If you believe you know the world in absolute truths, life will prove you wrong till you're down on your knees. Forget the mud, forget the stones cutting into your flesh, forget the feeling that the rug has been yanked under your feet.
You know nothing until you're standing over the person you love, unable to do anything to quench their excruciating pain and delirium. Until your fragile mortality stares back at you, and you degenerate into that wretched, helpless state from before you left your mother's womb. The universe will make you realise that you are nothing, over and over again, in fragmented seconds strung together into an endless loop.
Yuri Karamov had broken two ribs, punctured a lung, and dislocated his shoulder all before the weekend of his thirteenth birthday.
I wasn't myself. I was in a perpetual state of shock. At first, I had been a blubbering mess, askingâno, demandingâto be taken in the same ambulance as him. Tugging on my father's trousers like a child, begging from a place of deep despair. I couldn't get the sight of him out of my mind. His agonised screams rung in my ears long after he had passed out. Nature had been our only witness, and when the quietness fell after he'd been carried off on a stretcher, I felt nature's omnipresence suffocating me. The trees' gnarly branches looked ready to seize me and hold me accountable for the lies I had told my father and Mr Benofs in the aftermath.
When I was denied even a hospital visit, when (by some miracle or other) I had made it home without losing my mind, I shattered. I drew into myself. My tears stopped dripping like a leaking faucet and it felt like my whole body withdrew from within me. My snivelling stopped. I was both in myself, but simultaneously looking at myself through an opaque, hazy, mirage.
Only I knew what had truly happened at the Tree. I, therefore, thought that the reason my household was shielding me was that they didn't know. The reason they still loved me and still cared for me was that they didn't know what I had done. I saw it as my duty to the pain that had been etched with naturalistic perfection on Yuri's face to punish myself. Since nobody else knew better to do it themselves.
I was disgusted with myself. I was torn.
Had I really pushed him? Yuri? My best friend. The person I loved equal, if not more than, my own mother? And for what? A kiss. He had only been jesting. He had been angry. Why had I done that?
Time felt elusive. Mjinska had gotten me out of my clothes and into my pyjamas, courtesy of my father's orders. There was no warmth in her motions, just a mechanical force that was driven by sufficiency. She cleaned out the scratch wounds on my arms and legs with a damp cloth. She then darkened the room and told me to try to find some sleep. I might have fallen asleep, I don't recall. I came into myself with a startle. I was back in my room, aware. A second after-wave of shock hit me when I remembered Yuri's face as he was falling. The whole thing played out behind my eyelids like a montage.
My pillow was damp with tears. When had I cried? I couldn't recall. Had I ever stopped?
When I got up and found my way to the kitchen, it was lit and I couldn't tell if it was morning or evening. Petra and Mjinska were engaged in a hushed conversation in Brommin; their backs extended to me. Neither was surprised to find me standing, small and drawn into myself, at the doorframe.
Petra beckoned me inside and wrapped me into her warm embrace. She smelt of baking yeast and spices. I told her that I needed to see Yuri. I couldn't stop my voice from breaking up. The act of stringing words together into cohesive sentences was a laborious task, one that made my head throb. Petra regarded me with compassion. She told me to give it some time, to let Yuri's parents take care of him before we visited. She pulled me tighter into her large bosom and ran a loving hand through my hair. I started crying into her apron. Wracking sobs, that once they were out felt like they would never retreat into the place they had gushed forth from. A dam had broken inside me.
Mjinska came around the table and told me that she would ask Eline to call our driver. Petra said that she would prepare a porridge by soaking some oats and dried fruits. From the haste of their movements, and the way they scurried about in the kitchen, I got the sense that it was late at night, and that it was time for them to clock out. There was nothing to indicate otherwise. The house emanated a ghostly breeze which wafted into the kitchen. The corridors were dead quiet and cast long uncharacteristic shadows. Petra stayed awake with me. She fed me while she swept the floor. She and Mjinska came up with a plan of how we would get to the hospital in case the driver wasn't available. Their enthusiasm, though much appreciated, did little to sooth the storm of conflicting emotions ragging inside me.
I think some part of me knew how futile the Brommian ladies' planning was. I wanted to believe that everything would work out come morning, but I knew better than to allow myself to place too much hope in their words. In our house, my father's say was law, and I knew how my father and Eline felt about what had happened. To them, the accident was as minuscule as a fruit fly on the wall. It didn't so much as dent their plans for the weekend. Petra and Mjinska wouldn't risk losing their jobs, not for me, and certainly not for Yuri Karamov.
There was no driver the following morning. My father had driven himself to work, and Eline had strutted out before I had woken up to meet a hair appointment. Petra and Mjinska were on duty and weren't allowed to leave the house.
