Repose

What Serge could see of the world beyond the window was a frozen bay frosted with serpentine wisps of snow that moved with the wind. A skeletal hand of knotty-fingered barren limbs jutted out from the trunk of a tree, whose bark was the color of slate. The broad sky was heavy and saturnine. He cherished it all. 

He had reached a perfect place, where pain and discomfort were significantly lessened, but the period of treatment and recovery could be expected to drag on. He wanted to improve, but as slowly and incrementally as possible. 

“How are you feeling today?” the nurse asked first thing every morning. “A little better,” he would say, but never “good” or “much better.” 

He had come to regard the nurses as friends, as he had the fellow patients he encountered when he took his limited walks in the corridor as the doctor encouraged. More than friends, the nurses, doctors, patients, and staff were family now, the best kind of family that is: the kind that cared about you, and tended to you, and accepted you unconditionally. 

He’d only spoken with his Uncle Ihor once in the several months since he’d left Buffalo to work and live in Erie. Largely for the sake of his sister, Serge’s mother, Uncle Ihor had allowed his nephew to live with him for a brief time in Buffalo when he first arrived from Ukraine. Uncle Ihor owned a small wood frame house in a row of similar houses in an ancient neighborhood. The house was down the street from a magnificent Orthodox church. Serge had often gazed at the church from the window of his room, at its ravaged red stone pocked and worn from the harsh elements. Looking at it through spirals of falling snow, it might have been a photograph from Kiev or Minsk. 

While Uncle Ihor had been discernibly less than thrilled at having a houseguest, at the hospital on the frozen lake, those who lived in its rooms and slept in its beds felt accommodated. Serge found the meals to be remarkably tasty and the menus surprisingly varied. The television in his room received far more channels than the little television in the squat one-room apartment in the ramshackle house where he lived now. 

As good as the food was, though, Serge never finished a meal. The restoration of an appetite was one of the principal gauges of his recovery. There were many things over which Serge had no control at all: the lab tests of his blood, his vital signs, or his oxygen levels. The doctor ordered imaging tests every other day to examine the level of fluid still in Serge’s belly. Serge could do nothing about images that showed a diminishment of the fluid. But he could pick at the food, nibble around the edges of the dishes, and lightly sample the desert, no matter how appetizing. Serge wouldn’t think of sabotaging his recovery. But he could justify downplaying the vigor of it for the sake of staying a little longer there than otherwise. 

Each morning the nurse checked the status of the IV bags hanging on the pole beside the bed. He was receiving a mix of fluids and nutrients from one bag, antibiotics from another, and pain reliever from a third. Once the nurse was done, he could luxuriate in bed for as long as he wished. There was no waking in the night dreading the break of dawn and a long day ahead around machinery and greasy metal at the plant. There was nothing to dread but the eventual discharge. 

Uncle Ihor would not have approved of Serge’s attitude. His uncle was not especially positive about Serge living in America to begin with, especially on a temporary tourist visa. In fact, his uncle didn’t particularly like the idea of anybody coming to America anymore, even though he himself had come from Ukraine. Uncle Ihor had immigrated during the cold war when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. America had welcomed him, and those like him, as victims of communism. His uncle didn’t think much of the immigrants who came now, especially the ones from south of the border, being dubious of their reasons and intentions. 

Serge recalled his Uncle Ihor, with his round face, frizzy red hair, and spectacles, his sturdy build turning into a pudgy slouch with age, sitting in the kitchen one afternoon, lecturing Serge about those currently trying to come to America. “I don’t think they’re nice people at all.” 

Serge didn’t know much about the people to whom his uncle referred, whether they were nice or not. He did know that where he worked, at the small plant that manufactured dairy carts and display cases for markets and grocery stores, the man from Somalia named Geedi and the woman from Sri Lanka named Ravena never ridiculed him like the others did. The others laughed at his accent and hooted at his solecisms. They thought calling him Serge protector was as funny as it got. Some days it didn’t bother him, especially when he compared it to the things he had experienced during the fighting in Ukraine. But there were some days when his feelings were as raw and tender as pounded veal. 

As long as Serge remained in the hospital, though, he wouldn’t worry much about any of that. He wouldn’t be dwelling in his mind on the goings-on in the long building with high windows you couldn't see out of, the factory floor that smelled like a combination of sweat and oil and dust. 

Instead, Serge would relish the coziness of his room in the hospital, the stars of frost on the windowpanes in the morning, the soothing lights sprinkled around the lake at night, a sight he could see from his window. In the room in the old house where he lived, light from the only window was blocked out by the neighboring house several yards away. In that room, he battled with roaches who climbed the curtains, walked across the Formica kitchen table, and strolled up and over the alarm clock beside his bed. He was going to try something called boric acid against them on his next payday. 

