5.

The train pulled into Yaroslavsky Station at six twenty in the morning. The sun was already hovering above the rooftops, but for now it gave off a tender, rosy light. The cars hadn’t started moving yet; only the sprinklers crawled in formation along the broad avenues, wrapped in rainbow clouds of water mist, turning Moscow into a watercolor.

Many things, spaces, phenomena, and events that had seemed big to Ulyana when she was a child later fit her to a T, then even shrank. But Moscow remained just as huge. Everything here was built not for one person, but for a hundred thousand, for columns and ranks of people, for a parade.

For a second, Ulyana imagined you could fly in this city—maybe something had reminded her of those dreams in which she spread her arms, pushed off the ground, and soared high above the rooftops. And there was room enough to take off here—the buildings were all gigantic, and there was open space between them.

The Metro was magical too, completely empty. Empty trains pulled into empty stations, and only young cops in dark blue uniforms wandered about in pairs, sleepy. Ulyana, not fully awake herself, rode the Circle Line, looking not at her phone but out the window. Darkness gave way to palaces, palaces to darkness.

She got to Leninsky Prospekt and looked at the city again: Moscow was gradually waking up, coming to its senses. The avenues were turning up the volume. People streamed toward the Metro, disappearing into it like water down a sink. Ulyana walked against the flow—everyone going in, and she going out, like a cockroach that had spent the night in the drain and was heading out on a raid.

Aunt Marina lived in the courtyards near Gagarin Square.

Ulyana found the right address somehow; the navigation app on her phone kept getting things mixed up, but she figured it out herself from the street names. The building was a Stalin-era apartment block, restored, scraped back to its original sandy color. But it was too early to ring Aunt Marina’s doorbell: it was barely seven in the morning, indecently early to wake them; they probably didn’t get up before eight, maybe not until half past. She was imposing on them enough as it was… So she sat on a bench by the entrance and waited.

Too bad she hadn’t managed to use the toilet on the train: by the time she came to, there was already a line of people wanting to brush their teeth; she gave up and decided to hold it, and now she was bursting, with nowhere to go. Ulyana urged the clock to hurry up, but time crawled along at half speed, just to spite her. She had to hold it, had to let the Muscovites sleep.

An orange-clad caretaker set about scraping the sidewalks, eyeing Ulyana suspiciously but saying nothing. He had slanted eyes—probably not exactly on secure footing here himself. So don’t you go sticking your nose in, okay? Things are bad enough without you.

The courtyard was luxurious, not a courtyard but a proper park: nowhere to sit.

Ulyana started studying the windows to distract herself. They were on the fifth floor, she thought. All the windows were large; some had their curtains open, revealing lamps with shades, and in one of them there seemed to be a plaster bust. Which one was Aunt Marina’s window, Ulyana wondered.

Her phone pinged. She grabbed it.

Sasha was messaging her from this number—answering all the messages she’d sent yesterday that he hadn’t replied to.

“ulka im waiting when are you coming?”

“im already in moscow,” she quickly typed back. “ill drop my stuff and come to you!!!”

“miss u,” he replied. “hurry up its dead here already.”

She thought about it—should she tease him about the surprise? Or wait until they met? Better in person, she decided. She should put on makeup, do her hair. Then spring it on him. If she sent him a teaser now, she’d be the one suffering afterward. She was afraid Sasha might get scared.

And yet, what did it mean, that he was heavy? she asked herself again.

That he was going to die anyway?

Now that she’d come to Moscow, it was more terrifying to think that Sasha might die. Ulyana had already tried on the idea of his death in Vologda, when she kept calling the Rostov morgue. But back then it would have meant he’d simply left two months ago—and that was it, disappeared forever; and now… That would have been somehow easier. Something she could somehow imagine. But now, when she’d found him, when he’d come back… They were going to meet now… And then he’d die? It would be easier not to meet, not to say goodbye, a shameful thought darted through Ulyana’s mind.

Don’t think like that. It’s cruel to think like that.

She held out until eight in the morning. Then waited three more minutes so she wouldn’t ring right at eight, so they’d have time after their alarm. Aunt Marina didn’t answer. She had to storm the entrance. She pulled the door, and there was a gatekeeper behind glass, like in a governor’s reception room.

“Where are you going?” he asked sternly.

