Frederik Pohl - Chernobyl

Trying to make the Deputy Director eat was really the only service he could still offer to Smin. Even that was seldom successful. The old man would swallow a few mouthfuls as a courtesy, then he would shake his head. "But I have always been too fat, Leonid," he would say seriously. "To lose a few kilos is no bad thing." And then he would ask Sheranchuk, very considerately and politely, to draw the curtains again, please.

Smin spent most of his time now behind the curtains. Sometimes he was being sick, and then the nurses would come to help. Sometimes he was sleeping-Sheranchuk was glad for those times, though always with the fear that the sleep was, finally, something worse than mere sleeping. Often Sheranchuk could see through the gaps in the curtain that Smin was writing, writing, writing-writing something on a lined schoolboy's pad that he never showed to Sheranchuk, and shoved under the pillow when someone came near. His memoirs? A confession for the GehBehs? A letter to someone? But when Sheranchuk ventured to ask, Smin said only, "It's nothing, simply some things I want to put on paper-my memory may not be so good anymore."

But it was not simply his memory that Smin was in the process of losing.

This time there had been no need for Sheranchuk to cut his meal short to help Smin eat, for when he got to the door of their room, he saw that Smin's wife and younger son were there. The boy was standing by his father's bed, a plate in one hand and a spoon in the other, looking unsure of himself. "It's all right, Vassili," Serena Smin whispered to her son. "He did eat quite a bit, and now he needs to sleep." Then she saw Sheranchuk hovering in the doorway and smiled a welcome.

To Leonid Sheranchuk, Smin's wife had always been above criticism, simply because she was Smin's wife. To himself, at least, he might have admitted that he found her rather self-centered and perhaps just a bit proud. He did not think that now. She was quite an exceptionally handsome woman-hadn't she been a dancer once? And so much younger than her husband-but what he saw as he looked at her now was a wife and mother whose love for her family was written achingly all over her face.

He stepped courteously aside as she and her son came out of the room, but she paused to talk to him. "Vassili got him to eat nearly all of his lamb." She reported the small triumph with unreasoning hope shining through the desperation in her eyes. "I minced it up for him first. I tasted it myself; it was really quite good."

"They feed us well here," Sheranchuk agreed. Then he said, "Mrs. Smin? I've been wondering if having me here in the room isn't really a bit too much for him."

"No, no, Leonid! He is grateful for your company. Don't think he hasn't told us how much you do for him."

"I wish I could do more!"

"You do everything anyone ever could," Selena Smin said firmly. "I think he will sleep now, and so we will leave him for a bit in your good hands."

"Thank you," Sheranchuk said, awkward as he wondered whether to shake her hand or not, but she setded the matter by leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. He gazed after her admiringly and hardly noticed when a doctor came up to him, hooded, booted, and robed in white. When the physician addressed him by name, Sheranchuk was astonished to find that she was his wife.

Tamara Sheranchuk reached up to kiss her husband, a feathery, distant kiss on his cheekbone-as much as was advisable, he knew, since even the tiny salt flakes from his sweat might also be radioactive, not to mention his saliva if they had kissed on the lips. "Isn't this great luck?" she cried in delight. "How am I here? Well, partly because my own count is a bit low, and partly because I am to learn how they test blood to determine the extent of radioactivity-just for forty-eight hours, I'm afraid. But most of all, I am here because you are here, my dear, and I asked for permission."

Sheranchuk looked at her in distress. "Your count is low?"

"Oh, quite marginal," she assured him. "No, my dear, it is you who are the patient here, not I. I have had a look at your charts with the other doctors. They're a bit puzzling."

"So they have told me. I am not as sick as I ought to be."

"Did they explain to you about Dr. Guskova's system? Since we don't know how much radiation you received, she has worked out a method of deducing it from the way your blood count falls off- "

"I have heard everything there is to hear about Dr. Guskova's system. But she did not tell me how much of a dose that was, and neither did anyone else."

Tamara hesitated. "Perhaps one hundred rads," she said reluctantly. "It is possible that it is more."

"And that means?" he demanded.

"In your case, my dear," she said, "it is difficult to say."

"I see," he said, thinking. Then, remembering how she had appeared from nowhere and made him put on coveralls, "It would have been more if it hadn't been for you."

"So I am good for something as a wife," she said. It was a light remark, but her tone was not light. He opened his mouth to ask if anything was wrong, but she was going right on: "Deputy Director Smin may not have had much more, but as you see, he is very ill and you are-not?"

"I feel all right," he said, stretching the truth. In fact, he felt tired much of the time and sometimes a bit feverish. But nothing like Smin, of course.

His wife sat down next to him on the bed, prepared to lecture. "The etiology of radiation sickness," she said, "is quite well known. Simyon Mikhailovitch doesn't fit the curve. He is getting worse faster than he should. He-"

Suddenly remembering, she glanced apprehensively at the closed curtains. "He's asleep," Sheranchuk assured her. "I heard him snoring a minute ago."

"Well," she said, lowering her voice, "your blood count is not dropping off as fast as his, or many of the others."

"Doctor talk again," he complained. "Which means what?"

"Which means we don't know what," she said. "Perhaps it means that all of your exposure was from external sources- dust and smoke on your skin, that was washed off. Smin, on the other hand, may actually have swallowed some, or breathed it. The radioisotopes are still in his body."

Sheranchuk was puzzled. "But I was exposed as much as he! I was in the area longer, even; he was away when the explosion occurred. We breathed the same air, ate the same food-"

"But such a little difference can make such a big effect, Leonid. You were within buildings much of the time. He may have been outside. It could be as small a thing as a stack of bread that was left too long on a table. Perhaps he had the top slice, and you only one from lower down."

Sheranchuk said, making his tone calm, "Does that mean that I will-"

He didn't finish the sentence. "It means that your chances are better," she said; and then, strongly, "Leonid! I think you will recover completely!"

Sheranchuk turned and raised himself on an elbow to study his wife. He had never been her patient before, except now and then for a headache or a sore wrist. Was this how she always talked to those under her care? It was not at all the same free and easy way they spoke in their kitchen, or their bed.

"You do go on talking like a doctor," he complained.

"But, Leonid, I am a doctor. And, oh," she went on, "I'm sure of it! Especially with those American doctors here! You would not believe how good they are! Just this morning the hospital centrifuge broke down, and in just a few hours they had packed everything up and moved it to another facility. And their own instruments! They have a machine, you put into it a sample of blood, whisk, click, and in just a few seconds you have a blood cell count printed out, with every number! While for us it is necessary to put each blood sample under a microscope and someone must count every individual cell-half an hour at least, and after a technician has counted a dozen samples his eyes are weary and his attention flags, and how likely it is to make mistakes!"