Page 113 of Cilka's Journey

Cilka looks from her to the truck, as it rounds a building out of sight, to her hands.

She tears at her gloves. Using her teeth, she frees her fingers, throws the gloves to the ground and drops beside them. Burying her hands in the snow, she grabs handfuls of it, rubbing each hand furiously, desperately, tears streaming down her face.

“Cilka, Cilka,” a panicked voice calls out.

Her friends Gita and Dana run to her. Reaching down, they try to lift her up, but she fights them off.

“What’s wrong with you, Cilka?” Dana pleads.

“Help me wash it off, make it go away.”

“Cilka, come on…”

Cilka holds up her hands, now red from the cold and the vicious rubbing.

“I can’t get them clean,” she wails.

Dana takes one of Cilka’s hands and rubs it with her coat to dry and warm it up before pulling one of the discarded gloves on.

“Cilka, we’ve got you. It’s all right.”

Gita helps her to her feet.

“Come on, let’s get you back in your room,” she says.

“The blood, can’t you see the blood?”

“Come on back inside before you freeze,” Gita says.

“Cilka, are you all right, we could do with a hand here,” a worried Kirill says.

“All this blood,” she says, staring at the ground.

“Cilka.” Fyodor touches her arm gently. She flinches. Then sound and light and air come back to her. She swallows, takes a breath.

She focuses on the unconscious man lying at her feet. Though his face is covered in blood, she thinks she knows who it is.

No, not him. Please.

“Get the stretcher, Kirill. I can’t see his injuries,” she manages to say. “We’ll load him up and I’ll get a better look in the ambulance.”

Once the man is on the stretcher, Cilka walks beside him as he is carried to the ambulance. A prisoner joins them.

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know yet. Do you know his name?”

“Petrik—Alexandr Petrik,” the man says as he peels off, walking away.

CHAPTER 31

“Check Bed 13 and record time of death,” Yury Petrovich says to Cilka the next morning as he starts his rounds on the ward.

What he doesn’t realize is that Cilka has been checking Bed 13 all night.

“Surprised he’s still with us. I expected him to die overnight,” Yury says.

“Okay, will do,” Cilka says, trying not to reveal any emotion in her voice. After all, she does not really know Alexandr, has barely spoken with him.