“To 203, to the Savvins,” Ulyana gave the password.

“How should I announce you?” He seemed to have grown more polite.

“Announce me naked,” she said. “Just kidding, just kidding. Ulyana. I’m their niece. Marina Savvina’s.”

The gatekeeper called someone, muttered into the receiver, nodded importantly, and only then opened the door for Ulyana. She ran up the stairs to the elevator, then urged it to hurry upstairs, begged it to move faster, and finally rang the doorbell impatiently.

Her uncle opened the door.

Tall and thin, with light hair curling at the sides and just a wisp left on top, hollow bags beneath his eyes. Ulyana thought she sort of remembered him from that New Year’s trip to the Kremlin. The uncle she remembered from way back had been a jolly fellow. Compared to that uncle, this one had hunched, shriveled, withered, and it was as if all the joy had seeped out of him along with his vitality. But there was still something magical about him, something little Ulyana had liked, something that had even charmed her, though back then she wouldn’t have been able to quite understand or describe it. Something cinematic… Class? Nobility?

“Ulyan… Ulya?” he said. “Long time no see!”

She leaned in to hug him. He moved toward her, but not at once, as if he’d rusted badly over the years and now she had to press harder to make his stuck body respond. He hugged her too, just as stiffly. Maybe he felt awkward hugging her, such a big horse? He remembered her as a little girl, but now… These were very different hugs.

“Yes. Well, here we are… Ahem. How are your parents?”

“Listen, Uncle Maksim…” Ulyana interrupted him, no longer able to keep up the act. “I’ve been here and there… Since the station… I’m about to piss myself, honestly.”

“Huh? Oh… Of course,” he said, alarmed. “You haven’t been to this apartment before, have you? Over there… The bathroom. And I’ll give you a towel. You must want a shower after the train… Just in time for Marina to get up…”

The bathroom was marble, the showerhead gold, the ceilings more than ten feet high, the towel fluffy, the water pressure so good she didn’t want to get out. But she had to get out. She had to go to Sasha.

She crept down the hallway—the parquet creaked—one bedroom, another, the living room, with its gigantic black TV gaping like a void, an entrance to emptiness, an antique bronze chandelier, oil paintings…

“You’ve got quite a palace here!” Ulyana remarked.

“Ulyanochka!” Aunt Marina called from the kitchen. “I’m cooking up a storm… Hello!”

She was all smiles, by contrast—she hugged Ulyana and kissed her. Aunt Marina had aged too, in her own way: grown puffy and swollen, her skin papery, and her hair was no longer its own color, not the one Ulyana remembered.

“Well, look how you’ve grown! How pretty you’ve become!” Aunt Marina seemed to be admiring Ulyana, but her smile kept bobbing a little, and her eyes were winking. “Sit down, sit down! How’s your mom?”

Ulyana gave her the report on her mom: the grocery store, drunks, Colorado potato beetles, watering, weeding, rheumatism, dizzy spells, No-Spa, Citramon, Nurofen, Thai balm, and, oh, by the way—drowned people. Aunt Marina kept exclaiming, but didn’t ask about the main thing—Sasha. Uncle Maksim sat quietly, studying Ulyana, and she, darting quick sidelong glances away from his eyes, couldn’t make out what they held. Nothing sharp, nothing oily, nothing warm, nothing cold… Something restless, something searching. But what? He was cutting his plate with his knife, and the plate squealed. He’d listened, summed it up distractedly: yes, the rustic life. Then he got up. Ulyana still couldn’t tell whether he liked her or not. And she wanted him to.

“Well, I should get going, then… To the hospital,” Ulyana told them. “To Sasha.”

“To Sasha,” her uncle repeated.

But he didn’t ask her anything about Sasha. He just gave a short nod—not to Ulyana but to the kettle or perhaps the microwave—parted his lips, hesitated, and shut them again. Aunt Marina glanced at him, oddly.

“Right. I see.”

And Ulyana didn’t tell them anything about him, since they hadn’t asked, since they already knew everything anyway. And what exactly did they know? The question hung in the air. Oh well, whatever.

“Do you have any candy?” she asked. “I’m dying for some.”

“Oh. We’re just trying not to eat sweets,” Aunt Marina said. “Well, I’ll buy some for tonight.”

“Let’s hope I live to see tonight,” Ulyana joked.

