Her absence brought a kind of uneasy relief, but Ilya Danilovich remained just as grim and skeptical. He clearly wasn’t ready to believe that some random caregiver could be connected to his family, but he tolerated my presence until the lab gave its answer. When I walked into the living room, he was sitting by the window in his wheelchair, his hand already reaching for a heavy crystal decanter.
“Your heart can’t handle alcohol on top of the medication you took this morning, Mr. Sukhogorov,” I said evenly, stepping closer. Before he could reach it, I moved the decanter to a side table across the room. He looked up at me, his eyes cold with irritation.
“You’re here to follow instructions, not show initiative, young lady,” he rasped. “You’re right,” I said, holding his gaze. “And your doctor’s instructions are no alcohol.
Please don’t make my job harder than it has to be.” The old man stared at me for several seconds, as if testing whether I’d back down. I didn’t.
Growing up in an institution had exposed me to harder stares than his. At last he let out a rough breath and leaned back in his chair. “Stubborn,” he muttered, turning toward the window.
“You’re getting a little too comfortable here.” That afternoon I insisted on taking him outside. Despite his grumbling that he had no interest in putting his weakness on display for the grounds crew, I quietly wheeled him out onto the terrace.
We moved down a path lined with linden trees in complete silence. I could see him squinting against the bright sunlight, but little by little his breathing steadied and deepened. “Bossy,” he muttered, though his shoulders loosened a little.
“You really think a few breaths of fresh air will fix an old man who hasn’t seen the point of leaving his room in years?” he asked, and there was a tiredness in his voice that sounded older than his body. I stopped at the edge of the path, adjusted the blanket over his knees, and said, “When I was a kid, I didn’t have much that was mine except the sky overhead and the ability to find something good in small things.
That kept me from falling apart. At the children’s home, we grew flowers on the windowsill in old jars. They didn’t have much room, but they still leaned toward the light.
You could probably use a little of that yourself.” Ilya Danilovich slowly turned his head toward me. He studied my face for a long moment, as if trying to figure out where a twenty-year-old girl got that kind of calm, matter-of-fact confidence.
I could tell he still saw me as an outsider, but the ice in his distrust had begun to crack. “Life hasn’t exactly been easy on you,” he said quietly, and for a moment his face softened. He closed his eyes and let the mild breeze touch his face, and for the first time since I’d arrived in that house, I saw his body relax…
