There was still silence outside. Sasha was walking past the nurses’ desk when suddenly there were multiple explosions coming from all directions, and the sounds of hell began again.
It was all too familiar now. For a moment there had been a hope that it was over, and instead it was worse than ever.
And their hope for peace was dashed again.
Nothing had changed and peace seemed an unattainable dream.
The country lay in ruins in one of the worst wars the civilized world had ever seen.
War crimes had been committed and human suffering had been limitless.
Half a dozen cities had been destroyed, wiped off the map.
Countless thousands had died, millions were homeless, and millions had fled.
And for what? It would take decades to repair the damage and several lifetimes and generations to forget it, when peace would finally be achieved.
And the longer it went on the greater the damage, to the country and to people’s morale.
How much more could they tolerate? Sasha could barely remember what peacetime felt like, when people weren’t dying all around her.
Anton came to find her and they left the maternity ward together.
“Did you hear the silence?” she asked. “For a minute, I thought it was over,” she said sadly. They could hear the missile strikes in the distance as she said it. And he nodded.
“I’m afraid it won’t be over for a long time,” he said.
“We just have to keep going until it is.” No one knew when that would be.
A time when the suffering would be over and no more children would lose their fathers and mothers and brothers, and die themselves, a time when the hemorrhaging of human lives would end.
Somehow, they had to keep hope alive until that day came.
—
Yulya had been haunted lately by an idea that kept gnawing at her.
It kept her awake at night. She wanted to find a job, to move forward instead of mourning the past, but she realized that she couldn’t until she knew what had happened to Symon.
In her heart, she believed he was still alive.
She didn’t know if it was her wish or some premonition.
It seemed reasonable to believe that he was dead, but she couldn’t accept it until they found his remains, or someone who had seen him die.
And neither was the case. She realized that she needed to go back to Kyiv and try to find out for herself.
She told Olek that night after dinner, and he said everything he could to convince her not to, but he couldn’t change her mind.
She knew for certain that she would never rest until she was sure, and she couldn’t do it long distance.
She had to go there herself. She couldn’t let go of Symon and bury him in her mind until she was certain he was dead.
“You can’t go,” Olek insisted. “It’s too dangerous, it’s crazy. The war is getting worse, not better. Your children need you. You can’t risk it.”
“I have to go.” Nothing could sway her now.
It was a sacred mission to her, before she could give up hope.
“I have to find out what happened to my husband. I want to go now, and finally find out what did happen, if anyone knows. And I want to know how our parents are, and see for myself. We have to get them a place to live, or bring them here. We can’t leave them there if the war doesn’t end soon. ” That had been troubling her too.
“If they’ll come. Don’t forget who they are.
If they wouldn’t come here to escape the war when it started, I’m not so sure they’ll come now.
It would be easier for us to have them here, but it’s not what they want.
They love their country, their city. They’d rather live in a shelter in Kyiv than here with us.
And let’s face it, they love each other a hell of a lot more than they love either of us.
That was always the case, even when we were kids.
” It was something neither of them had ever said before, and Yulya knew it was true.
But most of all, she wanted to try to find Symon, or at least know what had happened to him.
Then she had to figure out her own life.
She’d been holding her breath for two months, trying to keep hope alive, praying he wasn’t dead.
And she felt responsible for her parents too, and wanted to see them for herself.
“The country is a shambles.” She knew that Olek was right about it, but her need to see her parents, and find out about Symon, was stronger than her brother’s words.
“I’ll leave the kids with you, see what I can find out about Symon, and check on our parents. I won’t stay long, but I have to go. I can get in and out, others have done it. If things get worse or they close the borders, I won’t be able to go. The war isn’t ending and it could go on for years.”
Olek could see that he had lost the argument. Nothing was going to stop Yulya now, no matter how great the risk to her.
“There are probably refugee organizations who could check on our parents without your being there,” he said sensibly.
“Olek, they won’t look for Symon the way I would.
He’s my husband. I love him. I want to know if I’m a widow or a wife.
I have to know. I still feel married to him and I always will.
” In Olek’s mind, Symon had been dead for two months.
Case closed. But it wasn’t closed for Yulya, and she needed closure if he was dead.
She needed to know the truth, and to be sure before she gave up hope.
“Go, if you need to,” he finally conceded. “I can’t imagine what the place is like now. It will be a trip to hell.” The country would never be the same again. Nor would the people who had lived in it and survived.
“Not knowing what happened to him is hell too.” The entire world had watched the war in horror for four months, and now Yulya wanted to go back and see it for herself. She felt she owed it to her parents, her husband, and herself.
—
Yulya thought she knew what she was facing, going back to Kyiv.