– «Hey, move over!» – a childish voice, like a silver bell, rang out.
That ringing call instantly pulled Anastasia out of the depths of her heavy thoughts, forcing her to step aside. A little boy, dressed in a gray tracksuit and a white jacket, zipped past her like a tiny tornado. Nastya struggled to regain her breath, disrupted by the surprise, adjusted the bag on her shoulder, and continued on her way.
– «Oh, how good it is to be a teenager,» she thought with a hint of envy, mentally transporting herself back to the carefree years of her youth.
What worries did she have back then? Schoolwork and plans for how to have more fun on the weekends. And she, silly girl, had dreamed of growing up as quickly as possible! Remembering her parents, who had long since passed away, Nastya completely lost her composure.
– «I can’t wait to get home,» she muttered under her breath, «to cry my heart out if I must.»
And just moments ago, the chief physician had scolded her so severely that it seemed like the perfect time to write a resignation letter.
– «The best thing I can do for you,» declared the boss, «is to offer you the opportunity to resign voluntarily.»
And all because Nastya had refused to prescribe an ineffective medication to a severely ill child suffering from days of vomiting!
– «My dear old man will probably threaten to tear my head off, and as for me, a little orphan, they could just kick me out – no one will even stand up for me,» Anastasia bitterly reflected.
Evgeny Vasilievich, the pediatrician, had prescribed enzymes for the little one, insisting he had acute pancreatitis.
– «Acute pancreatitis in a three-year-old? What is he, a veteran alcoholic, or did he devour greasy pork with spoons? Such a disease is exceedingly rare in little ones, and certainly, enzymes aren’t the treatment – especially when the stomach has been empty for days!» Anastasia fumed. «Let’s wait for the test results,» she suggested, but the pediatrician objected again.
At that point, Nastya couldn’t hold back:
– «Go to your own children’s ward and call the shots there! This is my territory!» she shouted, and the nurses of the infectious diseases department hurriedly disappeared into the nurses’ station.
Nastya had been working as a doctor at the city infectious disease hospital for several years. Her life seemed to have settled into a routine: work, home, books, and rare meetings with a friend. No new experiences, no new acquaintances.
– «Maybe I should get a kitten?» she thought. «Or a hamster? At least someone to wait for me at home.»
But she immediately dismissed the idea. Yeah, first a kitten, then a cat, and before you know it – like Aunt Vera with her twenty cats, a blue stocking.
Aunt Vera, the downstairs neighbor, often brought her pets for a check-up.
– «Vera Andreevna, how many times must I repeat? I’m an infectiologist, not a veterinarian! I don’t understand a thing about feline diseases!» Nastya would say, but the old lady was unyielding.
– «How can that be? Are feline ailments any more complicated than human ones? Look, maybe you’ll find something?»
Nastya sighed, took another kitten into her arms, and carefully examined it. As usual, she found either a bloated belly, a broken claw, or a bitten ear.
– «See, I told you you’d manage!» the neighbor rejoiced, having received some recommendations for her beloved pet.
Then Aunt Vera disappeared, and all her cats vanished. At that time, Nastya was in town, attending advanced training courses at the regional center. When she returned, new tenants—a young couple—had already moved into Vera Andreevna’s apartment.
Once again, Nastya adjusted the bag on her shoulder and suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the direction of the river along which she was walking. At first, she thought it was a kitten squeaking, accidentally stranded on a fragment of ice that still floated by in some places despite the unusually warm April. She craned her neck, trying to see something in the water. At this time, the river usually overflowed and flooded the banks. It seemed to her that an upside-down boat was lying on the beach, and the sound was coming from there.
Nastya walked toward the boat, but when she got closer, she involuntarily recoiled and crossed herself. On the sand lay not a boat – but a real wooden coffin, unpainted and unlined with fabric.
It nearly knocked the wind out of her! The last time she had seen a coffin so close was when she was burying her parents, who had died in a car accident. Then, some distant relatives, who handled the funeral arrangements, had taken her along to a funeral home and offered her a choice of a final resting place for her parents. That painful memory had deeply etched itself into her mind. And now, before her, lay this ghastly object, inside of which someone was clearly squeaking or crying.
