Authors: Veronica Melan
I carefully pulled the door handle and stepped into the “reception area” that smelt of medicine. I noticed some white curtains with the corner of my eye, a table with some papers on top of it, a couch, a depository with some flasks and white coats hanging in the corner, and nobody inside. The room for better or for worse, turned out to be completely empty. The chair, standing away from the table, was lonely, sparkling with its metal back.
If it wasn’t for the ticking on the wall clock, it would have been completely silent. I didn’t want to continue lingering in the doorway and attract any unnecessary attention, so I carefully slipped inside, closed the door and took a few more steps towards the table. The smell of medicine was even stronger.
Where is the doctor? And where is Ted?
I kept on listening to the sounds around me (did I just hear men’s voices coming from another room?) I looked at two doors leading from the reception in opposite directions. The first door led to a treatment room - a light, but narrow little room with a couch and a partition curtain that allowed patients to undress. I went back to check another corridor.
Jenny must be somewhere here as well, but she wasn’t the one I was searching for. Passing a table my eye caught a piece of paper lying on top of others and I froze to the floor. "Death Certificate" – was the first line on the sheet. I took the paper with trembling hands, and quickly began reading through it.
"I, Doctor blah-blah-blah... confirm the death of a prisoner Thaddeus Ranzhevsky that took place at fourteen hundred hours on the date...”
My first reaction was to howl in despair! So, Ted was dead and it was too late to help him. But before I allowed myself to succumb to the dark wave, my eyes, darting back and forth over the lines, sent an alarm signal to my brain. Something wasn’t right... Something didn’t match.
I read the document from top to bottom once again.
Yes, there was Ted’s name on it and the paper had already been signed and stamped with a date and time - two o’clock this afternoon.
I slowly raised my eyes and looked at the clock - it was only quarter past one. It wasn’t even two!
How could the doctor sign anything before the body was delivered to the infirmary?
I felt as if my brain were filled with sand - I couldn’t put two and two together, getting either five or eighteen as a result.
How could the doctor have learnt about Ted’s death without knowing about the beating? And it’s not even 2PM! Why would this paper be created in advance? What kind of terrible things are going on in this place? I saw the guards beating up Ted; I saw them bringing his body in here, where the death certificate had already been signed. Is it some kind of a plot? A conspiracy?
At this very moment I heard a distinct cough. The same cough that I heard that day, when Ted was standing beside me, giving me the gems. He’s alive! This meant he’s alive!
I put the paper on the table and rushed into the corridor that appeared to be a rather spacious hall with three more doors. I paused for a moment, not knowing where to go, but then someone started coughing again. Guided by the sound, I pushed one of the doors and burst into the room.
The first thing I saw was Ted sitting on a bed, alive, and looking even content; the second was the doctor, wiping his wounds with a cotton tampon and saying something. As soon as those two saw me - they froze with an expression frank confusion and panic on their faces.
“Ted!” I screamed, “Thank God, you are alive!”
I ran and hugged him- he grunted from the pain, but still managed to smile, still looking confused.
“What are you doing here, Shereen? How did you get in here?”
“What are you doing, woman?” The old man resented, “Go away now!”
Not giving the doctor a single glance, I once again happily looked at beaten up, but alive Ted.
“I saw you being battered and then taken to the infirmary. I thought you were dead, but I was still hoping... that maybe you weren’t and I wanted to help you.”
I was almost hiccupping from joy and shaking from the excitement. The dark wave subsided, as if it never existed, and happiness took over.
He’s alive! Alive!
“Is everything ok with you?”
Noticing that both Ted and the doctor were silently looking at me with strange expression on their faces, I went quiet. Why do they look so embarrassed, confused and extremely concerned? Almost scared?
“What’s wrong?” It was my turn to be lost, “I was just worried about you, Ted... I saw this paper on the desk about your death...”
This time, my friend and old fellow-doctor exchanged long looks. The doctor turned pale and Ted swallowed nervously.
After a long pause, he said, “It’s not good that you saw me here.”
*****
“So, you make death certificates and then send them back?”
“How else, in your opinion, could I send them back?” Asked Hulk, holding a glass with whiskey in his hand, “I can’t just add a thousand points to their bracelets and let them go “with peace”. Also, frequently occurring deaths are good for the reputation of the “good” owner.”
This conversation took place very late in the evening, once Hulk had finished with his daily duties. By that time I’d had my lonely supper and created hundreds of possible variations of what was going on within the ranch.
“So, a certain person dies in Tally and a completely different individual goes back to the “outer” world? New name, new documents, new life?”
“Yes, because I cannot send them back using their old names. Because if it was the Commission who sentenced the person, they can’t just go back, without a confirmation that they’ve worked for a number of years in Tally, fully remorseful for their actions, received one thousand points, and now have got another chance to start a normal life.”
“But it must be very easy for the Commission to check this - yes, new names, but the faces...”
“I don’t give a damn about their checks!” Hulk was annoyed, “It’s the only pleasant thing I can do for myself, and the only way I can escape the reality in here.”