The doctor assigned to him, Dr. Lac, was fit and diminutive, neither young nor old, with gray hair creeping in just above his ears. Though warm, he spoke straightforwardly in medical terms, not in euphemisms or watered-down vocabulary. This made Serge feel as though he had extremely competent care. Doctor Lac felt around his belly, told him what the latest blood tests showed about the levels of infection, and what the recent imaging revealed. He asked Serge about his appetite and his level of discomfort. He advised Serge to walk as much as he was able in the hallways, because doing so helped to dissipate the fluid and would build Serge’s strength back. The doctor looked at the information about vital signs and medications on the chalkboard, occasionally instructing the nurse to change a dosage. 

Serge knew that any day could be the day that Doctor Lac informed Serge he was finally well enough to be discharged, and the prospect was there in the back of Serge’s mind at all times while Doctor Lac was in the room. But once Serge was certain he would remain in the hospital for another day, he enjoyed the banter he exchanged with Doctor Lac and welcomed the convivial small talk he and the doctor and the nurse shared, the way people in tight-knit circles of friends or family did. 

Serge, following Dr. Lac’s advice, did put on his robe each day and mosey along the halls of the ward. He daily greeted the men and women staffing the nurses’ station, a ritual that contributed to the family feel of his surroundings. All of the initially alien sights and smells of the hospital had become familiar, redolent of the continuity of normal, everyday practices, of common purpose, and eventually simply the trappings of home. 

Serge structured his walks so that he would be at around the halfway point when he got to the atrium, and there he would sit on one of the sofas bathed in the natural light and rest. Occasionally he would have a conversation with Randall, the patient in the room across the hall from his. 

Randall bore a striking resemblance to Jay-Z, Serge thought, not just because of his facial features, but as much for a certain cool and collected effect. Serge had glimpsed a guitar leaning against the wall when passing Randall’s room. He eventually learned that Randall worked in a music store and performed occasionally with a band. Serge had heard Randall play some of his own music on the guitar in the atrium, the music having both a soulful flavor and a jazz flavor, Serge thought. When they talked for the first time, it was about caps. Each wore a cap around the hospital that the other liked. 

Randall had been living on the ward for over a month, waiting for a liver. He never went very deep into his background or his personal life, nor did Serge feel inclined to reveal a great deal to Randall. However, it was Randall with whom Serge talked a bit about the fighting in Donetsk. 

“Yes,” Serge said to him, “when I say struggling with the pain from a blocked bowel and intestine on the way to the hospital was worse than fighting against the Russians in Ukraine, I am comparing two things I actually know about.” 

Randall acknowledged difficulty “keeping straight who the good guys and the bad guys are over there at the moment, other than the Russians being the bad guys.” 

“Where I’m from, Donetsk,” Serge told him, “is a city in a region called Donbas. A lot of ethnic Russians have lived there a long time. Everyone’s multilingual, and they mostly used to get along. But especially since the end of communism when Ukraine became independent again, more and more of the ethnic Russians have identified with Russia instead of Ukraine. And now it’s gotten to the point where some of them want all of Eastern Ukraine to break away completely and attach itself to Russia. Once Putin stole Crimea—and a lot of Crimea belonged to Ukraine—things turned really bad.” 

“Real fighting,” Randall said. 

“Real war. Russian troops without uniforms or identification coming over the border and fighting along with Ukrainians sympathetic to Russia. There are always whispers of a full-scale Russian invasion coming at some point. But no one is really convinced.” 

Serge told Randall how he’d dropped out of the local technical college, infuriated by the Russians and inspired by the pro-Ukrainian fighter Semen Semenchenko on Facebook to volunteer for the Donbas Battalion, a militia. It was a militia independent of the army, though it fought in conjunction with it. Serge didn’t say anything about his family, and failed to mention to Randall that Serge’s own father was an ethnic Russian and had deserted the family when Serge was five. 

But Serge did tell Randall about one thing, something that had happened near the end of his service. “The unit I was in was ordered to attack one of the separatist checkpoints near Karlivka, north of Donetsk. There were about fifty of us, and an armored personnel carrier, and maybe twenty of them holding the checkpoint. But as we started our approach, swarms of Russians came from out of nowhere, two hundred of them at least. They started chasing us, and some of us went one way, and the rest, maybe ten of us, ended up hiding in a shelled-out mall. About a hundred of the Russians came inside to find us. They weren't officially Russian troops, or any kind of troops—they weren’t even officially there. So they wouldn’t be holding prisoners. They’d execute us without a thought. We sat there and listened to their voices and the blasts from their radios as they got closer. Each man quietly made his peace with what was about to happen. I was trying to keep from crying. Then another militia unit that had recently begun to fight in the area showed up and surrounded them. When it was over, the ten of us came out of our hiding place, much to our surprise, alive.” 

Randall told Serge he “couldn’t even imagine that,” and knew he would have been “scared enough to cry in that situation too.” 

Serge explained how not long afterward the Donbas Battalion was incorporated into the National Guard, which took only professional soldiers. This freed Serge from further service, which was fine with him. “My mother pushed hard for me to come here. She doesn’t want me getting involved again. She said there’s no such thing as being a civilian in Donetsk now. More Russians will probably come, she’s convinced. Putin will never leave us in peace, she says. I’m young, and I could have a future somewhere else.” 