Nastya looked around, trying to find an iron rod or at least a sturdy stick to pry the lid open. It was evident that the coffin wasn’t nailed shut; it had simply settled tightly into its grooves. Finally, her gaze fell on a rusty, hole-riddled shovel. She wedged it under the lid and forcefully pried it open.
– «Help!» – a childish voice cried out from inside.
Nastya tossed the lid aside and pulled a girl of about seven years old out onto the sand, cold, wet, and frightened.
– «How did you get here?» Nastya asked.
– «I hid from the police; they were trying to catch me because I stole a bun,» the girl sobbed. «And some tea… and sleep…» she listed her simple wishes.
Nastya was moved to tears. She removed her jacket, wrapped the little one up, and said:
– «Come on, I’m hungry too, and I want to have tea with a bun.»
On the way, they got acquainted. The girl’s name was Inga. She didn’t remember her parents. She had been sent to an orphanage, but she decided to run away because she disliked everything about the new place: the new caregivers, the unfamiliar children. At first, Inga managed to get to her native orphanage and told the guard that she was home, but for some reason the adults weren’t happy about her return and called a psychologist, who spent several hours insisting that the girl should stay at the orphanage.
Then Inga ran away again, got to the train station, and boarded a bus that was headed in that direction. She had never been to such a place before: crowds of people, noisy trains, pushing and shoving. But she got very hungry, so she chose the most appetizing, the fluffiest bun from a vendor’s stall and immediately took a bite. A woman shrieked, called the police, and Inga realized – she needed to run. She lost her bun, the laces on her shoes came undone, and she almost ended up barefoot.
– «So how did you end up in that horrible box?» Nastya inquired.
– «I kept running and running, and then I smelled familiar sawdust. In our orphanage, they sprinkled it on the playground. I stopped, and there I saw a shed with its gates wide open, and they were taking these boxes out and loading them into a van. And I thought, ‘What if I leave?’ So I jumped inside before anyone noticed. And to avoid being found, the men hid me in one of the boxes. Then the van started moving, I fell asleep, and I woke up only when my box was falling somewhere. There must have been an accident, and all the boxes were dumped out. I was so scared!» the girl recounted with eyes burning. «Aunt Nastya, I even fell into the water with that box!»
Nastya gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
– «Yes, it suddenly became so cold that I couldn’t feel my teeth! And then water began seeping through the gaps, and I heard what sounded like crashing waves, and it washed me onto the shore. I tried to get out, but the lid wouldn’t budge!»
The girl burst into tears again, and Nastya held her tightly.
– «Oh, my poor dear! And I thought my own fate was difficult enough!»
The living room in Nastya’s apartment was filled with sunlight streaming through a large south-facing window. The woman immediately set the kettle and a saucepan with chicken broth on the stove, and filled a bathtub with fragrant pink foam for Inga. – «Wow! Is that really a bathtub?» the girl asked in awe. «Oh, I’ve always dreamed of splashing around in one!»
– «And where are your parents?» Nastya asked.
Inga, carefully chewing on a cheese sandwich, just shrugged.
– «The caregiver said that my mom brought me to the orphanage herself. And dad…» the girl shrugged again.
Nastya couldn’t shake off Inga’s story. The girl clearly had a foreign last name – Als, and her appearance was unusual: almost black, deep-set eyes and light, curly hair.
– «I need to take a day off work,» Nastya thought, «and start processing the adoption documents. Our meeting was surely not a coincidence.»
She called her friend:
– «Olya, listen, there’s something going on… No, everything’s fine, wait, don’t interrupt!»
Nastya told her how she had found Inga and under what circumstances. Olya patiently listened to her friend’s sighs and exclamations of shock, and then asked:
– «Does your Vadik’s institute by any chance have a vacancy for a lab technician?» Olya promised to talk to her husband about the documents for the girl and added immediately: «Listen, bring your Inga over to my place; I’m doing an inventory at home and wanted to donate some children’s clothes. Maybe we’ll find something suitable for her.»
Olya was on maternity leave with her third child, so she was practically always available.
