I’ve had enough of hospitals. I am tired of the persistent indifference of the doctor’s hands wielding syringes, the mournful sighs of relatives, the despondency of patients in tracksuits. Their knees rub against those of the people sitting across from them. They await a life-extending conveyor belt. In all this absurdity, what is most lacking is the warmth of simple human contact. I force myself to look, visit each floor, look into faces, and then go up to the sixth floor. There’s a huge glass dome through which students observe the operating theatre. I stand looking through the glass as surgeons work on children and adults. In a hospital, we are no longer divine creatures, but mere broken watches. Little clocks with cuckoos in our chests. Sometimes you can be fixed, sometimes you can’t. You know, Mari, it’s not so easy to die on the operating table, unless it’s from uncontrolled bleeding under the knife of an unlucky surgeon; modern medicine rarely allows otherwise. Machines for artificial respiration and blood circulation will keep you alive as long as needed. Death is most often the decision of the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit, the anaesthesiologist, the head of the ward. I won’t say it’s murder. It’s simply the decision of strangers, strangers with their own lives and children and family troubles. They’re the ones that answer for whether your fight for life should stop or continue. They write the date and time of death in black marker pen on your cold thigh.

A medical committee sits in a row of chairs like jurors. I’m waiting for the verdict.

(text breaks off)

Ukraine had by then adopted its decommunisation laws, so Pravda Avenue was renamed Independence Avenue. Maria stood and looked at the new blue plate. It blurred before her tired eyes. What she had feared had come to pass. Saturday became Sunday, which then turned into Monday. The days bled into one another. The weather worsened. She refused to go to callouts and waited instead for another couple of addresses, so she could collect all the bodies in one go. That way she had time to visit Fryderyk’s house.

Pravda Avenue. Truth. Just like him to live on a street with a name like that. Show-off.

The loud caw of a crow on a branch outside the block of flats shook her out of her trance.

Maria shook her head. The street came back into focus. Bloody insomnia. Impossible to think.

The entrance to Fryderyk’s flat was tightly shut. The doorbell didn’t work. The smoked-up artists had severed the wires with scissors the year before, to prevent the neighbours from interfering with their parties. Still no answer on the phone.

She sat on the bench downstairs and rang the main number for the Romodanov Institute.

“I understand perfectly well,” the woman replied, “but we’re not an information service.”

“What ward is he in? Just put me through to his ward.”

“I am not at liberty to divulge any information.”