When I came downstairs to the dining hall for a late breakfast, Mjinska wouldn't hold my gaze. I didn't dare go see Petra.
My hopes were decimated under the overbearing weight of worry and guilt. I told myself that this is what I deserved. Yuri didn't want to see me. He hated me. I didn't deserve to see him.
Yet still, I found the will, urged by desperation, to go over to my aunt's house. I let myself in and went straight to Adriana's room. She sat together with Viktor, her younger brother. They were playing cards. It was disorienting seeing the two of them have an ordinary Saturday morning. It gave me insight into what an alternative universe could have looked like had the events at the Tree never happened.
- Where's Yuri? Adriana asked. She didn't bother looking up at me from her cards. I glanced at Viktor's hand of three jokers as I walked over to them. Bemused, I thought they must be playing Red Hand Blue Hand.
- Didn't your father tell you? I didn't know why I was surprised, but I was. I thought by then the whole of Dronesk would have known what had happened. Surely, Adriana couldn't be completely oblivious, could she?
- No...What's happened? She asked, her expression revealing the depth of her ignorance. My heart sank like a stone. Of course, Mr Benofs wouldn't have cared about a Brommian boy to have alerted his family to the accident.
- I...I, I faltered, - I pushed him down a tree and now he's in the hospital.
Her eyebrows skyrocketed to her hairline; her eyes were the size of saucers.
- Why would you do that? It almost sounded like she didn't believe me. The longer she took me in, the more her confusion grew.
- We...we fought...and then...then...I pushed him because I was angry.
Had I been angry? I wasn't so sure. I didn't even know what I was standing right then and there. All I knew was an insatiable need clawing at my oesophagus. I needed to see Yuri.
- I need to see him, Adriana. We need to go, but...but...you need to show me the way. We need to go to the hospital right now.
My sight became blurry with unshed tears that I tried to blink away.
Now in retrospect, I realise how blind my faith in my cousin was. She might as well have hung the moon, because I was certain that she could pull off the impossible. She always found a way. She was the one I came to when I needed out of trouble or as in this case, into trouble.
Adriana looked at me with empathetic eyes.
- Is he hurt badly? She asked.
I nodded. I wouldn't have been able to speak without my voice breaking and opening a portal to all the guilt I had sealed between my diaphragm and thymus.
- You know where the hospital is, Ru, she said calmly, like she was soothing a rabid dog. - We can't bike there. Have you asked Aunty to call the driver?
- Do you think she cares? Yuri is hurt and she's out getting her hair cut! A fat drop of tear escaped my left eye and carved a stream down my cheek. I hurriedly swatted it away.
- Ru...then...then have you tried calling his house? He might not be at the hospital. He might be at home.
Adriana's voice was the ray of reason that pierced the dark clouds that fogged my mind. As she said it, I opened my mouth to rebut her, but nothing clever came out. I was forced to digest her words. What if Yuri had actually been discharged and was already at home? My heart leapt up into my throat.
- What if he's already at home? I repeated to myself, bewildered that I hadn't thought of it myself. Without sparing another second, I darted out the door. I heard Adriana's faint laughter filter through just as the door slammed shut behind me.
I ran out of their house. My heart as light as a feather in my chest. I stopped several times on my way to the bicycle shed, making sure I didn't induce an asthma attack. Although I hadn't had an attack in almost a year, I was still careful. I got on my bike and pedalled down the road that forked at the foot of Ljerumlup until I got onto the gravel road to Yuri's house.
The view of the house's white gable greeted me from on top of a small hill. I was shaking like a leave with anticipation when I knocked on their door. I thought I saw Surimna through the window in the kitchen as I rounded the house, but I wasn't sure. Would she be angry to see me? Did they care for me anymore? Had Yuri told them what I'd done?
The door opened and Yuri's mother's weary face greeted me.
- Ru? She said. She looked like the life had been sucked out of her. She wore an oversized knitted cardigan that I had seen on Katka once before. It drowned her frame, making her look even more fragile than normal. I hugged her out of desperation; out of guilt. Her arms came around my body, and I felt her bones through her layered clothes.
I hadn't thought anyone would have been as affected by what had happened as much as I, but obviously, I hadn't spared his mother much thought, or any of his family members for that matter. I had been so preoccupied with myself, that the pain and worry I had caused the people who cared about him the most had evaded my mind. The realisation hit me then, square in the chest. Tears brimmed on my lower eyelids. My heart felt like it would burst from swelling.
- He's not home, Ru. Krié's with him at the hospital. She grabbed hold of my upper arms and took a step back from me. Her sudden withdrawal felt like a slap to the face. I staggered back. Her eyes, so much like her son's, burned fiercely into mine.
