Drifting in and out of sleep … A young doctor in a white coat … Cold. Quiet emptiness … A dark, monumental hospital room … Thirst. Panic … My neck, fragile as a daisy stem …
… A little girl is lying on the asphalt … I was holding her hand as we were leaving a shop with shopping bags full of new dresses … Now she lies motionless on a pedestrian crossing. A car with blades instead of wheels has cut off her feet but there is no blood. There is nothing. Nobody. Just me looking … at her deformed body … her pale skin … her blonde hair … I am her. But she can’t walk. But I can … or can I?
‘You should not be wearing the foam collar for more than three hours at a time,’ says a kind young male voice. ‘To keep your neck muscles in good working order.’
‘OK.’ I try to smile with my dry lips at the blurry face in front of me.
‘Can you see me alright?’ he asks, checking my eyes.
‘I guess so,’ I say, resisting the droop of my heavy eyelids.
‘What color are my eyes?’ he asks. To me, he looks like a one-eyed Cyclops.
‘Gray … hazel … green,’ I mumble.
‘Your blood coagulation is very low because you have a high level of benzoylecgonine, which tells me that you might have been abusing certain substances,’ he says, checking the bloody bandages on my knee, covering the sticking-out bolts. ‘The bleeding is rather abnormal - so we’re asking you to stay away from drugs and alcohol for at least a month, till we remove the screws … if you want your ligaments to heal and to be able to walk again soon,’ he says in a serious tone. ‘Try to lift up your leg,’
‘OK,’ I say, trying to lift my weighty limb - but it just doesn’t obey.
‘Try harder,’ he commands.
‘I can’t,’ I whine powerlessly.
The foreboding creak of an old parquet, at first only distantly audible, is now so close it is going to get me … I move further underneath the cold blanket, as if it were my shield … but I cannot turn my head.
In the corner of my eye I see Akbar’s face partially covered with bandages, which in the subdued light looks particularly scary – like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street. He is wearing a silk dressing gown and boxers over thick, tight beige bandages. He silently takes a seat at my bedside, struggling to bend his elbows and knees, letting the doctor continue to torture me with leg exercises.
Straining my entire body, I grab the bed rails and with a squawk of pain, finally lift my zinc-heavy leg.
‘Good. It’s important to keep practising - you need to build up your muscle strength again,’ the doctor says, writing something in a journal. ‘I’ll send a nurse to change your bandages.’ He nods at Akbar and leaves the room.
‘Hi,’ Akbar says after a long pause, breaking the heavy silence.
‘Hi,’ I say, ashamed, pushing myself through pain to prop myself up on my elbows.
‘They told me you had concussion and whiplash and … your knee,’ he points at my leg, bulky from all the bolts and bandages.
‘I’ll walk again,’ I say gruffly, fighting the desire to sleep and the urge to vomit.
‘That’s a nasty one,’ he says.
‘No, blyat, I just like to wear this stupid silicon costume,’ he says, struggling to control his anger. ‘It’s a third degree burn!’
‘I’m very sorry,’ I slur, ready to accept whatever blame comes my way.
‘Yes,’ he says imperiously. ‘It was a bloody good car.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat, already drained of energy by this conversation.
‘And … I’ve heard …’ He pauses, eyeing me suspiciously. ‘… omeone has sent pictures from the crash site to the FT and they’re going to put it on the front page tomorrow … If this was in Moscow it would be easy to revoke the article, but we’re dealing here with a headline in a respectable London paper: “Akbar Gromov’s mistress crashes top-of-the-range Ferrari as thousands lose their jobs in Lehman collapse”,’ he yells, louder than even my mom ever did - but now I cannot run away. ‘Do you know what my in-laws are going to do to me? I’ll never get a loan again in my life,’ he fumes, raising the formidable mountain of his body above my bed.
‘Lehman collapsed?’ I ask in disbelief.