– «Pocket phones are made exactly for that—to be carried around at all times,» she loved to repeat.
After visiting Olya, Inga returned home, dressed in an almost new denim jacket with white fur, corduroy pants with suspenders, sneakers with LED lights, and a pristine white cap – a real model for a children’s fashion magazine! Nastya walked beside her, carrying two checkered bags full of new clothes, and was delighted. – «Isn’t she a princess?» she thought.
Then, at home, she began gathering the adoption documents and scrolled through a huge stream of job vacancies. But in the evening, Olya called:
– «My friend, you’re incredibly lucky! Vadik’s institute actually needs a senior lab technician in the virology department. They’re paying more than in the hospital, and there’s much less work. So they’re expecting you tomorrow! And you can bring Inga to my place in the meantime.»
– «Not Inga, but Inga,» Nastya corrected her.
But Olya just smirked:
– «What’s the difference? She’s a good girl; I’d adopt her myself if I could, honestly!»
Amazingly, the adoption process took Nastya a full seven months! The guardianship and custody authorities, like stubborn bureaucrats, kept trying to deny her, saying, «Where have we ever seen a single woman raise a child?» But in the end, the argument about Nastya’s medical education, which guaranteed a stable income, outweighed all the objections.
And the documents for Inga took even longer. They had been gathering dust in the boarding school from which the girl had run away, and the institution, without much thought, had filed a missing persons report with the police. But once all the obstacles were cleared, Inga finally moved into Nastya’s apartment as her daughter.
Her new «mother»—perhaps from joy, perhaps out of habit—often called her «kitten,» recalling how she had wanted to get a pet to ease her loneliness, and fate had given her an entire daughter.
One day Inga returned from school, bent over with stomach pain. She barely crawled to the sofa and, without even undressing, curled up into a ball.
– «Mom, I think I got a bad sausage at school,» the girl whimpered, and then immediately vomited.
Nastya, feeling Inga’s forehead, grabbed the phone and called an ambulance. In the children’s ward where Inga was taken, they immediately waved her off due to the severe vomiting:
– «What? We don’t admit patients with such symptoms! Go to the infectious disease department!»
Reluctantly, Nastya had to drag poor Inga to another building. There, the girl was immediately hooked up to an IV. Of course, Nastya was not allowed to stay with her daughter. – «That’s not allowed, Anastasia Valeryevna, you know,» the new head of the infectious disease department said sadly, «only infants are allowed to lie with their mothers.»
Nastya nodded and asked when the test results would be ready.
– «By tomorrow at lunch. Come over, and we’ll set a diagnosis and decide on treatment.»
The next day, after noon, Nastya arrived at the hospital and sat on a small sofa in the lobby, her heart pounding like a caged bird.
– «Lord, please, not hepatitis!» she prayed, knowing that liver inflammation was a life sentence.
Suddenly, the front door opened, and Nastya saw the pediatrician, Evgeny Vasilievich, who, without glancing around, hurried toward the staircase. Nastya’s heart beat even faster.
– «Oh, here he comes again to give his ridiculous advice!» she thought, and began pacing in the lobby.
A nurse at the first desk, glancing at her sideways, loudly said:
– «Madam, don’t worry, Sergey Vitalievich is an excellent doctor; he’ll cure your little girl!»
– «What?» Nastya didn’t understand, distracted by her own thoughts.
– «I’m telling you, Sergey Vitalievich can handle any ailment!»
– «Yes, yes, I know, we’re colleagues, I just don’t understand why Evgeny Vasilievich came here?»
Nastya grew even more anxious, but then noticed that Evgeny was dashing down the stairs, leaping over steps.
– «Anastasia Valeryevna!» he almost shouted, «is that you, the mother of Inga?»
– «Yes,» she replied with difficulty, trying to keep calm, «what’s the matter?»
She braced herself to hear anything—even the darkest prognosis—but not what he said in the next moment:
– «Nastya, you won’t believe it… it seems Inga is my daughter!»
He rushed to her, embraced her with trembling arms—whether from laughter or tears, she couldn’t tell—and then looked straight into her eyes.