It was risky. But I could understand him. Tally absolutely was not the place where you could find a lot of pleasant things to do, and each of them was as precious as gold.
Hulk’s logic was simple - choose those who really needed the help and give it to them. But do it very thoroughly, so nobody would see the truth, but believe in a completely different story about the angry and unfair “owner”. In order to create a myth like that, the person must organise things in the right way, have a strong personality and excellent knowledge of human psychology. Hulk possessed all of those qualities, and that’s why he was able to build an effective system for rescuing people from the shithole named “Area 33".
“How do you pick the ones you want to help?”
“I run rigorous checks on every person that enters the ranch. What kind of person they are, what their past was like, what exactly brought them here, pay attention to their behaviour, observe and so on. There are some people that almost didn’t deserve to end up here. Why “almost”? Yes, some of them stumbled, like your Ted, but not so much that he’d have to spend the rest of his life in Tally. His lungs cannot be cured without proper hospital treatment, and I don’t have the necessary equipment. Was he guilty enough to die in Tally from TB just because he was looking for some seeds in a closed nature reserve? I don’t think so. I had to act quickly, because in this climate, he wouldn’t stay alive for longer than one month.”
His words were flowing smoothly, but my mind was hovering somewhere far away, thinking that not so long ago, sitting on the same couch, I accused Hulk of cruelty to the prisoners, feeling angry that he’d never interfere to prevent the beatings, complained about the lack of attention to the worker’s needs, and it now turned out that he wasn’t just looking after everyone, he was also assessing their individual situations. If you are guilty - then work and get punished, but if the destiny turned its ass to your face, then it could be possible to turn it back.
So what they had to change their identity? Hulk said that every person that gets released from Tally receives a certain amount of money to start living and a good CV in the area where they want to find a job, which is a lot of help!
So ultimately Hulk was almost my twin in his actions - he couldn’t look at undeserved suffering through his fingers and do nothing.
While I was reflecting on all of this, Hulk was thoughtfully looking at me.
“Was that unexpected? I’m not a monstrous beast as you might’ve thought.”
I looked at him reproachfully.
“I never thought you were a beast.”
“At least, I kept my promise to answer any of your questions and I’ve been as frank as I could. Now it’s time to talk about another thing...”
He paused and looked at the glass he was holding in his hand.
For some reason I never liked phrases that started with the words "We need to talk..." "Let's be honest ..." "It’s time to discuss something ..." - all of these never promised any good continuation, so I tensed.
“What do we need to talk about?”
“About us, Shereen.”
Well... That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
Feeling worried, I was staring at the familiar and dear face, which I couldn’t stop looking at ever since I regained my vision. Those light grey eyes, tanned skin, short, slightly curly hair, beautiful lips, so often curving into a smile. I still couldn’t get used to how fit and muscly Hulk looked, how the shirt stretched on his broad shoulders, how tight his jeans seemed on him, although they were not skinny. I liked looking at his golden chain, gleaming around his neck in an open collar - so daring and sexy. I enjoyed knowing that these eyes - the eyes of a sensor killer - could be so gentle and warm, and how glimpses of care splash in them and love would sparkle.
So why, damn it, do we need to talk? About what? Everything was great and I didn’t want to change a single thing.
“Are you angry with me because I saw what I wasn’t supposed to see? Please, forgive me. You can delete any of those memories...”
“No, Shereen. I’m not angry with you and I wasn’t planning to hide it anyway. Sooner or later your nosiness would sniff out the details.”
He smiled, and I felt something ache in my chest. I shrunk inside and then asked, “So why would we need to talk about us?”
I, as a complete coward, was ready to flee, instead of raising the subject, which was desperately frightening for me.
“Because it’s time for it. I told you that we need to discuss something when your vision recovers.”
True. He did. And now I wasn’t happy that I was able to see at all.
“Hulk, what’s wrong?” It wasn’t a nice question to ask, but if something was going to be revealed, I’d rather know about it sooner rather than later.
Now the man sitting in the chair opposite me fell silent. Stirring the whiskey in his glass, he was looking to the side and that was unusual. It was bad and it was wrong.
The pause went on for too long and again the ticking of the clock on the wall became too loud and annoying.
“What, Hulk? Talk to me!”
He turned and looked into my eyes, causing a new way of nervous shivering. There was something incomprehensible, painful and dreary in them.
“I want you to go back.”
I froze in surprise, trying to understand the meaning of what he just said, and then clarified, “To my room? You want me to move to my little...”
“No, back to Klendon-city.”
The arrow on the clock moved with an unbearably loud sound. And then once again. Pauses between the seconds were stretched into eternities.
“What?!”
“Yes, Shereen, I want you to go back there.”
Something crashed inside of me, like in an old building - the floor collapsed and the ceiling sunk in. How often did I think about my return to Klendon-City, to my shop, to my old friends, to the familiar things I loved so much...Live a normal life again? All these dreams were filled with impatience and happiness, every minute of anticipation was sweet and attractive, so desirable and so unreachable.