The easiest way to get to Sasha’s hospital was to take the Metro to Yugo-Zapadnaya station, then catch a bus from there out to the region, to Odintsovo. A motley assortment of people had gathered at the stop: some ageless woman in a sweater, a bearded, gloomy man in a green fleece, a student with a little backpack, an emo girl in a miniskirt, a young mother with a folding stroller and a kid with a pacifier, a disheveled pensioner. They were all staring at their phones out of boredom, while Ulyana looked at them. Muscovites were special only in the center, as if they’d arrived from a supernova; on the outskirts they were just people, exactly like in Vologda. Having reached that conclusion, Moscow seemed closer, easier to understand, and she felt less resentful about home.

The bus that arrived was stubby, minibus-style—the exact size needed to pick up this whole mixed bunch. Some non-Russian guy was behind the wheel, but he seemed all right, and he tried to speak so you couldn’t hear an accent. Though even without an accent, everything was written all over his face.

They settled into their seats, and the bus rolled through Moscow’s empty outskirts. Ulyana was getting ready to see him: thinking about Sasha. She looked at their photos. Called up her memories—his smile, the kisses, how at half past four in the morning, after the second time, standing there without his underwear in front of the open fridge in her kitchen, he’d suddenly asked how she felt about getting married, in principle; and how afterward he’d pretended none of it had happened, and how he’d tucked his tail between his legs, and how he’d given her store-bought flowers, her first flowers in three years. She had to remember him before they met, massage that part of her soul, because it had gone stiff and numb. It worked: fiery ants began to crawl, the blood came back. Her eyes stung, her nose clogged up.

Some program rattled away in the background: the man in the green fleece was staring at his clamshell phone, blaring at full volume. Was he deaf or something? It was loud enough for all the passengers.

“And I insist that a person who posts a video on social media showing an enemy drone striking our military airfield, where, incidentally, our strategic aviation is stationed, is not just an idiot, he’s a traitor, and he should be dealt with according to the laws of wartime! People like that should be shot, that’s what! And I don’t care if he’s a conscript, I don’t care how old he is, don’t try to make me feel sorry for him! He’s serving in the army, he’s supposed to defend our country, our motherland from the enemy, and the only reason he’s not on the front line is that our state decided the combat zone should be occupied not by raw conscripts but by trained, skilled professionals, but he’s still fighting, because he’s defending our deep rear! And what do we see?! Not only is he failing to carry out his military duty, he’s also mocking his comrades, mocking our setback! What’s more, by posting that video online, where he’s also making a mockery of it—and he is mocking us, his own people—he’s revealing the results of the sabotage to the enemy! And encouraging them to carry out new terrorist attacks! Maybe this enemy sabotage was possible only because of this kind of sabotage, by this guy or someone like him! And let our security services, our military prosecutor’s office find out whether this espionage was paid for by the enemy! Don’t you understand what this means?”

The bus passed ugly old buildings and beautiful new ones, kiosks selling all sorts of things, and the mass-produced concrete fences that divide up the whole country.

“It means that this strategic bomber, which, incidentally, clears the way for our infantry, won’t take off, won’t bomb enemy fortified positions or their arms factories, and our fighters will have to assault Ukrainian machine guns, their drones, that they’ll risk their lives for nothing and someone will definitely—definitely!—die because of this so-called ‘idiot’ of yours! No, I’ll repeat, he’s not an idiot, he’s a saboteur, he’s a traitor, and the blood of our boys will be on his hands—what am I saying, it’s probably already there!—the boys working on the front line, the ones taking enemy fire so that your idiot can lounge around in the deep rear and make his stupid videos!”

The man in the green fleece hunched over his rattling phone, listening intently, but every so often he’d break away and dart his slightly wild eyes around, as if checking whether the others were interested too. They weren’t. The student sat with glassy eyes, looking at his phone. As soon as the emo girl had paid her fare, she’d put her headphones over her ears and tuned out. The uncombed old man swayed with the turns, his face expressionless. The woman in the sweater shifted around, frowning.

Ulyana listened with half an ear, thinking about Sasha; only when they mentioned assault units did she tune in, then she drifted off again. The radio could be screaming all it wanted, but it wasn’t saying anything new, so to Ulyana it was just the sound of the engine, the sound of surf.