What he didn’t tell Randall was how afraid he was of going back. You couldn’t adequately convey it to people who hadn’t been a part of such things, who’d only seen movies, or photographs, or television: the visceral impact on your brain of the smells, of the level of fear inside, of the unnerving concussion of the explosions or the screaming—just the chaotic vicious brutality of it all. 

When Serge was back in his room again, he curled up atop the bed. He felt ensconced in a delectable way, as if the air in the room was made up of invisible bubble wrap that insulated him. The rays of winter sun coming through the window were heavenly light bearing angelic guardianship and safekeeping. He fell into a sweet nap. 

Before dinner, he read a bit in a novel by Yurii Andrukhovych he was halfway through. After eating—a delicious soup and flavorful bread—he set his eyes as he often did on the lights around the bay. He was consciously seeking now to imprint such scenes firmly in his brain. He wanted to remember everything about the place as vividly as he could manage. They were images he hoped would give him peace and consolation in the future whenever he recalled them. 

For Serge accepted the only decision available to him once his visa expired in a few months: a return to Ukraine. 

Several inalterable facts had become apparent to him. He and his mother might have believed, when he arrived in America on his nonimmigrant tourist visa, that using it to segue into permanency somehow was actually possible. He discovered it wasn’t, one of the perils of setting out on a wing and a prayer. Staying on undocumented with an expired tourist visa would relegate him to a lonely and apprehensive life, one essentially underground. His Uncle Ihor had made quite clear he fiercely disapproved of such a course. Not only would his uncle not assist him in any shape or form, he would forbid Serge from making contact with him. Serge had no other relatives in the country, and no network of support at all. Why go from being a person with a fraught political identity in his native region to being one in another place? Back in Donetsk, he could apply for a student visa, though he knew the process was long and problematic. In the meantime, he would remain in the thick of the bloody turmoil, where at least he could be of use to his mother. He met none of the eligibility requirements for obtaining a green card, and applying for one wouldn’t keep him in the country, either. Nor would an application for asylum. As much as he believed he ought to qualify, Ukraine was absent from the list of countries from which asylum was granted. 

Yet, for a little longer, at least, he could linger in his hospital paradise on Lake Erie. He figured that even if he would still be working the whole time on dairy carts in a cramped factory and living in a dim room, he would stay on in the United States until the visa expired. He wouldn’t go back to Donetsk until he had to. 

Among the luxuries still available in his present sanctuary was the freedom simply to be still and allow his mind to wander, without its bumping into onerous dreads of the day ahead or the prospect of imminent fear. He indulged himself with rarefied ponderings and opaque questions. Did everybody young find it so difficult to know what to do in the world? Even where to go? Why was life Sisyphean for some, effortless for others? He knew a million things were involved: where you were born, the color of your skin, the kind of parents you had, the kind of circumstances you grew up in, an enormous amount of dumb luck. He knew these weren’t the kinds of questions there were answers for, and that countless people had fruitlessly been seeking them forever. But you had to ask them, he believed. 

He began to eat heartily, savoring the delightful meals. Honeysuckle beams of sunlight entered his room in the morning, and he held onto them as best he could. The icy lake was not a body of water but a sparkling jewel, and he would remember it that way. Sometimes, well into the night, when the moon scoured the dark, icy lake to a shine, a kind of hush fell, stilling even the hospital, as if all living things held their breaths for several fragile seconds. He wanted to capture the human warmth around him in this place and carry it with him in an impenetrable ark. 

When the day came that Dr. Lac delivered the inevitable news so mercifully long in coming—that Serge was being discharged—Serge did his best to smile. He pretended to be delighted, saying how much he’d been looking forward to going home. 

Serge settled in for the final hours of his holiday, the last night in his airy, enveloping room on the familial ward. He still didn’t have to dread a morrow of work around the daunting machinery, or the taunting coworkers. Nor did he have to board a plane for Ukraine the following morning. He could think of no better way to spend his final evening here than exactly as he’d spent the ones before. 

Early the next morning, the nurse brought documents for him to sign. Around noon, another nurse instructed him to climb into a wheelchair to deliver him to the door of the hospital as the rules required. Along the way, patients and staff alike wished him well and treated it as a parting celebration. Randall gave him a huge hug. 

At the entrance to the hospital, he stood up from the chair and expressed his gratitude to the nurse who had brought him down. The automated hospital doors whooshed open, and he passed through. It was snowing lightly. He walked across the snowy parking lot to the sidewalk on the other side. He stopped for a moment, turned around, and looked back. Then he started in the direction of the bus stop. 

KEN O’STEEN

Ken O’Steen’s stories have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Fjords Review, Eclectica, Blue Lake Review, and other publications. Ken is from Los Angeles, California, and currently lives in Proctor, Vermont.