‘While you’ve been chilling here, the world has changed and will never be the same again,’ he shouts furiously. ‘Because of you, I’ve lost over twenty million dollars on those fucking Lehman shares you sold me …’ he yells, pointing a beige-gloved finger at me.
‘It was your order to buy …’ I say quietly.
‘I know what I’ve bought.’ His usually pale face is now all red. ‘The freaking plant you made me buy. Zilbermans attacked it,’ he continues with intensity, slowly pacing around the room.
‘I thought you wanted Zilbermans to react?’ I defend myself with the remains of my consciousness.
‘Yes, but not to throw missiles!’ he exclaims. ‘Who’s going to repay me the hundred fifty million dollars cash I paid for that hole because of you?’ He kicks the chair with his poker-straight leg. ‘And I can’t even fight back, because those bastards told the court it was me who arranged the raid in the first place, to take ownership of the plant.’
‘I just wanted to help,’ I gasp, anxiously.
‘Katya,’ he exhales. ‘I don’t have time for this.’ He looks at his watch on his unbended arm, turning towards the door. ‘Get your friend to remove all the articles mentioning my name or yours,’ he commands, threatening me with his index finger. ‘This is in your best interest. We’ll talk later.’ With that, he walks out of the room.
Breathing shallowly, I use what is left of my strength to lift myself up with my arms and reach for the remote control to switch the TV on.
Every channel is showing the unimaginable image of hundreds of employees in shock, standing with their cardboard boxes in front of an instantly-recognisable glass building on a sunny square.
Making a real effort, I reach for my handbag on the windowsill and pull out my iPhone, which has only a few per cent battery left.
When I swipe the screen, Facebook automatically opens up, suggesting I should check in at the Sochi Presidential Hospital. A post from Virgin Mary pops up: ‘The entry cards to the building stopped working at 6.45. No further information given.’ The Polish kurva comments below: ‘Those fucking cunts knew it. Alex left last week with all his shit, including the keyboard.’
Quickly, I check Alex’s account, with the picture of him chilling by the pool … and my battery treacherously dies. My heart palpitates … I wasted all that charge and did not even message Richard.
Drifting off, I hear a low, grumpy voice from behind the door: ‘Do I look like a journalist? You see a camera on me or a microphone?’ A brash, plump woman in her fifties loudly pushes past the guard at my door, rumbling a cart with a giant pot on its top.
‘You want porridge?’ she asks abruptly.
‘Hm, can I have some water, please?’ I answer, forcing a tired smile.
‘So you don’t want porridge?’ she asks, putting the ladle back into the pot.
‘No, I’d like some water, please,’ I say despairingly, looking at the scowl on her face.
‘I don’t have any water,’ she says curtly.
‘Can I give you some money? Maybe you can get me a bottle from downstairs?’ I plead.
‘Yeah? And who’ll pay me to change your urinal after?’ she snaps at me, probably waiting for me to increase my bid.
‘Hey,’ I shout past her. ‘You, at the door!’ I scream with all the force I can muster. ‘Ibrahim!’ I yowl.
An imposing square-jawed young guy, wearing all black, with blue plastic shoe covers over his military boots, confidently enters the room.
‘What?’ he grunts.
‘I need an iPhone charger,’ I say firmly, resisting his intense stare, ‘and a few liters of water.’ I calmly ignore the chubby kitchen employee, who tries to object but eventually gives up and leaves.
‘Akbar needs me to make an urgent phone call,’ I say serenely, pausing prior to the key words. ‘I can’t do it because the number is in my phone and its battery has died. If I don’t talk to this person and an article comes out incriminating Akbar, I’ll make you personally responsible.’
The next moment, he is gone.
Minutes later, he duly returns with the charger and a pack of water bottles.
‘Call me. Urgent.’ I text Richard, as soon as the phone switches on again.
‘I can’t right now. Crazy here. R u ok?’ he texts back.
‘Plz don’t publish anything about the crash. Need to talk,’ I feebly type back, letting myself drift into an overpowering snooze.