“Yes, unfortunately, our country still has no capital punishment—or rather, a moratorium on it was introduced by liberals who infiltrated the government, and who, as I’ve always believed and still believe, are themselves just as much the enemy’s accomplices. And if we could once afford to be so soft, in the fourth year of the war, when all our resources are stretched to the limit, we simply have no right to go easy on traitors, on this fifth column—well, anyway, even if we don’t have capital punishment, what’s stopping us from grabbing your idiot by the scruff of the neck and sending him to join those boys who are storming the enemy positions right now, so he can atone for his crime with his blood, stand shoulder to shoulder with the people he betrayed, and answer to them! You know how Vysotsky sang: ‘Let him be linked with you, then you’ll understand what he’s like…’ In any case, it’s high time we repealed that moratorium, because these are difficult times, and I think nobody here would disagree that difficult times call for difficult measures! What we really need is SMERSH to fight saboteurs like this; we need emergency measures, Stalinist ones! If our hands were untied, we’d have won this campaign three years ago! But no…”

Then the student dialed someone and started talking, drowning out the bearded man’s phone, so the bearded man got angry and turned his volume up even more. Then the woman in the sweater cut in and asked:

“Mister, how much longer? You’re not the only one on this bus. We’re sick to death of all this already, honestly!”

The bearded man immediately turned his whole body toward her.

“And so what?”

“Aren’t you sick of all this yourself?”

“Sick of what ‘all this’?”

“You know, ‘what’!” the woman shot back. “All this! It’s already the fourth year, how much longer can this go on? And anyway!”

The bearded man clenched his fists against his chest, cracked his knuckles, and gave her a nasty, crooked smile.

“Me? I’ll tell you… Hey!” He got up, reached toward the driver, and gave him a heavy slap on the shoulder. “We’re about to pass a traffic police checkpoint up there, before the Ring Road—stop there. The lady and I will get out. She can tell them at the station what she’s sick of.”

“What, seriously?” the driver asked, taken aback.

Ulyana looked at the woman who had spoken up. Her face was worried, sympathetic, and tired. Come to think of it, she was a woman, not an old broad, if you looked closely.

“Seriously!”

“I’m not getting off anywhere!” the woman said uncertainly. “I’m going to the terminus!”

“She says she doesn’t want to, brother,” the driver relayed to the bearded man.

“Well, this is how it’s going to be!” He got up from his seat, his neck pressed against the ceiling, hunched over, which made him look even angrier. “Stop the bus. Am I making myself clear? Or do you want to get out with her too?”

“What gives you the right?!” the woman protested.

The emo girl took her headphones off for a second or two—apparently the bearded man’s growling was intruding on her music—listened to what was going on, put them back on, and turned away. The student just burrowed deeper into his phone, his head sinking into his shoulders. The mother concentrated on stroking her grumpy child’s head, adjusting his pacifier. The old man remained as oblivious as ever.

“Maybe I’m a volunteer patrolman, that’s what gives me the right!” the man rasped furiously. “You’re going to interrogate me about my rights now? I go past the front line to our boys, I take them humanitarian aid, I risk my neck, while you’re sitting here looking for someone to sell your ass to, and now you’re going to challenge my right to do this? Stop the bus, hear me?”

The woman looked around helplessly and pitifully, searching for someone she could lean on, someone she could at least hold on to, while the driver, already frightened, steered toward the traffic police checkpoint.

“And I’d like to remind our esteemed listeners that we’re raising funds to support our fighters on the front line, collecting for body armor, first and foremost for assault units currently engaged in combat operations in Toretsk…” The clamshell phone boomed on in the quiet cabin. “You may think it’s somewhere far away, that it has nothing to do with you, but incidentally, it’s only fourteen hours by car from Moscow to Toretsk, and today our boys are fighting there so that all this evil they’re facing won’t reach our cities. Fourteen hours, think about that! We need to raise just over one and a half million rubles to complete this shipment, and tomorrow it’ll be ready to go past the front line…”

And the woman caught Ulyana’s eye, and Ulyana recognized in it that very recent premonition of inevitable, irreversible disaster—the one only Sasha’s unyielding righteousness had saved her from.