- You need to tell me what happened to my boy. Did he really fall off a tree? Did something else happen to him, Ru? He was fine...he was...so excited to go hunting with you when he left yesterday morning. What happened?
Her fingers pressed into my flesh, hard enough to evoke discomfort. If looks could pierce through souls, then Yuri's mother had just disintegrated mine. I didn't know what to tell her that she didn't already seem to know.
I hated that I started crying. At first, no more than a quiver of my lips which I stubbornly thought I could control. Then her gaze had softened, and it undid me. The quiver rippled across my face and then my whole body. The first whimper of a tsunami-like sob escaped me.
- C-c-can I see him, please? I didn't...I..I...We were on the Tree. He fell down. I'm so sorry. I'm-, I sniffed.
Yuri's mother engulfed me in her embrace. She smelt just like him.
I was a complete mess. I was snivelling and getting snot and tears all over her dress. I wasn't making any intelligible sentences. I kept begging to see Yuri. And when she made me look up at herâI saw something. For the first time that day it felt like something might give, and might, despite the horrible wrong I had done him, make my wish come true. A small part of me still thought that I didn't deserve such forgiveness, but it was pushed down and kicked aside by my urgency.
- I'll bring out the scooter, wait for me here, Yuri's mother said before disappearing into the house and calling out to whoever was in there in Brommin. I stood pacing in place, waiting for her to return. When she did, she had a helmet tucked under her arm, dressed in a woolly hat, a jacket, and a clinical face mask that she always wore outside.
I followed her into one of the sheds in their backyard. My nerves fluttered in anticipation. She pulled out a red motor scooter that had seen many miles on the road. It was one of those old sport type models with the raised seat. For a second, I wonder if I would be seated in the front or the back. I got my answered when Yuri's mother got on and beckoned me to sit in front of her. Her arms came around my sides as she gripped the handlebars. With a force that I would have never thought she would be able to muster, she revved the engine with a flick of her wrist. Before I knew it, we were on the bumpy trail, making our way onto the gravel road.
We got on the asphalted main road which morphed with the larger lane taking us downtown. From downtown, we drove what felt closer to an hour, but what couldn't have been more than a quarter hour. We drove past the community in the flatlandsâpast their pastures, and their many livestock and barnsâbefore we got on another road which took us to the industrial district.
The scooter wove through a labyrinth of faceless concrete buildings that felt as far away from Ljerumlup as you could get. The woodland that made up as much of Ljerumlup as it did Dronesk had been cut to clear way for human activity. The roads were vast, designed for trucks and other large transportation vehicles. Tucked away somewhere in the concrete jungle, was a low-rise building. The only sign of it being a hospital was the building's many windows and the two ambulances parked out front.
At first glance, my mind flashed back to my last hospital visit some years prior, a day that I had almost died of dyspnoea when my inhalers had stopped working. I could still recall the smell of disinfectant and coffee that permeated the hallways as if it had been yesterday. My childhood asthma had inured me to the clinical environment of hospitals, but something about the sight of the building that day unsettled me.
We parked to the side, close to the entrance. Yuri's mother guided me inside. She spoke to the receptionist and was told to take the stairs to the third floor. I followed behind her rustling skirts, wide-eyed and observant, as we navigated our way from one ward to the next. They all looked the same to me; the same blue and grey speckled linoleum floors with pointers, and lines, and the same light-coloured wooden doors in the corridors. After some wandering about, we came to the ward where they kept Yuri in wait for his surgery.
Prior to that moment, I hadn't known he had needed surgery. Naively, I had thought that in the worst-case scenario Yuri might have broken his arm, maybe even fractured his leg. Never did it cross my mind that his injuries might require surgery. The severity of the realisation made my stomach churn.
- Ma'am is Yuri getting operated?
Yuri's mother glanced over her shoulder at me.
- Your papa didn't tell you? She wondered, her eyes narrowing. I shook my head at her.
- He's...Yuri's badly hurt. He broke two ribs and hurt his lung. They said he needed surgery to fix the hole.
- What hole? I asked, alarmed.
She was about to answer me when she lost her train of thought to a piece of paper stuck to one of the doors. She halted in her tracks, and I collided into her. She didn't give me a moment to collect myself before she yanked opened the door to Yuri's hospital room.
Krié sat on a chair placed halfway between the side of the bed and the windows. He stared up at what from the entrance looked like the wall, but which upon entering the room I found out was an older television and a VHS set.
The foot of the bed was visible from the threshold, but it was only as we stepped inside that I took it in in its entirety. There, lying propped up by pillows; a baby blue blanket drawn up to his waist, a tube stuck through his nose, was Yuri Karamov, and he was staring right at me.