Anastasia Kuznetsova - Fire Smoldering Under Water стр 10.

Absurdity of the situation had brought such a compilation of emotions and feelings, that to Anastasia, who was a psychologist at the moment, not yet a surgeon, but already a great experimenter, all this seemed to be a bad dream. Viscous, stifling nightmare as it happens sometimes when you cannot wake up.

Because just yesterday she had been brought by the ambulance to the hospital and was told that her waters had started to break. But, despite such period of pregnancy  6.5 months  nobody would try to change anything.

Thus she was told.

Nobody would.

Because, from their point of view, the term was too small. The chances that a child could be born alive, in their opinion, also were too small. And anyway, why did she bother them with some stupid junk and diverted the whole medical team from celebrating the anniversary of their best gynecologist. They had got a table set there. Vodka was getting warm. And you, girl, has to hang on, it happens like this. You already have a child.

So. It means that you are lucky.

Others have not got even this.

Everything was happening in such an unreal world, that she took a sharp pain when breathing in and lost her mind when breathing out. She kept breathing this way, filling every cell of her body, spirit and mind with a painful insanity.

It all happened too fast. Just last morning she woke up in an excellent mood. Her caring husband had got their daughter to stay for a while with his mother, who lived in the next building, and went to his work. Anastasia went to the kitchen and came close to the window. She always liked to look through the window.

Outside autumn was getting weird.

On the bank of the river, which flowed under the window, reeds competed with fallen poplar leaves. The reeds tried to show up against the background of already dimming water with a row of brown cobs. It provided a contrast to a slate-gray shade of the river water. The river, in gratitude, added some more profound shades of mercury in the slate-gray color. The leaves of the poplars, sparsely growing along the river bank, were carried away by the breath of the autumn wind and tried to get into water. Their pale yellow worthlessness enlivened the landscape in the most paradoxical way.

Looking into this autumn river-filled November, she wanted to wrap herself up in a plaid and to fall asleep. Till spring. To hibernate for the whole winter as a she-bear. To wake up in spring, give birth to her bear cub and begin living. It would be then, when her Mishenka was born, that the happiness would become absolute and obtain some universal scale.

How else could it be? As so much was already in place for that.

She had a beloved husband, the second one, which meant that with him they should definitely live long, happily and the covers of their coffins would be nailed with one and the same nail. Because with so much love people not only live happily ever after, but also die in one day. This was an obligatory condition.

Her beloved daughter, clever, beautiful, her small panthers kitten with the name of a goddess, her Diana. Her first husbands appearance, who looked very much like Steven Seagal, was reflected in Diana by its best features. She was tall, with long, coal-black hair; beautiful, dark hazel, almost black eyes, with ideal face features and a slender figure  Anastasia new that she was growing to be a beauty and a clever girl. With a very kind heart and a delicately organized soul. She was excellent in her studies, was a winner of academic competitions. Kind, sensitive, delicate in her attitude to and her perception of the world, like a crystal bell. What else could a mother dream of?

And her mother dreamed of a brother for her wonderful little daughter. The power of her each previous dreaming was so strong, that all the dreams came true. Every objective had usually been achieved. The desire reigned over the achievement of the goal. So this time also the understanding of her own forcefulness continued to cultivate a selective form of vanity and pride.

She got a great temptation  to feel herself as God

But Life and Death  are Gods Providence. And this had become her first doze of pure medical alcohol, drunk to the bottom from the Holy Grail, at a long rest break on the scenic road of the psychotherapy skills

It was a night. The hospital walls had become saturated with sufferings and lost their distinctness. It had been 12 hours already, during which the smell of insanity accrued and became stronger. An animal fear was spreading in her chest and stomach, mixed with the pain of the increasing intensity of the labor. She was in pain.

It was so much pain that she wanted to scream.

The doctor on duty was sitting in the staff room, drinking vodka with other participants and colleagues of the hero of the anniversary. He had waved aside the request for alleviation of pain and with a poorly controlled tongue mumbled something about the damage caused by an anesthetization. And had not even bothered to give just a pill. Just any pill. Even a placebo.

Anastasia went out into the corridor, to the stairs, where it was allowed to smoke, taking out of the pocket of the hospital gown her cigarettes and a memo pad. They did not give painkillers here. But they did not prohibit smoking in a stairwell. Nobody cared about anything here.

Well, at least she got something.

She did not manage to light up a cigarette right away  her hands had already ceased to obey, and they quivered, reflecting the internal tremor of her consciousness. She wanted so much to write something. Her soul demanded a catharsis. Just a small but tangible proof that her mind was still fighting for the adequate perception of reality.

Outside the window the first snow fell. This was early for the end of November in a southern city. If snow ever fell here, it was likely to happen in the middle of winter, or even closer to its end. The snow was scanty, as were the colors of this last autumn month. But it was there.

Anastasia looked at it through her pain and through the dirty glass of the hospital window, thinking that it might be a sign. She tried to reason. This was a specific attempt to obtain hope for a further self-consciousness, which simply might never come. In case her psyche was not be able to go through the trauma.

She opened the memo pad, and holding a pencil in cold trembling fingers, she tried to catch some signs of destiny, poetry and drops of sense.

It was somehow disturbing outside. Using a pool stick, the wind pushed and knocked young snow, rolling it into billiard balls, which fell to pieces like shortbread biscuits. As if nature itself compassionately played up in unison to a strange and frightening tragedy, which was acted out on a green cloth of the billiard table of Her Majesty Destiny.

At some point her consciousness changed the form of perception; the level of control and criticism went down to the water line between the Ego body and the Id bottom. The ship became unstable despite the fact that the Alter-Ego sails had not been lowered yet. Suddenly her fingers became firm, the tremor stopped and the graphite turned into a scribbler. Anastasia new this state. While in this state, she used to write poems in her childhood and youth. And now this would happen again

Anastasia lit up another cigarette, convulsively filling herself one last time with the memories of the bloodline force. And she remembered herself  as a memory of the past. As if she remembered herself is some parallel reality, as if she had already gone through all that, which she still had to go through.