Free The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach

while, I can just smell when a kid has given up because something in his body tells something in his brain that no amount of fighting is going to keep him alive. In the end, calling any three-monther can be reduced to two simple symptoms:
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    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  (1) A light leaves his/her eyes, and
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  (2) He/she has a posture that looks like someone stole half his/her bones.
    Nurse Katya (not known for her tact) once asked me if I thought I would be able to tell when I became a three-monther. My first instinct was to tell her to fuck off. My second instinct was to tell her that she would be a three-monther living alone in the Mazyr Hospital for the Gravely Old long before I was ever a three-monther. Nurse Katya (also not known for her wit) did not have anything clever to say back to me, but once the satisfaction wore off, I actually started to think about whether I would be able to predict the day that my own three-month bag would be dropped in front of me. Then it occurred to me that I would never let myself become a three-monther.
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    IX
    The Staff of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children
    Polina, myself, and the other misfits are tended by four nurses at the asylum: Nurse Lyudmila, Nurse Elena, Nurse Katya, and Nurse Natalya. It is their job to read our blood pressure, change our sheets, wash our clothes, clean our toilets, take our blood, change our diapers, clean our asses, cover our wounds, deliver our meds, serve our food, forge our prescriptions (there are no permanent doctors on staff), turn on our TV, take our temperatures, and diagnose viral versus bacterial infections in order to determine antibiotic needs.
    This is where the job description ends for the nurses at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. The more optional traits of a good health care provider, such as empathy, humanity, honesty, respect, professionalism, and human decency, are not mandatory. I know this because I’ve made it a point to eavesdrop on every nurse interview in the last eight years, of which there have been two, in order to feel like I was a participant in the hiring process.
    Nurse Natalya is the one exception, of course. One day, while she was scrubbing my toilet with bright pink rubber gloves, I asked her:
    â€œCan we talk about the elephant in the room?”
    â€œI’m not sure what you’re talking about. There are many elephants in many rooms at this hospital,” she said.
    â€œExactly,” I said.
    â€œIvan, are you trying to stir up muddy waters?”
    â€œThe water is already muddy.”
    â€œIt is, but I’ll never admit it.”
    â€œJust tell me why I love you and I hate them.”
    She stopped scrubbing, pulled off her pink gloves, and hugged me awkwardly because I’m in a wheelchair. This was my third hug ever and second from Nurse Natalya (the first came from the narrator of an American documentary, who seconds later wiped her arms of me).
    â€œYou know my husband is dead, don’t you, Ivan?” she asked.
    â€œNo, you never told me. How would I know if you never told me?”
    â€œBecause you figure everything else out.”
    â€œWhen did he die?” I asked.
    â€œEighteen years and nine months ago.”
    â€œThat was a year before I met you.”
    â€œWe had just decided to have a baby, and then he died.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œGuess.”
    â€œSome variety of uncontrolled cellular reproduction?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œObviously.”
    â€œAfter he died, I had a choice. I could stay faithful to him for the rest of my life, or I could find someone else to give me a baby. I tried to find someone else, but I couldn’t touch another man. So I became a nurse, and now I have more babies than I ever wanted.”
    And like a sweet cosmic revelation, it occurred to me that while the other nurses were just curmudgeonly women, Natalya was a mother.
    â€œAre you