Semyon Ivanovich, after many years on the job, was used to sudden calls in the night: sometimes a complicated operation had to be performed urgently, sometimes a patient would take an unexpected turn for the worse. Today they called with an alarming message that a patient in intensive care had sharply deteriorated.
Walking past the doctors’ room, the chief physician stopped. The door was ajar; a dim lamp glowed inside. Semyon Ivanovich pushed the door and saw a strange sight: at a table piled with textbooks and notebooks, with her head resting right on the open pages, a girl was asleep. She looked very young, slender. Ksyusha—that was her name; Semyon Ivanovich vaguely recalled she had recently been hired as an orderly.
He frowned and cleared his throat.
“Kseniya?” His voice made the girl jerk as if she’d been shocked with electricity, and she stared at him in fright.
“Oh! Semyon Ivanovich!.. I… I’ll tidy everything up right away! I’m so sorry!”
“What sort of reading room have we set up in the doctors’ lounge?” he asked sternly, folding his arms across his chest. “And why are you sleeping on the job?”
The girl froze, clutching two books as if she were afraid they’d be taken away.
“I wasn’t sleeping while on duty, honestly,” she answered quietly. “My shift is already over. It’s just… I have nowhere to go for the moment.”
Semyon Ivanovich narrowed his eyes.
“What do you mean—nowhere?”
Ksyusha drew a deep breath and began to rattle off:
“The landlady of the apartment I was renting decided to sell it. She threw me out without even warning me. I barely managed to gather my things, and that’s it. I haven’t had time to find a new place yet. And I have to study… I’m on track to graduate with honors from medical college, exams are soon, so I… decided to study here.”
She hurried her words, they tangled, and again came the apologies:
“I’m sorry, Semyon Ivanovich. I understand, I won’t stay here anymore, I promise—just please don’t be angry.”
Semyon Ivanovich stood in silence, looking into her guilty eyes, thinking. He was usually brusque: for sleeping at work he could give someone a dressing-down they wouldn’t forget. Even experienced doctors preferred not to cross his path.
But now, looking at this bewildered girl with eyes red from lack of sleep, he didn’t see a slacker—he saw a stubborn student clinging to the chance to study even when life had kicked the stool out from under her.
“And where are you going to live?” he finally asked.
Ksyusha flushed.
“I’ll find something… a room somewhere, maybe a dorm. Don’t worry, I won’t sleep at the hospital again.”
The chief physician was silent a little longer, stroking his chin, and then unexpectedly suggested:
“Come stay with me for now.”
Ksyusha was taken aback. She had been afraid of this man since her first day at work: everyone said that Semyon Ivanovich was strict, harsh, an “iron” administrator. And now, suddenly, he was offering her a helping hand.
“No, no, I couldn’t… How could I? I’d only be a bother. I…” She waved her hands, lowering her eyes in embarrassment.
“It won’t be a bother,” Semyon Ivanovich cut in. “I live alone. The house is large, the rooms are empty. And the library is at your disposal. There are books there you won’t find at the college.”
Ksyusha still tried to refuse, but his tone brooked no argument. In the end she only nodded and quietly added:
“If you insist… thank you.”
As promised, Semyon Ivanovich settled Ksyusha at his place and gave her a spacious room. When she first stepped inside, she was at a loss: it was bright, with a large window where the morning sun streamed in; neat furniture; a bookcase; an armchair by the wall. To a girl used to a modest apartment, it seemed almost like a palace.
And then he showed her his greatest treasure—the library—and her eyes truly lit up. The shelves rose to the ceiling, lined with dozens, hundreds of volumes: old editions, reference works… Ksyusha stood unable to tear her gaze away. She’d always thought libraries like this existed only in films.
“Wow…” was all she could say.
“Make use of it,” Semyon Ivanovich said simply. “There are quite a few rare editions here—they’ll be useful for your exams.”
From then on, whenever she had a free minute, she ran there. She read, took notes, made outlines.
“You should take some time off,” Semyon Ivanovich suggested once. “Prepare for the exams in peace.”
Ksyusha tried to object, but he insisted:
“You’ll have time to earn extra later; you don’t have to pay rent now, so objections are not accepted. Studying is the most important thing right now.”
