“All right, go and have a rest. See you tomorrow.”

Mr. Willow is the head of the department. I am overwhelmed by his erudition, literacy and clinical instinct. He has been working in the hospital for 30 years already. A true luminary he is. He is always there to help and to prompt. We work with him together in the same building. I respect him immensely.

“Sir, I left you an apple, on the table, to have a snack before bedtime.” “Marie, are you afraid I’m gonna lose weight?” he looks at me cheerfully with a squint. “I agree, 117 kg should be nourished properly, but don’t you worry, my Allie gave me a lunch box to go.”

“Oh, give the best of my regards to Mrs. Willow. Well, that’s it, have a calm shift.”

We have a superstitious belief that if one wishes the other good luck for a duty shift, there will be an influx of complicated patients. It seems no one wished me anything at all in the morning, but still, as usual, it turned out to be a multitask issue.

“I will definitely do. That’s it, go and have a proper sleep. You are as pale as

a ghost. Apparently, you endured the entire patient ‘impact’, which means todays I am going to rest. I love taking the shift after you. It’s all peace and quiet and I can even take a sleep. That’s it, child, until tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow Mr. Willow.”

No ‘good nights’ are pronounced also for superstitious reasons. Although, we are all definitely not superstitious, it works out at the checkpoint.

I say goodbye to Marina and Valera, thank them for the duty, while they are washing the floors.

“Take good care of yourself, seems you have grown completely thin. Eat, for the first thing, I can give a banana. Want one?” asks Marina attentively.

“No, thanks. I’ll go.”

Before leaving, I dial up the 11th department using that horrible telephone. “Good evening, this is the doctor on duty, how is Michael doing?”

“Oh, doctor, thank you so much. He’s asleep and everyone is happy!” Karina will come tomorrow and adjust everything. It’s great, means the therapy worked out. Fine.

“Goodbye.”

I am dialing up the 29th department. I inquire how Mr. Nameless is doing. “Well, not really good. He is lying down with high pressure. We’ve injected

magnesium, but there is nothing else we have in the department.” “Got it. Well, hold on.

Finally, I say goodbye to everyone and go out into the street. The air is fresh and frosty. The sky seems to be strewn with multi-colored bright lanterns. It looks beautiful and bewitching. I remember when a child, when I felt lonely, I sat down and gaze at one single star for a long while. I fantasized that out there, in some corner of the planet, there also was a boy sitting and looking at the same star. So, like that it became warm and cozy in my heart. You are not alone. Where are you? The Universe is very wise, but impassive. Everything comes exactly when it should.

I sit down into my cold combat ‘speed bird’ and start it up from the sixth try, wait till it’s warmed up. I see eight missed calls and one text message from Alevtina: “Are you comming?” Everything inside of me resists and turns over. But I have to go. Writing: “Leaving already.”

I can’t calm down because of the thoughts. At which point does a person loose humanity? We are kind and empathetic by nature, but for some reason we lose it all. Like that ambulance doctor. Millions of people I have encountered along my way, why do their hearts harden? Everyone wants love and it is only through love one may learn of the happiness. And I am not speaking of the generally accepted concept. When you bring love, the world becomes amazing. Love should be in everything. It is a bright emotion that inspires, lends wings and makes you want to share. It is literally everywhere, in people, dawn, books, profession, life. If we carry no light, the world will darken. Because, light and love are inseparable. They illuminate the path we walk, through the darkness of our everyday routines. It is only us to choose, whether to dwell in light on this planet or produce darkness and decay.

I go to the pharmacy and announce the list of medicines to the pharmacist. She obediently assembles the package and declares: “672 hryvnia, please.” I open up my wallet and there is one single 200-hryvnia bill in it. ‘And nothing on the cards, damn it.’ Then, it has dawned upon me: “Alevtina’s gift! Bingo!” I hesitate … I get into the envelope, take out the sacred five-hundred note, pay and leave.

“Misha’s in need of it more than Alevtina’s in need of a new lip-gloss.”

I go back to the hospital. Ring the door of the 29th department. A nurse opens up. I hold out the package.

“Today it’s Michael’s birthday. That’s his gift.” “What birthday, Miss Clover? We are unaware of…”

“Who cares? Let it be today,” I smile and say goodbye.

The nurse stands puzzled. I arrive at of Alevtina’s feast of life. Everyone is dressed up and in the full play, while I am hardly able to speak. I’m tired.

“Oh, Marie, you are not joyful today,” Alevtina notes disappointedly. “Hon, just after the shift and I am without a gift, will congratulate you

later.”

“No worries, sweety. That’s okay! It’s cool you could make it and you remember, I love useful gifts, preferably in cash equivalent,” she winks at me.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just I have forgotten your gift at home.”

“It’s fine, yet, in fact I was counting on the one from you. Anyways, on Tuesday, I will go to buy myself a present from all of you, guys. I’ve put an eye on such a purse in Symbol Boutique… It’s Gucci and it’s awesome. You’ll die of envy when you see it.”

“Of course, Al’,” I pronounce wearily and, sincerely, don’t understand what

I was doing there.

There is a great deal of people there, all beautiful, many go in pairs. I’ve greeted everyone. At the end of the table, I see a white shirt and a bald head and a bunch of young chicks in extremely short dresses around…

“Vova!”

I get up, hug him, we haven’t seen each other for three years. “Hi! So good to see you! How are you, my darling?”

“Ohhh,… Marie, hello dear. I’m cool and you don’t seem to be very well.

You’ve grown completely thin.” “I’m fine.”

“Wann’a shot of something?”

“Nope, I’m to drive home today. Can’t.”

“Come on, you are all out of face. You are not going to your Lyubomyrovka, drink one for Alevtina’s health, he leans over to me and adds in whisper: “Frankly, I don’t understand what I am doing here.”

“Vovka, frankly, neither do I,” I laugh.

Vova is a big shot. In his younger years he became the chief of the district police department. Quite a catch for any girl. He’s good-looking, tall, athletic, with blue eyes and money, unshaven, with a fancy car and stuff. Nevertheless, still no lady to be ‘the shape of his heart’. He smells of luxury life.

He pours whiskey into a glass, hands it to me and says: “Drink”. “Happy birthday, Alevtina. Whooha!”

We woke up in one and the same bed in the morning…

Alevtina came into my life when I was three years old. We were like sisters. She was a bright, eye-catching girl, but a 'victim' in the head. She needed to suffer, to be concerned about and literally needed men “to wipe their feet over her”. Yet, she dreamed of a prince charming, whom she would serve, since, in her opinion, a woman’s sex-role task should have been just like that. Coming over in the middle of the night “to save Oleg, because he was lonely and sad, and needed me” – easy. It didn’t matter that Oleg called her only at such moments, when he was bored of sitting alone in the kitchen, after a three-day alcohol marathon with chicks and drugs, when all the adequate ones had already been fed up with his post-weekend crap. Whereas, she considered it to be her vital necessity and a perseonal fulfillment of her woman’s nature.