One word, said without trying to get sympathy. The next morning, Sunday, he got up at seven-thirty, ate breakfast, put on his jacket, and went to the children’s home. Petrovich wasn’t there. Day off.
Victor rang the bell and told the staff member on duty that he had come the day before to fix the fence and had forgotten the key to the tool room. That was a lie. The key was in his pocket.
The staff member let him in without much fuss. He walked down the hallway. Artyom was sitting on the same bench by the window.
When he saw Victor, he didn’t look surprised or excited, as if he had known he would come. He just shifted over a little on the bench to make room. Victor sat down. Again, almost no words, just the two of them side by side, looking out the same window at the same yard.
On the third day he came again. On the fourth too. After a week the caregivers knew him by name. After two weeks the woman at the front desk was leaving a mug of tea for him without asking.
He didn’t notice when it became part of his life. It just did. Every time he thought about what he would do tomorrow, the answer was the same: go to the children’s home. The truth about Artyom, Victor didn’t learn right away.
For about a month he simply came, sat beside him, talked about this and that, sometimes brought something small. Colored pencils, a tangerine, once a little wooden car he bought at a hardware store for a few dollars. Artyom accepted things without ceremony, without exaggerated delight, but not indifferently either.
He just took them, looked them over carefully, and put them away. Like someone who had learned not to waste energy on extra emotion. In early May Victor stayed later than usual.
Artyom was taken away early. He got dizzy right there on the bench. A nurse came and led him off. Victor stayed in the hallway with an empty mug in his hands.
That was when the caregiver, Marina Sergeyevna, the same young, tired woman who had first started leaving him tea, came out to him. She sat across from him, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him directly, not pitying, but not detached either. “You understand what’s wrong with him, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
Victor shook his head. Marina Sergeyevna was silent for a second, then began to speak, evenly, without extra words. Artyom Sokolov had come to the children’s home in March 2002.
He wasn’t even a year old then. His mother had relinquished him at the hospital. Father unknown.
At one of his first routine exams, doctors found a congenital heart defect, a ventricular septal defect with pulmonary hypertension. It sounded like a sentence with a delayed date. In 2003 they took him to a regional medical center for consultation.
The cardiologist spoke carefully. Surgery might be possible, but the risks were high and his body was weak. He said, let’s watch him for a year and see how things develop.
In 2004 they kept watching. In 2005 the same thing. Between the lines of every report, one message was clear.
We’re waiting, but we can’t promise anything. The children’s home knew it. Prospective adoptive parents found out too and walked away.
Some right away, some after a second visit, once they were handed the medical file and saw how thick it was. Victor listened in silence. “How long do they give him?” he asked.
Marina Sergeyevna looked away. A year earlier the cardiologist had said, “A year, maybe two.” “Without surgery.”
“With surgery, we don’t know. Too risky right now.” Victor nodded and stood up.
He thanked her for the tea and left. He didn’t talk about it with Petrovich. Didn’t talk about it with Nina Stepanovna. Didn’t talk about it with anybody. He just went to work, welded metal, came home, ate supper.
But now every night before sleep he saw one image in his mind. A boy on a bench by the window, feet not touching the floor, and that calm, grown-up way of saying one word without explanation: heart. Two weeks later Victor came to Petrovich.
They were sitting in the factory cafeteria. Petrovich was eating buckwheat and a cutlet. Victor just held his mug. He said without preface that he wanted to know what it would take to bring Artyom home. “Artyom.”
Petrovich set down his fork. Looked at him for a long moment. “You understand that he…”
“I understand.” Petrovich rubbed his forehead. “Paperwork goes through child services.”
“You need an application, background checks, housing of your own or at least a long-term lease. References. A criminal record check.” He said the last part quietly, without looking Victor in the eye.
They both knew that was the part that would shut the door before it ever opened. Victor finished his drink. “Got it,” he said, and went back to work.
By late May he had gathered everything he could gather, arranged an official lease with his landlady, got a reference from work. The foreman wrote it short but strong, without extra flourishes. He ordered a medical clearance.
And the criminal background report too. He looked at it for a long time, then slipped it into the folder with the rest. The county child welfare office was in a gray two-story government building with institutional curtains in the windows.
Victor came at one in the afternoon on public office day and took a number. He waited forty minutes. Raisa Gennadyevna Cherepnova saw visitors at a desk with neat stacks of folders laid out in front of her.
About fifty-five, glasses on a chain, dark cardigan with a brooch. Her face wasn’t unkind, just practiced. The face of someone who had made so many decisions about other people’s lives that she no longer saw them as lives…