– «Her last name was…» Anastasia finally managed to reply, stunned, «Als.»
– «That’s her mother’s surname, Agnes. She didn’t want to give Inga my surname. And then, when the girl turned three, she ran away from me. A few days later, Agnes called and said, ‘You can stop looking for us; we’re in Europe now.’ I don’t know how I ever got over it…» Evgeny fell silent, as if trying to digest the memories.
– «Wait, if Agnes took Inga to Europe, how did she end up in an orphanage in a neighboring region?» asked Nastya.
– «It’s simple. At customs, she was refused exit without the father’s consent. Without much thought, she took the girl to the first orphanage she found and abandoned her there. Can you imagine the level of treachery? Alright, I was unloved, our family was despised, but how could she do that to her own daughter?» Evgeny waved his hand, his shoulders trembling once more.
Nastya couldn’t utter a word from shock.
– «I was called here by Sergey Vitalievich,» Evgeny continued, «he said just pop in for a minute; the case was clear enough, so no examination was necessary, just to keep the protocol. So I came. And when I saw her… she was the spitting image of Agnes! Then it turned out her name was Inga, and I understood everything… she’s mine!»
Nastya froze, lowering her gaze. What was he trying to say? How should she understand – «mine»? Could he really be planning to take away her one joy, her little treasure who had been calling her mom for almost a year? Why was this man, once again, standing in her way and threatening her happiness?
Evgeny, seemingly realizing her dismay, immediately grabbed both her hands.
– «Yes, I was wrong! Forgive me, for goodness’ sake! That boy’s diagnosis was indeed exactly what you suspected. That’s why we used your treatment plan. After that incident, I wanted to call you and apologize, but…»
– «But apologizing to a rootless female doctor is not in your rules?» she snapped, looking him straight in the eyes.
– «Why are you like that?» Evgeny lowered his eyes. «It just seemed strange after you lost your position, and instead, Sergey was appointed. By the way, he, too, is trying to treat children without my involvement… But I’m not such a bad doctor!»
Nastya didn’t know what to say. At that moment, it was more important for her to be sure that Evgeny wouldn’t intrude on the peaceful life she had built with Inga or make her daughter suffer or cry.
– «And how exactly do you intend to help Inga?» she asked.
– «Don’t you know how much a little girl needs? I’ll ensure she has the very best!»
– «Please, don’t do that!» Nastya cut him off sternly. «Right now, Inga is a golden child – modest, grateful, affectionate. And your overbearing care will ruin her. No, I won’t let you do that!»
– «But listen, don’t you have any right to refuse a biological father?» Evgeny’s voice, contrary to expectations, sounded not threatening but pleading. «At least allow me to see her!»
He uttered the last phrase in such a broken tone that Nastya couldn’t hold back.
– «Alright, many families live with an intermittent father. I’ll talk to Inga and tell her that you unexpectedly showed up. But let’s wait until she recovers; I still don’t know what’s wrong with her.»
– «She’ll be fine,» Evgeny suddenly reassured her, «just a common rotavirus, a disease of unclean hands. So in a week or two, she’ll be off to school again.»
The doctor embraced Nastya again, holding her close.
– «Thank you, Anastasia Valeryevna!»
– «For what?» she asked, genuinely surprised.
– «For not chasing me away and for listening. And most of all—for saving my daughter!»
He stepped back, bowed, and left the lobby. Nastya still caught the lingering scent of his cologne and felt anxious, remembering how tightly he had embraced her.
– «What tangled fates we have!» she thought, «And how will I ever explain this to Inga?»
Returning home, Nastya saw a courier at the door with a huge bouquet of pink roses. Noticing the lady of the apartment, the young man said:
– «How wonderful that I caught you! Otherwise, I’d have had to come back again; I was told to deliver this personally.»
He handed her the flowers and a receipt. She mechanically signed for them and timidly asked:
– «Who is the sender?»
– «There’s a note inside!» the courier shouted, hurrying down the stairs.
At home, Nastya placed the flowers in a vase and retrieved the note: «You didn’t forbid spoiling your daughter, but you didn’t forbid spoiling yourself either. Zhenya.»