But now righteousness radiated from this ferocious man like heat from a blast furnace. Ulyana might still have risked throwing herself into the fire for her own sake, but she wasn’t ready to do it for this woman. She had to get to Sasha; she couldn’t waste herself on anything else. To tamp down her human doubts and keep from standing up for the woman, Ulyana silently reminded herself how she’d been sickened “by all of it”—and “all of it” meant all those guys who went up against Ukrainian machine guns without strategic bombers covering them, guys just like her Sasha; which meant she was sickened by Sasha himself, too. Right? Right. A lump rose in her throat. And then Ulyana felt that the heat coming from the man, from the furnace, was no longer burning her. Now it was warming her. All she had to do was take offense along with him and not let pity for some stranger woman make her lose that sense of outrage.

Ulyana broke eye contact with the woman and turned toward the window. The bus stopped. The woman tried to linger inside, but it was all weak, feeble fussing now; the bearded man confidently took her by the elbow and pushed her out, toward the bewildered cops.

“What is this… My bag, my bag!” she shrieked.

Then the old man came to and handed her the shopping bag the woman hadn’t managed to take. So he’d heard and understood everything after all; he’d only been pretending to stare into space. The driver waited for the bearded man’s signal. The door slid along its metal runners, cutting off the sounds like a knife. Ulyana happened to glance back over her shoulder at the woman—she was worried about what they might do to her now, after all, and for some reason she felt ashamed, too. And then, so she wouldn’t stumble over all this unpleasant confusion, wouldn’t get stuck in it, she said to herself—aloud, so she could hear it once more in her own voice:

“He was wounded over there… And she’s sickened by it…”

And she started looking ahead. Everyone else looked ahead, too, or at their phones; no one turned around anymore, and just in case, they stopped looking one another in the eye as well. What was there to look at?

Meanwhile, the bus rolled on—past the concrete bows of the overpass interchanges, past the tattered forests outside Moscow—toward the city of Odintsovo, all clean, stern, and smartly turned out, like the dress uniform of a major in some crack combat unit.

She got off at the Hospital stop. A gray fence stretched right and left as far as the eye could see, and beyond it, in the distance, rose gray hospital buildings. Ulyana got her bearings and found the entrance checkpoint. She explained where she wanted to go and whom she wanted to see.

“Who are you to him?” asked the security guard, already worn out this early in the morning.

“His fiancée.”

“So you’re not family yet? As of right now.”

“His fiancée, okay? We’re going to get married. I came to propose to him,” Ulyana said with a smile, the way she always smiled at security guards.

“If it’s not in your passport, you’re not allowed,” he snapped.

“But how am I supposed to marry him if you won’t let me in?”

The security guard looked at her as if she were mentally deficient. The rules of life here were as simple and immutable to him as the times table.

“Miss. Have him write a request to the chief doctor, with your full name on it. This is a restricted facility, understand? What if you’re a Ukrainian saboteur?”

“Me?”

“It’s the times we live in. Anyone could be. They manipulate people over the phone any way they want. They derail trains, do all sorts of things. Go on, write it.”

Ulyana spat. She almost told him to go fuck himself, but held back; she started calling Sasha—and thank God—he picked up.

“Sasha? Sashenka! I’m here at the checkpoint. They won’t let me in, they need a request to process it. Yeah. Tsareva Ulyana Konstantinovna, in case you need it. How are you? Yeah. Can you ask? I’ll wait here.”

But the hospital’s gears turned slowly. They were much too huge, much too heavy for one person to set in motion. While they were turning… Ulyana had already walked herself all over the place, sat everywhere, found the little grocery shop, bought herself a hot sausage roll—for a hundred and fifty rubles, mind you, twice what it cost in Vologda!—wolfed it down, and then let herself have another one, even though it killed her to spend the money.

She sat on a bench in a dark patch beneath a poplar, fluff flying into her eyes like a blizzard, killing time on her phone. She opened Avito and started looking at apartments in Vologda. For four million three hundred thousand, there was, for example, a one-bedroom, thirty-seven square meters, on Arkhangelskaya Street, with modern renovations, a glazed-in balcony, stretch ceilings throughout, a white kitchen with engineered stone, all the appliances already in place, a not-too-shabby view of the courtyard—it looked more or less like a new-build—a steam shower with a little seat, and a nice steel front door… Definitely better than the places Ulyana had scraped by in all her life, and almost in the center, too: down Marshala Koneva, then it turned into Herzen Street, and Mira Street was just a stone’s throw away.

