The woman’s two head wounds were bleeding profusely.

“She’s been here for ages, damn it. Her pressure is dropping. We have to get it back up again.”

Anton retrieved dexamethasone from his case. K. scrutinised the ampoule.

He gave it back.

“No, this won’t do.”

“Why not?”

“Not if she has a head injury.”

Anton threw up his hands in frustration. K. concentrated.

“Let’s try caffeine. We must have caffeine somewhere.”

Anton found an ampoule of caffeine and primed a syringe.

The boy appeared at the door again and gingerly entered the flat sideways, like a crab. He had a cup of water in his hand.

“Come on, come on,” said K.

“I can’t find a vein.”

“Sir, how can I help?”

The boy came closer. K. tried to position himself so the boy couldn’t see the blood, but he walked around and looked anyway, still with the cup in his hand.

“Should I pour the water?”

K. examined the woman’s arms and legs—no visible veins.

“What are we going to do?”

“Let’s try a hyoid muscle.”

“You what?” Anton goggled at him. “Have you ever done this before?”

“No. Keep her mouth steady and push her tongue to the side.”

Anton held the woman’s jaw fast and turned her head towards the light. K. took hold of the syringe and injected a spot under her tongue. The boy gawped at K.’s hands and the syringe’s long needle.

“Wrap the bandages tighter, her pressure will intensify, there’s going to be more bleeding.”

K. jumped up, leaned out of the hole in the wall and yelled: “Kolya! Bring a stretcher up to the fourth floor, fast!”

The woman’s cheeks pinkened and her veins became visible. K. applied a catheter.

“When we’re done with the catheter, we’ll take her down to the ambulance and put her on Polyglucin or a saline solution, whatever we’ve got there. Do we have Polyglucin?”

“Poly-what? We’ve got Polivenol.”

Nikolai stomped into the flat with the stretcher, which he tossed to the ground.

And one-two-three—they hauled the woman onto the stretcher and carried her out.

Her face was pale. Her eyes flickered open, they were blue. She had a high-heeled shoe on one foot and nothing on the other.

They carried down the stretcher headfirst. At the ambulance, K. looked back and caught a glimpse of the entrance to the flats. The metal front door was peppered with shrapnel. Nadezhda Markovna, or whatever her name was, had disappeared. So had her mosquito nets. The dead man still lay in the cool twilight. The boy skipped over him and outside to the ambulance with a blood-spattered heeled shoe in his hand.

“Thank you,” said K. with a smile. “You’ll make a good doctor.” He slammed the doors shut.

The ambulance raced through the deserted city. “I didn’t put on any gloves,” thought K., clenching and unclenching his fists as he battled to still his trembling fingers. “I wonder why she had high heels on,” he asked himself. “Come on! Get your shit together.”