For some reason, the note irritated Nastya.
– «What kind of lordly games is this? Has he decided to win my favor? Does he think I’ll melt and give him my daughter? But nothing of the sort will happen!»
She decided that next time, if such an event occurred, she would refuse any gifts and send them back. But in the evening the phone rang.
– «Nastya,» Evgeny said in a soft voice, «have you already spoken with Inga?»
– «Evgeny Vasilievich, it seems we agreed to wait until she recovered, or do you have a short memory?»
The remark was too sharp, yet Evgeny didn’t seem embarrassed at all, merely smiling:
– «Well, why all the hostility? I’d really like to talk.»
Nastya suddenly felt ashamed. She imagined what would have happened if her own child had gone missing and she hadn’t known for years. And now he had been found, and she couldn’t even hug him. Perhaps this was too harsh a trial for any parent. Nastya sighed and resolved to act. She called Inga in the hospital and began the difficult conversation.
– «Kitten, you know that no one can be born without a mom and a dad, right?» she began.
The daughter looked at her in surprise.
– «Of course, they told us that at school.»
– «Well then… sometimes there are cases when parents lose their children for various reasons. That’s what happened with your dad. Your mom took you and planned to run far away, and then…» Nastya faltered, not knowing how to continue, «then something happened to her, and you ended up in an orphanage. And your dad knew nothing about it.»
Inga listened, holding her breath. When she heard about the orphanage, she frowned:
– «And why didn’t dad look for me?»
The question nearly caught Nastya off guard, and she blurted out the first thing that came to mind:
– «Because they told him that you had died. And your mom…» she left the sentence unfinished.
– «No wonder I don’t love them,» the little girl grumbled, staring at Nastya with her dark brown eyes once again.
– «And then… then… yesterday your dad accidentally saw you in a hospital ward and recognized you. He said, ‘That’s my Inga!'»
– «Is that the doctor who came to see me, and then grabbed his head and ran off?»
– «Yes! His name is Evgeny Vasilievich, he…»
The girl clapped her hands at first, but then suddenly became thoughtful again.
– «So, will you give me to him?»
Nastya couldn’t hold back and burst into tears:
– «Oh, my dear, how could I? I love you so much! But your dad… he loves you too, you understand? He missed you terribly and wants to hold you.»
– «Mom, don’t cry,» Inga wiped her tears with her little hand, and they embraced tightly.
At that moment, Sergey Vitalievich approached them, handing over a sheet with prescriptions and a note for school. Then the door swung open, and Evgeny Vasilievich, striding briskly, nearly ran past them to the second floor, holding a pink bouquet and a pretty box with a toy.
Evgeny entered the ward and smiled broadly:
– «Inga! Nastya! May I come in?»
– «You may, I’ve told her everything,» Nastya replied.
The man handed Nastya the flowers and then approached the girl:
– «This is for you,» he said, offering Inga a box containing a doll and a set of clothes.
The little girl widened her eyes and, without taking her gaze off Evgeny, accepted the gift.
– «Thank you. And are you my dad?»
He nodded.
– «Thank you, Dad,» the girl repeated, tears glistening on her lashes.
Unable to hold back any longer, Evgeny scooped his daughter into his arms and buried his face in her light hair. Nastya, feeling that she herself was about to cry, turned away, and Evgeny briefly said:
– «Nastya, let’s go to the car; I’ll drive you both home.»
Inga had never seen such beautiful dolls, such big cars, nor had anyone ever hugged her so tightly. And suddenly, everything felt so calm, so joyful, that she wiped away her tears, hugged Evgeny, and said:
– «Dad, stay for tea! Mom said she bought a cake.»
Six months later, Inga became the belle of the ball at the lavish wedding of Zhenya, Inga’s dad, and Nastya, her mom. She was dressed in a long pink dress with sequins and a full skirt, her hair was gathered into an elegant bun with delicate tendrils framing her temples, and a velvet headband adorned with small roses was placed on her head. Nastya, in a snowy wedding dress concealing her pregnancy, looked like Inga’s older sister, and they frequently took photos with guests and a smiling Zhenya as a long, happy memory.