And here was another one, right on Marshala Koneva, forty-five whole square meters, wow, and only three and a half million. “Move-in ready!” the listing said, but honestly, the renovation was so-so, old-lady style, as Kristinka would say. But damn, forty-five square meters were still forty-five square meters. Two rooms; they could make the living room look decent, find a proper couch, paint the walls white, say, and make the place cozy somehow: hang a stylish black-and-white photo in a frame here, put a plush kitty there, shelves over there, toss some fashionable magazines around, and the whole place would feel completely different. And Koneva meant it was close to real life, too.

Oh, and for four million seven hundred, this one was totally gorgeous, with whitewashed walls and European-style renovations, on Karl Marx Street in Fryazinovo, fifty-one square meters. Practically by the river; if it was on the top floor and the windows faced the right way, you could even see the golden domes of St. Nicholas Church. Here she could definitely get a decent life going. It wasn’t some temporary dump; there’d be room for Mom to stay over, she could have the girls around for a bachelorette party, and it wouldn’t feel cramped if she had a family, either.

Unsnapped photos from the future flashed before Ulyana’s eyes: Alinka and Kris came over, they ate sushi they’d had delivered, drank wine, chatted—and then went clubbing all night; Mom rustled something up in the kitchen, cozy as could be; Ulyana sprawled on the couch watching The White Lotus, because The Magnificent Century didn’t suit an apartment like this anymore—she’d have to get into something more sophisticated, something she’d heard of but had been too lazy to look into… And of course she wouldn’t be watching alone, but cuddled up with someone, crunching chips in time with him, laughing in unison. With whom? With Sasha, obviously—with Sasha!

She pulled away from the apartments.

She should go buy him some candy, actually. She got up from the bench, went back to the grocery shop, and picked out an assortment: Mishka na Severe, chocolate bars, Belochka—Sasha had a sweet tooth… She filled a bag and, while she was waiting, ate half of it herself. Then it suddenly occurred to her: it wasn’t she who wanted sweets, it was him, the baby. The baby was half Sasha, after all, so it had inherited his sweet tooth.

She rested a hand on her belly and listened. Of course, nothing was stirring in there yet.

And suddenly she truly wanted to see Sasha, to share this discovery with him. But she still had to wait—for someone to get the message, read it, think it over, make a decision, approve it. There were as many Sashas in here as bullets in a machine-gun belt; it would be a while before her turn came around.

But eventually it did.

The hospital was endless: buildings upon buildings, corridors upon corridors, wards upon wards. And it was full of strange people. Ulyana had seen something like this as a child, when the boys from next door poured gasoline on an anthill and set it on fire—and the stunned, burnt ants who happened to survive and had no idea what to do now were somehow like the patients here.

On the floor, they told her to go to the doctors’ room first and speak to the attending physician while he was still around. The doctor was a young guy with a schoolboy’s face; he kept trying to frown to look more experienced, but sometimes he forgot, and then his utter bewilderment came spilling out, like someone faced with material they hadn’t studied for an exam.

“So… Well, he asked me not to spoil anything, so to speak…” he said. “But there are some things you should know. The patient’s condition isn’t great, actually. Yeah. It’s… He’s had one difficult operation. Another one’s still ahead. An even more difficult one. So right now he’s on medication… Morphine. Which means he’s not entirely… with it. Just keep that in mind, okay?”

“Okay,” Ulyana replied.

Everything would be all right. Everything would be all right.

“And you should bear in mind… While we’re here and there… Visiting hours are already over for today, so I’m making an exception for you.”

He paused and waited for the information to sink in. Ulyana usually didn’t need things like this explained twice. She wasn’t born yesterday; she knew what exceptions cost in this life. But she had thirty-four thousand rubles left on her card, and she needed to spend them wisely.

“I don’t have anything. I spent it all on candy, honestly,” Ulyana said. “I could give you a piece, though.”

“All right,” the attending physician sighed.

He took a chocolate bar.

He led Ulyana down the corridor toward Sasha. The whole corridor stared at her—all those people in blue hospital gowns. Some eyed her hungrily, some peeked shyly, some stared straight at her from under their brows. Men. She was wearing a short skirt, her heels clicking; she’d dressed to make Sasha want to live. To live and get married.

“Lazarenko! You’ve got company!” the doctor announced.