The next thing I know, a friendly, good-looking brunette in her fifties is tapping me on the shoulder. ‘Good afternoon,’ she says kindly. ‘Time to change your bandages, love.’ She gently removes my blanket, making me pull my heavy body up on my tired, shaking arms.
‘Before I start, please fill in some paperwork for the hospital. We just need your data,’ she says, genuinely smiling, passing me the forms.
Slowly, with a disobedient hand, I fill out my name, address and all the usual stuff, but when I get to the ‘next of kin’ field at the bottom, my eyes fill with tears of despair.
Who the hell is my next of kin? There is no one to bring me water, take me home … Where is home? I am a fallen leaf away from its tree, with no place to come back to, no one to call, no one to love …
‘All good?’ the woman asks.
‘I don’t know who to put in the next of kin section,’ I sob.
‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asks, preparing the new bandages.
‘Yes, but we don’t …’ I tail off.
‘What is there to think about?’ she asks with a shrug. ‘Put her details in. She’ll always be your next of kin.’
‘Whatever,’ I obey, copying my mom’s cell phone number from my phone, wondering if it is still the same.
‘OK, let’s start,’ she says. While she is removing the swathes of bandages, Richard calls.
‘Hey, sorry it took ages - so crazy here,’ he says. I can hear the rapid click-clack of his typing in the background.
‘What happened to Lehman?’ I weakly ask.
‘Seems like the liquidity dried up and it couldn’t get out of its structured credit crap,’ he hurriedly explains. ‘Anyway, how are you feeling?’
‘They reconstructed my knee ligaments from bits and pieces,’ I say, watching the nurse as she cuts the bandage, revealing the bolts sticking out of my flesh.
‘Ouch … It’ll take ages to heal. You should be very careful with it,’ he says, shouting something to someone on the other end of the phone.
‘Akbar doesn’t want any articles about the crash at all,’ I say, as the nurse scrapes the dried blood off my knee, keeping me well awake.
‘Well, Akbar Gromov is not just any old John Doe … and you sent me a very exclusive photo … luckily for him there was bigger news today,’ he smirks.
‘He’s concerned that his in-laws … won’t let him have any more corporate loans,’ I explain, wincing in pain as I speak.
‘They should have stopped doing that a long time ago,’ Richard cynically comments. ‘The Russian economy would have been a lot stronger for it.’
‘Please at least don’t mention my name or the mistress thing,’ I say feebly.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Richard says.
‘Thank you,’ I say, watching as the nurse finishes cleaning up the open wounds on my knee. ‘What about the other accident?’ I ask, shivering, trying not to look that way.
‘What other crash?’ he asks, curious.
‘At the plant in Siberia … that I advised Akbar to acquire,’ I say, anxiously observing the nurse soaking cotton pads in a big, menacing bottle of iodine.
‘M&A in Russia without something getting blown up is like an English tea without cucumber sandwiches. Let’s see,’ he says, searching. ‘The Western media didn’t report anything on that front …’
‘Does that mean it didn’t happen?’ I tense all my muscles as she applies the iodine to my gashes.
‘Oh wait, Al-Jazeera reported an explosion in Seversk,’ he exclaims.
‘In Seversk?’ I shout out my pain, shifting my leg so iodine gets right into the wound, burning me to the core.
‘Yes, in Seversk, Tomsk region, Siberia,’ he confirms, his every word thundering like a storm, through the agony of my flesh and my soul.
‘Are you OK?’ the nurse asks, looking at me with concern as my blood pressure sharply drops below the low level on the screen next to my bed.
‘Papa,’ I sob.
‘What?’ I hear in stereo from both ends, in two languages.
‘My dad,’ I wail, powerlessly covering my eyes with my hands, ignoring the glucose injection the nurse performs into the catheter in my hand.
‘Is that where your dad works?’ Richard poses a question I have got no nerve to answer. ‘Bloody hell, Katya, what kind of person have you become, that you’re willing to do this kind of shit?’