Free Happiness is Possible by Oleg Zaionchkovsky Page A

for the rest of the life.
    The injuries suffered at night in N-burg were mostly criminal in nature. Carelessly dressed individuals of mature age ended up in the department following domestic knife fights, and those who were younger and stronger generally came in with bullet wounds; these were the heavy types, who were still having gunfights with each other out of force of habit. The patients with knife wounds behaved modestly, while the heavies were insolent and aggressive, but Nastya wasn’t afraid of them here at work, and she decided for herself who should go straight onto the surgeon’s table and who should wait in reception for a while. Nastya worked shift after shift. One week followed another and very soon she would have completed her practical training and been enrolled in the Medical Institute. In time she would have married a decent man, become a district doctor – a paediatrician, for instance – and the children would have loved her. That’s how everything would have turned out, if Nastya had completed her practical training. But then, that would have been a different story, and she and I wouldn’t have been sitting by a fountain in a Moscow courtyard.
    Events took a different turn. A turn for which Nastya should be eternally grateful to her superiors at the hospital, who condemned her to serve those shifts in A&E. One wonderful evening – definitely wonderful this time, probably the only wonderful evening in the entire history of that sad institution – an ambulance brought yet another poor wretch into the A&E department. Nastya took a brief glance: the patient was large in build and dressed in a tracksuit.
    â€˜A firearms case?’ she asked professionally, addressing the paramedic in the ambulance.
    The paramedic shrugged.
    â€˜Seems not. He says it’s an ordinary dislocation.’
    â€˜Strange . . .’ Nastya took a closer look at the patient and her heart started pattering: standing there in front of her, holding one arm with his other hand, was the polite stranger from the night club. ‘Strange . . .’ she repeated, as her cheeks turned pink.
    It hardly needs to be said that from that moment on, he became Nastya’s personal patient. She led him past the waiting casualties, all the stabbed and the shot, straight to the doctor, who put the shoulder back in in a jiffy, before Nastya could even leave the room. The young man merely yelped in his pleasant voice, and the job was done. The doctor winked at Nastya.
    â€˜We could do with more patients like that,’ he said, pleased. This doctor was fond of dislocations and fractures, and he didn’t like sewing.
    The patient breathed in sharply, thanked the doctor and turned towards the nurse. And that was when he recognised her.
    â€˜Why, we’ve met before,’ he said with a smile on his still pale face.
    â€˜I remember,’ Nastya replied, and looked down. But this time her tights were all right.
    â€˜So this is where you work. And I thought you were one of those . . . evening girls.’
    â€˜And I thought you were one of those heavies.’
    â€˜Oh no,’ he said, smiling again. ‘I just dislocated my shoulder in the gym.’
    â€˜I’m glad.’
    â€˜Children, perhaps you could save the rejoicing for later?’ the doctor interrupted. ‘I’ve got a waiting room full of clients.’
    Dr Popov was not an ill-natured individual at heart, but he had practised all his life in A&E and that had toughened him up a little. In any case, he was right: work is work. Nastenka expressed the hope that the young man would take better care of his arm in future, and went back to performing her duties. Nonetheless, during the remainder of the shift, her thoughts flew off repeatedly to somewhere very, very far away from the A&E department.
    All of the above-described can, however, be regarded as merely the prelude to the real fairytale,