And they truly did. Without her, many serious patients would simply not have made it. The nearest city hospital was too far away over bad roads, especially in winter.
After seven years of punishing work, she had become the most respected person in Cedar Hollow. People trusted her with their lives more than anyone else. More than once she performed difficult procedures by kerosene lamp when the generator failed.
She delivered emergency babies when there was no time to get women to a maternity ward. She rode horseback to urgent calls in outlying settlements. She stitched up loggers, cared for the elderly, and set broken bones for unlucky hunters.
Nina was a slender brunette with large gray eyes and a serious face. She did not smile often, but her calm voice had a way of settling frightened patients. She had never married.
Not because she didn’t want a family, but because she simply had no time. She worked twenty-hour days and slept on a sagging couch in a cramped on-call room. Most of what she ate came from grateful patients who brought food by the hospital.
She had no real personal life to speak of. The hospital had become her family. Then, on the night of September 14, everything changed. Around three in the morning, a heavyset man with a stab wound was rushed into the ER.
He had lost a great deal of blood and was in serious but stable condition. His face was white as paper as they moved him onto a gurney. He had been brought in by a company truck driver and another man in an old leather jacket.
Nina recognized the patient immediately. It was Arkady Dremov, head of the local logging operation. He was well known in the area and not especially admired. He drank heavily, lived large by local standards, and had connections.
One of his close relatives, Valentin Ganichev, served as deputy head of the local administration. In a town like that, a man with that kind of family backing was close to untouchable. The night watchman who had accompanied him hurriedly told Nina that Dremov had accidentally cut himself while out hunting.
Supposedly he had fallen on his own knife while dressing a moose carcass. Nina gave a short nod and went straight to work preparing him for surgery. At that moment, she had no time for pointless questions.
Her job was to save the life on the table. The operation lasted five grueling hours. Nina worked almost alone, assisted only by an older nurse, Zoya Bulakhova, who had limited training.
She opened the abdominal cavity and immediately found severe internal injuries. She repaired a torn intestine and controlled heavy bleeding from the liver. By eight in the morning, the patient was alive and stable.
And that was when the thing happened that would cost Nina twelve years of freedom. During the procedure, the experienced surgeon had carefully examined the wound edges. She understood at once that this was not some routine hunting accident…
