O.A. - Ruby

Answering the question what I meant was the death that awaits the hero when he takes a step into the abyss.

“How did you find out about this exhibition?” I plucked up the courage to get personal and direct the conversation into neutral territory.

“I am the owner of this gallery,” Dimitry smiled shyly. So! I’ve fallen in love! How cool you are! “We’re just about to close… The end of the working day…”

Kill me, please, someone…

Well hell! Why is it every time someone shows me attention, I immediately regard it as the beginning of a relationship or almost a declaration of love?! You can’t do that. You can’t. Can’t can’t can’t can’t.

“Oh, yes, of course, I beg your pardon…” I said fussily, “I was just leaving.”

…to try to heal my pride and self-esteem…

“Sorry sir, so…”

When you address me formally I feel even more humiliated. You goat!

“No, it’s all right,” I interrupted, “I just need to take a… tram.”

What tram? You dumbass. You take the subway.

I turned around and headed for the exit.

“Next week there will be an interesting exhibition. We will be anxiously waiting for you.”

“Oh, screw you!”

Oh my God! Did I say that out loud?!

I flew out of the gallery like a bullet and ran to the first intersection to hide around the corner and try to survive the surging waves of shame, awkwardness and self-loathing.

Not my day. Not my day. Today is definitely not my day.

The desire to find a park and smell the lilacs now seemed like something distant, like some old childhood memory. Now I just wanted to get home, go to bed and figure out what to do with myself.

I’ve had enough for today. It can’t go on like this.

I open a textbook on histology. A chill runs down my spine. My hands shake. A little more and I will cry. I have only one day to prepare for the exam. In no case can I fail it since this is the third and last retake. If I fail, I will be expelled from the medical academy and then I will have to go home or even worse, join the army. We could say that life would end right there. I open the textbook at random: “Cytoarchitectonics of the Spinal Cord”. Lord God, I don’t have enough days to remember even that name… How did I manage to enter a medical academy? How is it that I have absolutely no knowledge of the training material I have already passed? How could I allow this to happen?

“Oleg, wake up! Get up.”

Camilla was standing by the bed and shaking my shoulder. From her tousled hair and the fact that she was wearing her giant Eiffel Tower night shirt, I could tell that she had only just gotten up.

“Oleg, get up. We have an urgent meeting.”

“How glad I am that you woke me up,” I said in a whisper. “… even if only to report that a meteorite is flying at us and we will all die, that would be definitely better than what I was dreaming about. What time is it?”

Cam looked around in confusion, trying to find a clock.

“I don’t know, about four in the morning. We’re in trouble. Amir’s father just died.”

Amir and Sophia were already sitting at the kitchen table. Sopha was wearing pajamas, and Amir a pair of jeans and a buttoned-up lightweight windbreaker. Each had a mug of coffee in front of them. Two more mugs were waiting for me and Camilla.

Why coffee so early? Why drink anything at all right now?

While Amir waited for a taxi to the airport, he told us that his father had died of a massive stroke at the age of 64. His sister had told him this news at about one in the morning. Sophia had helped him buy a ticket online on the next flight to where his father had lived. Then Camilla had made everyone coffee before waking me up. I sat and did not know what to say. Best friend that’s called.

What can you say in such a situation? Will comforting words make it easier? If I were in Amir’s place, I would not want to discuss the issue, nor accept words of condolence from which it certainly would not become easier, nor would I want to see anyone.

The worst thing of all is that I did not feel any empathy at all for my friend’s or what he was feeling. Maybe it was because my brain hadn’t woken up yet? But what if I really don’t care? Amir is alive. Each of us will face the death of our parents someday. Almost everyone, in fact, goes through this. It’s part of life. You can’t prepare for it, it can only be accepted. Someday I will have to go through it too and at such a moment I will have absolutely no time for condolences, but now I cannot and do not want to put myself in Amir’s place. I just want to sleep. Does that make me a bad friend and a bad person?

“My dearest friend, please know that we are with you,” I said and that only because I had to at least say something.

“Thanks, bro, I know. That’s it, the taxi has just pulled up.” Amir got up and put his phone in his windbreaker pocket. “It’s time…”

We all left the table and went into the corridor.

“Okay, guys, I’m not saying goodbye. When everything is over… I don’t think I’ll be long.” Amir put on his backpack. “I should be back in two weeks, maximum in a month.”

The sisters and I took turns hugging him.

Sophia closed the door behind him.

There were about two and a half hours left before the alarm went off and as luck would have it I now had no desire to sleep.

A quick death from a massive stroke is probably not so bad. In my opinion, anything is better than being locked inside your own body and slowly fading away… Waiting for it to stop functioning and shut down.

After I had received my university diploma, I decided that it was time for me to change cities to a larger one. I had to go to a place where very few people knew me and where I could finally afford to have a relationship with a guy.

It always seemed to me, probably thanks to the suggestions of adults, that everything should be done in order: “First, get a diploma, then hang around wherever you want,” “first enter some university after you finish school, then you can rest and relax,” “first finish your studies so that you will not be expelled, then you can do whatever you want.” However, it was only now that I understand how much time had been lost, but really that is another topic.

My choice fell on a large city in the south of the European part of the country. In the city itself, my stepfather’s nephew lived with his family, whom I had to stay with until I got on my feet when I first got there. Outside the city, in a small village, lived the nephew’s mother, my stepfather’s sister grandma Dusya, an amusing 82-year-old granny. Having worked all her life at a cement plant, she was still able to plant and dig up potatoes in her incredible garden, keep livestock and take care of the house.

As soon as I arrived and unpacked my things, my stepfather’s nephew took me to visit his mother and say hello. Everything went well at first, until he decided to go to the melon fields for a watermelon and I was left alone with grandmother Dusya.

While she was setting the table, I went out to the garden to look at the sunflowers. Returning to the house I heard the continuous whistling of the kettle. Going into the kitchen, I turned it off. Grandma Dusya was lying face down on the sofa in the living room. As was learned later she had had a stroke. I immediately called for an ambulance in which we went to the hospital without first waiting for her son.

After Grandma Dusya was transferred from the intensive care unit to a regular two-bed room, for the first few days I lived with her in the hospital (after consulting with her son, we both decided that it would be better to keep her under the supervision of someone close, not just the medical staff). She was now completely paralyzed and she could not speak. I’m not even sure if she understood everything one hundred percent. Her gaze was blank most of the time, but there were also lucid glimpses and times when it seemed that she wanted to say something but was not able to.