Ulyana went in after him. She stepped inside and saw everything at once: Sasha had no legs.

She grabbed the doorframe.

Sasha was lying there, covered by a sheet—and the sheet sank down. One leg was gone up to the knee, the other almost at the hip. Ulyana saw that first, and only then Sasha’s face: bloodless, gaunt, with black bags beneath his eyes. Bandages covered his forehead, like the strips of paper they put on the dead in their coffins.

He was smiling beatifically.

“Sasha… God…”

Horror felt around inside Ulyana; pity rose up, a sharp nausea climbed into her throat, and she swayed and swayed. She tried to smile back at him, but knew it came out crooked. Her eyes burned, her cheekbones clenched. It took her more than a second to make herself go closer. But Sasha didn’t notice her hesitation; he was simply so happy to see her. Truly happy.

He grabbed the hanging handle suspended above the bed, wanting to pull himself a little higher. He held on, then let go. At last Ulyana pushed herself toward him, walked over on wooden legs, as if she were the one wearing prostheses, sank to her knees beside the bed, hugged him, and pressed her lips to his.

There were other people there, too—two guys with limbs chopped off, one with an empty sleeve, the other with a bandage over his eye, like a pirate. They chuckled and said something indistinct to each other. Ulyana didn’t know what, because just then the blood was pounding in her ears; everything came through cotton wool, and she could barely hear anything but Sasha. They whispered together and left.

His lips were soft and barely alive, as if they’d given him a numbing shot at the dentist’s. They flapped weakly; he couldn’t quite kiss or form words. And he smiled strangely with them.

“Ulka… Ulyash… I asked them not to tell you. So you wouldn’t get scared… I thought… Maybe you wouldn’t come if you found out.”

“Oh, how… What are you…?” she stammered. “How could I not come?”

Now the tears came—they dragged a hot wire through her eyes and forced them open. And she asked herself: honestly, if she’d known beforehand, would she have come? Of course she would. Of course she’d have come, what a stupid question! She’d have come, absolutely!

“What does it matter…” Ulyana managed to say. “Well, it is what it is. So this is how things are going to be now… Oh!” She sobbed and held up the bag of candy. “Look what I brought. I got those ones you like.”

He pulled another hand out from under the sheet, all cut up, and started taking a candy from her hand—as children in a claw machine try to grab a toy with the feeble, dangling claw.

“How did this happen to you…?” Ulyana asked.

“I don’t know, honestly… I don’t remember. A concussion, you know? They say there was an incoming strike. I remember when we left to go there… On that little moped. And then… After that, I don’t know. The doctor says I’ll remember later. I remembered your phone number, didn’t I?”

“Thank God. Thank God.”

She kissed him again and again. He kept smiling. She stroked his cheek; it was as if he couldn’t feel her touch. Someone coughed behind her, and she turned around. His roommates had come back in after all; they were peeking at them. They even giggled.

And they knocked her off that warm, tender wave.

She sobered up.

She still seemed to be looking Sasha in the eyes, but really she was already looking inside herself. He was disabled. That was it; it was forever. He was disabled. How could she marry him? What kind of life was that, with a disabled man? Getting him out of bed and into a wheelchair every morning, and out of the wheelchair and into bed every night. And what would his days be like? And hers—Ulyana’s, she was only thirty, after all—what would her days be like with a disabled man? And their nights…

Everything sank. Even her smile must have slipped away.

“What is it? Don’t be sad,” Sasha said.

“I’m not… I’m not sad, what are you talking about! We thought you were dead… This is a miracle,” she replied.

“Visiting hours are over!” a woman’s voice said behind her, as soulless as the voice at a government service center or a train conductor’s.

A nurse was standing there. Ulyana nodded.

“Yes, yes… Just a second!” Ulyana promised. “Just one more minute!”

She begged for that minute, and the nurse stepped away. She had to tell him why she’d come, but her jaw was clenched shut. Sasha lay there smiling at her dreamily, as though Ulyana had simply appeared to him in a vision, as though she weren’t really here and he didn’t want to scare her off, make her disappear. Would he even understand?

Ulyana leaned over him so the morons in the doorway wouldn’t hear. And whispered:

“Sashk… I, um… I’m pregnant…”

Sasha leaned his head back a little, probably so Ulyana wouldn’t blur in front of him, and looked at her, completely dumbfounded and disbelieving.

