Lena reappeared after a few minutes with a stethoscope around her neck. She took her seat and waved the soldiers on.

“Let’s go, Kolenka,” she said. “The girls have started the evacuation. I just called them.”

Kolya was dressed in a tattered T-shirt and his arms were covered in tattoos. He turned the key. The engine jerked to life and quickly died. He muttered to himself and tried again. The ignition clicked a few times until the engine started and they drove away.

From the back seat, K. looked at Lena, her even nose, high forehead, and wrinkles around her eyes. She took an insulin syringe from the inner pocket of her vest and calculated the gap between potholes before jabbing herself in the leg. She replaced the syringe, patted the spot she had jabbed, and looked at K.

“We’re not far off, don’t get too comfortable.”

K. nodded.

“Not far from what?”

“We’re evacuating the psychiatric hospital.”

“Are you saying people didn’t retrieve their relatives?”

“The ones that wanted to, did. The others got left behind. I used to be head nurse there. Good hospital. Well, it was anyway.”

“You don’t really think they’d shell a hospital?”

Lena turned away with a sad smile.

They drove across the bridge, passed a checkpoint, an intersection, and turned left. Decaying village houses, the wreckage of a petrol station, burnt-out garages, a forest, and another checkpoint swished past. A soldier sitting on a concrete slab blew a kiss to Lena.

“Step on it, Kolya. They’re aiming fire at the road.”

The van accelerated into a wide intersection past a burnt truck and the huge, shrapnel-riddled letters SLOVYANSK. They turned right, twisted again, and began to ascend. A huge building surrounded by tall poplars stood out starkly against the sky at the top of the hill.

Kolya drove into the grounds and parked behind an outhouse kitchen. The Niva carrying the soldiers stopped at the gate. The view from the hill revealed the village of Semyonovka, an abandoned chemical factory to its left, and a power station in the distance to the right. The whole was woven together by invisible threads of silence. The motorway that traversed the village cut across a railroad, the river, and headed north toward Kharkiv. Smoke billowed from a spot beyond the river.

A nurse rushed out of the hospital.

“Lena!” she shouted, pointing to the kitchen. “Let’s put them there until the bus arrives. There’s a basement.”

“Have the women been taken out?”

“Yes, in the morning. Almost all of them.”

Urine-stained mattresses were hanging out to dry on the fence. The four soldiers in civvies tumbled out of the Niva with their guns.

A patient peered out from a huge hole in the wall on the second floor. He rested his hand on the lip of some collapsed masonry and teetered at the edge. K. looked at the other windows. To the left was a row of barred frames. The pale outline of faces, shaved heads and hands appeared between the bars.