Turning away, he took out the sandwich and quickly ate the raw heart himself. Immediately his mouth filled with blood. He ate the black bread with the blood.

“And now I will die,” he thought. “I’m glad at least that I will go first.”

“Can you hear me? Open your eyes!” someone said.

The father opened his eyes with difficulty and saw, as through a fog, the doctor’s blurry face.

“I can hear you,” he said.

“What’s your blood type?”

“The same as my daughter’s.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They carted him away, tied off his left arm, and stuck a needle in it.

“How is she?” asked the father.

“In what sense?” said the doctor, concentrating on his work.

“Is she alive?”

“What d’you think?” the doctor grumbled.

“She’s alive?”

“Lie down, lie down,” the wonderful doctor insisted.

The father lay there-nearby he could hear someone’s heavy breathing-and began to cry.

Then they were working on him, and he was carted off again, and again he was surrounded by green trees, but this time he was woken by a noise: his daughter, on the cot next to him, was breathing in a terribly screechy way, as if she couldn’t get enough air. Her father watched her. Her face was white, her mouth open. A tube carried blood from his arm to hers. He felt relieved, and tried to hurry the flow of blood-he wanted all of it to pour into his child. He wanted to die so that she could live.

Once again he found himself inside the apartment in the enormous gray house. His daughter wasn’t there. Quietly he went to look for her, and searched in all the corners of the dazzling apartment with its many windows, but he could find no living being. He sat on the sofa, then lay down on it. He felt quietly content, as if his daughter were already off living somewhere on her own, in comfort and joy, and he could afford to take a break. He began (in his dream) to fall asleep, and here his daughter suddenly appeared. She stepped like a whirlwind into the room, and soon turned into a spinning column, a tornado, howling, shaking everything around her, and then sunk her nails into the bend in his right arm, under the skin. He felt a sharp pain, yelled out in terror, and opened his eyes. The doctor had just given him a shot to his right arm.

His girl lay next to him, breathing heavily, but no longer making that awful screeching noise. The father raised himself up on an elbow, saw that his left arm was already free of the tourniquet, and bandaged, and turned to the doctor.

“Doctor, I need to make a phone call.”

“What phone call?” the doctor answered. “It’s too early for phone calls. You stay still, or else I’m going to start losing you, too…”

But before leaving he gave the father his cell phone, and the father called home. No one answered. His wife and mother-in-law must have woken up early and gone to the morgue and now must be running around, confused, not knowing where their daughter’s body had gone.

The girl was already better, though she had not yet regained consciousness. The father tried to stay near her in intensive care, pretending that he was himself dying. The night doctor had left already, and the poor father had no money anymore, but they gave him a cardiogram and kept him in intensive care-apparently the night doctor had managed to speak with someone. Either that or there really was something wrong with his heart.

The father considered what to do. He couldn’t go downstairs. They wouldn’t let him call. Everyone was a stranger, and they were all busy. He thought about what his two women must be going through now, his “girls,” as he called them- his wife and mother-in-law. His heart was in great pain. They had put him on a drip, just like his daughter.

He fell asleep, and when he awoke, his daughter was no longer there.

“Nurse, where is the girl who was here before?” he said.

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m her father, that’s what. Where is she?”

“They took her into the operating room. Don’t worry, and don’t get up. You can’t yet.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dear nurse, please call the doctor!”

“They’re all busy.”

An old man was moaning nearby. Next door a resident was putting an old lady through some procedures, all the while addressing her loudly and jocularly, like a village idiot: “Well, grandma, how about some soup?” Pause. “What kind of soup do we like?”

“Mm,” the old woman groaned in a nonhuman, metallic voice.

“How about some mushroom soup?” Pause. “With some mushrooms, eh? Have you tried the mushroom soup?”

Suddenly the old woman answered in her deep metallic bass: “Mushrooms-with macaroni.”

“There you go!” the resident cried out.

The father lay there, thinking they were operating on his daughter. Somewhere his wife was waiting, half-mad with grief, his mother-in-law next to her, fretting… A young doctor checked in on him, gave him another shot, and he fell asleep again.

In the evening he got up and, barefoot, just as he was, in his hospital gown, walked out. He reached the stairs unnoticed and began descending the cold stone steps. He went down to the basement hallway and followed the arrows to the morgue. Here some person in a white robe called out to him:

“What are you doing here, patient?”

“I’m from the morgue,” replied the father. “I got lost.”

“What do you mean, from the morgue?”

“I left, but my documents are still there. I want to go back, but I can’t find it.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re saying,” said the white robe, taking him by the arm and escorting him down the corridor. And then finally he asked: “You what? You got up?”

“I came to life, and there was no one around, so I started walking, and then I decided I should come back, so they could note that I was leaving.”

“Wonderful!” said his escort.

They reached the morgue, but there they were greeted by the curses of the morgue attendant on duty. The father heard him out and said: “My daughter is here, too. She was supposed to come here after her operation.” He told the man his name.

“I tell you she’s not here, she’s not here! They’re all driving me crazy! They were looking for her this morning! She’s not here! They’re driving everyone nuts! And this one’s a mental patient! Did you run off from a nuthouse, eh? Where’d he come from?”

“He was wandering around the hallway,” the white robe answered.

“We should call the guard in,” said the attendant and started cursing again.

“Let me call home,” said the father. “I just remembered-I was in intensive care on the third floor. My memory is all confused; I came here after the explosion on Tverskaya.”

Here the white robes went quiet. The explosion on the bus on Tverskaya had happened the day before. They took him, shivering and barefoot, to a desk with a telephone.

His wife picked up and immediately burst into tears.

“You! You! Where have you been! They took her body, we don’t know where! And you’re running around! There’s no money in the house! We don’t even have enough for a taxi! Did you take all the money?”

“I was-I was unconscious. I ended up in the hospital, in intensive care.”

“Which one, where?”

“The same one where she was.”

“Where is she? Where?” His wife howled.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m all undressed-bring me my things. I’m standing here in the morgue, I’m barefoot. Which hospital is this?” he asked the white robe.

“How’d you end up there? I don’t understand,” his wife said, still weeping.