“What?”

“Can you believe it… There’s going to be a little someone… of ours…” She sniffed.

“Really?” he whispered back, drowsily.

“You’re happy, Sasha? You are happy, right?” she asked anxiously.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“How should I know, Sasha? It’s no more than three months along…”

“I think it’s a boy. Probably a boy…”

The nurse appeared again and shoved the gawkers out of the way.

“Well, have you finished cooing? That’s enough, time to go. We’re kicking out the last visitors!”

“Oh, give it a minute…” Sasha frowned. “Something’s happening here… Please? Is it so much to ask?”

“I’m giving you one last minute,” the nurse relented. “One minute, then that’s it, kaput. In a minute I’m coming back with a shot so you’ll get a proper night’s sleep. Clear?”

“Clear!” Ulyana promised. “One minute, okay!”

She groped for Sasha’s hand, gathering her nerve. She wanted Sasha to squeeze her palm in his, wanted to feel at least a little strength in him. To believe their wedding could really happen. That they could live together afterward.

“Sash…” she managed. “Sasha! I know this probably isn’t the time… But… Sasha, let’s get married, okay?”

He stared at her, eyes round, pupils wide as bullet holes; he smiled helplessly.

“Get married?”

Ulyana nodded. How could she explain it more clearly?

“Let’s register it. So the baby has a father on paper. I mean… So it’s all legal. Mom, Dad. So the baby’s born in wedlock, you understand? Let’s?”

She was afraid: had she really put it like that? Or not? Had Sasha understood that she was taking his death into account, too?

“Let’s,” he agreed, and seemed happy about it.

That warmth washed over her again: the thought of a baby who’d just been given permission to be born, and Sasha’s vague happiness. The brief shadow that had fallen over her—that she was a bitch for bringing up the possibility of his death—passed.

“Wait…” He suddenly frowned. “How am I supposed to get married without legs? How am I going to raise him without legs?”

He said it stupidly, bewildered, and blinked. Any second now, he’d figure it out; any second now, he’d wake up to it; any second now, he’d burst into tears. She had to save him—and herself, too.

“That’s no problem these days!” Ulyana rattled on. “They’ll make you prosthetic legs. You know how great the modern ones are now? You can walk, you can dance! I saw it on the news myself!”

“And how am I supposed to feed you all without legs?” Sasha wouldn’t let it go.

“Well, the state will help,” Ulyana said. “They help everyone now.”

Sasha thought it over. Someone in the doorway either spat or snorted. Lightning flashed and struck her: What are you doing! What! But once again, only for an instant.

“Well, all right then,” he said, nodding his chin as if reassured. “Then let’s get married. That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

The nurse appeared again, holding a shiny metal tray with syringes loaded and ready.

“That’s it!” she said menacingly. “Now that’s really it!”

“I’m getting married,” Sasha informed the nurse, pointing at Ulyana. “To her.”

“Oh, wow. Congratulations. And when’s the wedding, I wonder?”

“You can register marriages on an expedited basis here, right?” Ulyana remembered. “For participants in the special military operation? I read about it online.”

“That’s up to the chief doctor. That’ll have to be tomorrow now.”

“Then I’ll come first thing tomorrow morning!” Ulyana kissed the smiling Sasha again. “First thing, okay? Sleep tight, get some rest!”

The corridors tightened around her and pressed in; the smell of bleach made her nauseous, and the soldiers’ glances shot into her back so fiercely they burned her skin. She barely made it to the exit, rushed outside, and collapsed onto a bench. She took out the vape she hadn’t touched for three days and breathed into it as if it were an oxygen mask.

Why? What have you done? Even tobacco wouldn’t clear her head. Why, what have you done. Dusk was already creeping over the hospital, over Ulyana, and she sat there, drawing in sweet air. Why and what.

Just then, a one-legged guy came hopping past on crutches. He spotted Ulyana, hopped over to her, and called out.

“Hey, gorgeous! You got any decent smokes? Not this electronic crap?”

Ulyana lifted her heavy head, looked at the third of his leg outlined by the sewn-up trouser leg, and knew she was about to throw up.

“What are you, concussed or something?” the one-legged man asked her.

“Why the fuck are you bothering me, huh?!” Ulyana shouted at him. “Fuck off, got it?!”