He stepped courteously aside as she and her son came out of the room, but she paused to talk to him. 'Vassili got him to eat nearly all of his lamb.' She reported the small triumph with unreasoning hope shining through the desperation in her eyes. 'I minced it up for him first. I tasted it myself; it was really quite good.'
'They feed us well here,' Sheranchuk agreed. Then he said, 'Mrs. Smin? I've been wondering if having me here in the room isn't really a bit too much for him.'
'No, no, Leonid! He is grateful for your company. Don't think he hasn't told us how much you do for him.'
'I wish I could do more!'
'You do everything anyone ever could,' Selena Smin said firmly. 'I think he will sleep now, and so we will leave him for a bit in your good hands.'
'Thank you,' Sheranchuk said, awkward as he wondered whether to shake her hand or not, but she setded the matter by leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. He gazed after her admiringly and hardly noticed when a doctor came up to him, hooded, booted, and robed in white. When the physician addressed him by name, Sheranchuk was astonished to find that she was his wife.
Tamara Sheranchuk reached up to kiss her husband, a feathery, distant kiss on his cheekbone — as much as was advisable, he knew, since even the tiny salt flakes from his sweat might also be radioactive, not to mention his saliva if they had kissed on the lips. 'Isn't this great luck?' she cried in delight. 'How am I here? Well, partly because my own count is a bit low, and partly because I am to learn how they test blood to determine the extent of radioactivity — just for forty-eight hours, I'm afraid. But most of all, I am here because you are here, my dear, and I asked for permission.'
Sheranchuk looked at her in distress. 'Your count is low?'
'Oh, quite marginal,' she assured him. 'No, my dear, it is you who are the patient here, not I. I have had a look at your charts with the other doctors. They're a bit puzzling.'
'So they have told me. I am not as sick as I ought to be.'
'Did they explain to you about Dr. Guskova's system? Since we don't know how much radiation you received, she has worked out a method of deducing it from the way your blood count falls off— '
'I have heard everything there is to hear about Dr. Guskova's system. But she did not tell me how much of a dose that was, and neither did anyone else.'
Tamara hesitated. 'Perhaps one hundred rads,' she said reluctantly. 'It is possible that it is more.'
'And that means?' he demanded.
'In your case, my dear,' she said, 'it is difficult to say.'
'I see,' he said, thinking. Then, remembering how she had appeared from nowhere and made him put on coveralls, 'It would have been more if it hadn't been for you.'
'So I am good for something as a wife,' she said. It was a light remark, but her tone was not light. He opened his mouth to ask if anything was wrong, but she was going right on: 'Deputy Director Smin may not have had much more, but as you see, he is very ill and you are — not?'
'I feel all right,' he said, stretching the truth. In fact, he felt tired much of the time and sometimes a bit feverish. But nothing like Smin, of course.
His wife sat down next to him on the bed, prepared to lecture. 'The etiology of radiation sickness,' she said, 'is quite well known. Simyon Mikhailovitch doesn't fit the curve. He is getting worse faster than he should. He —'
Suddenly remembering, she glanced apprehensively at the closed curtains. 'He's asleep,' Sheranchuk assured her. 'I heard him snoring a minute ago.'
'Well,' she said, lowering her voice, 'your blood count is not dropping off as fast as his, or many of the others.'
'Doctor talk again,' he complained. 'Which means what?'
'Which means we don't know what,' she said. 'Perhaps it means that all of your exposure was from external sources— dust and smoke on your skin, that was washed off. Smin, on the other hand, may actually have swallowed some, or breathed it. The radioisotopes are still in his body.'
Sheranchuk was puzzled. 'But I was exposed as much as he! I was in the area longer, even; he was away when the explosion occurred. We breathed the same air, ate the same food—'
'But such a little difference can make such a big effect, Leonid. You were within buildings much of the time. He may have been outside. It could be as small a thing as a stack of bread that was left too long on a table. Perhaps he had the top slice, and you only one from lower down.'
Sheranchuk said, making his tone calm, 'Does that mean that I will—'
He didn't finish the sentence. 'It means that your chances are better,' she said; and then, strongly, 'Leonid! I think you will recover completely!'
Sheranchuk turned and raised himself on an elbow to study his wife. He had never been her patient before, except now and then for a headache or a sore wrist. Was this how she always talked to those under her care? It was not at all the same free and easy way they spoke in their kitchen, or their bed.
'You do go on talking like a doctor,' he complained.
'But, Leonid, I am a doctor. And, oh,' she went on, 'I'm sure of it! Especially with those American doctors here! You would not believe how good they are! Just this morning the hospital centrifuge broke down, and in just a few hours they had packed everything up and moved it to another facility. And their own instruments! They have a machine, you put into it a sample of blood, whisk, click, and in just a few seconds you have a blood cell count printed out, with every number! While for us it is necessary to put each blood sample under a microscope and someone must count every individual cell — half an hour at least, and after a technician has counted a dozen samples his eyes are weary and his attention flags, and how likely it is to make mistakes!'
'That sounds wonderful,' said Sheranchuk.
She pursed her lips, preparing to announce some surprising news. 'And did you know, Leonka, that one of them is not an American at all, but from Israel?'
That was astonishing; Israel and the USSR had no diplomatic relations at all. Therefore no Israeli citizen could possibly get a visa to enter the Soviet Union — unless, of course, someone very high up ordered that the laws be forgotten for this case. 'That is even more surprising than a machine,' he conceded. 'Still, we've given the Israelis plenty of people, they can lend us one in return.'
'The American doctor even said that in his country a hospital like this would be air-conditioned!'
'The Americans,' Smin grinned, 'will be air-conditioning their cars next.' His arm was getting tired. He sank back on his bed, curled facing his wife as she went on describing the technological wonders that had flown in from California. Her manner was, after all, a bit puzzling. He welcomed the conversation because he didn't have many visitors and it was tiring to hold a book to read, but were these the subjects a wife would normally discuss under these circumstances? Was it possible she was keeping something from him? What could it be? 'What about Boris?' he asked suddenly.
She broke off. 'Boris?' she said, as though trying to recall who he was talking about. 'Well, yes. It is a pity, but his cells do not match yours. Still, you may not need a transfusion at all—'
'I already know that,' he grumbled. 'I was asking if you had heard from him since he left.'
'Oh, but of course I have,' she said penitently. 'He has been evacuated to the Artek camp — on the Black Sea — the very best Komsomol camp in the whole country, and it's all free for him.'
'I have been told that too. I asked if you had heard from the boy himself.'
'Certainly! Oh! I was forgetting — he even sent some photographs — look,' she said, fumbling some out of her bag, 'these were taken on a trip to Yalta.' While Tamara was proudly telling him how Boris was actually learning to ride a horse, Sheranchuk gazed at the color prints. There was Boris on a beach, his arm on the shoulder of another teenage boy Sheranchuk had never seen before. Both were in swim trunks, grinning into the camera. Behind them was a gaggle of stout, middle-aged women in bikinis, industriously tossing a volleyball. One had a huge caesarean scar across her belly.
'Can you trust him around such bathing beauties as these?' Sheranchuk smiled.
She took the pictures back, studying them for a moment before putting them away. 'In a summer camp one can be tempted,' she sighed.
Sheranchuk smiled a real smile. That at least was more like the old Tamara. 'Or in a hospital, perhaps? So you think I am misbehaving with Dr. Guskova? She is a bit old for me, as well as a trifle heavyset for my taste. But there is a nurse on the night duty—'
