For four hours, I fought for the life of a five-year-old boy, was late to my own wedding, and twenty people from the groom’s family blocked my way. “Get out, our son has already married someone else!” But when they found out whose child I had saved, everything changed. At five in the morning, the phone shattered the silence of the residents’ lounge, and Taisiya Vishnevskaya jumped up from the sagging sofa, not yet understanding where she was or why her head was buzzing after three hours of fragmented sleep. Outside, there was an impenetrable Dnipro darkness, and in the hallway, gurneys were already rattling, and hurried footsteps could be heard. Someone was shouting “faster, faster” in that special voice used only in emergencies.
She threw on her coat, ran out to the emergency room, and saw the head of the department, Maxim Yuryevich Abramenko, standing at the reception desk with a look on his face that usually accompanies news of a disaster. “Five-year-old, ruptured spleen, car accident on the highway last night,” he said quickly, swallowing the ends of his words. “Everyone’s on calls, Taisiya Sergeyevna, can you handle it?” She nodded without a second’s hesitation, although somewhere in the back of her mind, a thought flashed: the wedding, the banquet hall, her mother, to whom she had promised to be a perfect bride, Regina Valeryevna with her eternal disapproval. “I can,” she replied. “But today you…” Maxim Yuryevich hesitated. “I’ll make it,” she cut him off, already heading towards the operating room.
In the hallway of the surgical department, a large, well-dressed man was pacing, but with the completely lost look of someone whose world had just collapsed. On the gurney lay a boy, so pale from blood loss that he seemed sculpted from wax. Taisiya studied the vitals the nurses handed her as she walked, and a knot of anxiety tightened in her stomach: another ten minutes of delay, and there would be no one left to save. The surgery lasted four hours. Four hours during which nothing existed but the surgical field, the child’s delicate blood vessels, and the monotonous beeping of the equipment.
Her back ached so much she wanted to double over, her neck was drenched in sweat, and by the third hour, her fingers began to tremble treacherously from the strain. But she didn’t allow herself to think about anything but the small body on the table, the torn vessels that needed to be stitched millimeter by millimeter with the precise accuracy she had been taught for years. When the anesthesiologist said, “pressure has stabilized,” Taisiya exhaled so deeply it was as if she hadn’t been breathing all those hours herself. “Well done!” Maxim Yuryevich clapped her on the shoulder in the hallway as she pulled off her gloves and mask. “You saved the boy. Now run to your wedding.”
Nurse Irina Shevchenko caught up with her at the residents’ lounge and thrust a phone into her hands. The screen was filled with missed calls from unknown numbers, undoubtedly from the groom’s relatives who had already gathered at the banquet hall and were waiting for the bride. “At least twenty people called,” Irina said sympathetically. “But today you… I know, thank you,” Taisiya didn’t call back; explaining over the phone was pointless, and there was no time. She changed right there in the lounge, fastening the buttons of her wedding dress with fingers stiff from exhaustion, fumbling with the tiny hooks on the back. The dress was simple, without crinolines or embroidery; she had chosen it specifically so she could put it on herself, without help, and now she was grateful for that foresight.
There wasn’t a minute left for makeup. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, wiped her face with wet wipes, trying to somehow pull herself together after four hours in surgery, and ran to the parking lot to her old car, which, thankfully, started on the first try. On the way across the city, from Polya Avenue to the center, she mentally rehearsed her explanation for Regina Valeryevna, her future mother-in-law. Even in the best of times, this woman looked at her as an annoying misunderstanding, a random obstacle in the life of her precious son. Arkady will understand, Taisiya convinced herself, maneuvering through traffic, changing lanes, he himself said he was proud of my work, he’ll take my side…
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