Semyon Ivanovich didn’t impose on her. In the mornings he left for the hospital, in the evenings he returned and always invited Ksyusha to breakfast and dinner. Gradually she stopped being afraid of him. In conversation he turned out to be nothing like the stern, unbending figure he seemed in the hospital corridors: at home he was quiet, an attentive listener.
“And why did you decide to go into medicine?” he asked one day as they drank tea in the sitting room with a pie Ksyusha had baked.
Ksyusha smiled and told him something she almost never told anyone.
“My grandfather dreamed of becoming a doctor. He even enrolled, but… he died. So I decided—since Grandpa couldn’t, I’ll try. Maybe I’ll succeed.”
Semyon Ivanovich listened carefully, reservedly, but his gaze grew especially serious.
“So you’re working for the two of you?” he clarified.
“Something like that,” the girl nodded. “I feel like I have to complete his dream.”
“Commendable,” Semyon Ivanovich said with an approving nod.
One evening, while sorting through books in the library, Ksyusha pulled from a shelf a hefty volume with a leather spine. She opened it, and an old photograph slipped out. She picked it up and froze: from the black-and-white picture a young woman in a light dress, with a braid down to her waist and a clear smile, looked back at her. Her heart pounded—it was her grandmother!
Clutching the photo with trembling fingers, the girl ran to Semyon Ivanovich’s study. He was sitting at his desk, flipping through medical journals.
“Semyon Ivanovich…” Her voice trembled. “Please tell me, where did you get this photograph?”
He looked up, saw the picture, and seemed to turn to stone. For a few seconds he said nothing, then slowly removed his glasses.
“Where did you find it?”
“In a book… in the library,” she answered quickly.
Semyon Ivanovich was silent for a long time. You could see he was wrestling with himself. At last he set his papers aside and said quietly:
“Since you’ve trusted me and opened your heart, it would be dishonest if I kept silent.”
He stood, walked across the room, and began speaking slowly, as if reliving the past:
“She was my fiancée. Lyubasha.”
His voice shook, but he went on:
“After my first year they sent me out for practical training. There was an accident; I ended up in the hospital and was there for a long time. When I came back, I learned that the house where she rented a room from a solitary woman had burned down, and she had died. They told me at the police that identification was, of course, impossible, but they showed me a ring. The ring I’d given her…”
Ksyusha listened, and something inside her twisted.
“After that I tried to go on living. I even married once… but I quickly realized that no one could ever replace my Lyubasha—I loved her too much. Since then I’ve been alone.”
He fell silent, staring out the window. A heavy quiet settled over the room.
Ksyusha had gone pale; her hands were shaking. She suddenly felt her heart clench so tight she could hardly breathe.
“What’s wrong?” Semyon Ivanovich asked anxiously, turning around. He hurriedly brought her a glass of water. “Here, drink.”
She took a sip and managed to whisper:
“That’s… my grandmother in the photo. Lyubov Viktorovna. And… she’s alive.”
Semyon Ivanovich froze, as if not trusting his own ears.
“How… alive?”
Ksyusha still held the photograph; her fingers trembled. Thoughts jumbled in her head; her heart pounded so loudly it seemed you could hear it in the silence.
Only now did it dawn on her that the chief physician’s name and her grandfather’s were the same. Semyon. Semyon Ivanovich. But since childhood she had been sure her grandfather had died. Her grandmother had never doubted it. So Ksyusha hadn’t paid attention to the coincidence until this moment.
She raised her eyes and spoke softly:
“She’s alive, Semyon Ivanovich.”
And she told him what her grandmother had told her. When her fiancé left for his practical training and didn’t get in touch for a long time, Lyubasha went to his parents, but neighbors said they had gone away for a long while. Then she turned to his friend, and he told her that Semyon had died, that he had been buried in that distant city…
Semyon Ivanovich sprang to his feet.
“What?!” His voice turned metallic. “Which friend?”
“I… I don’t know his name,” Ksyusha faltered. “Grandma said he even tried to persuade her to marry him later. He said her daughter needed a father and he was ready to be that… But she refused. She loved only my grandfather. You…”
Semyon Ivanovich began pacing around the room, unable to find a place for himself.
“God…” he muttered. “So she’s alive… Alive! My Lyubasha…”
Ksyusha went on, trying to speak calmly though she was trembling inside:
“And that house where Grandma rented a room… it really did burn down. But it wasn’t she who died. She had money troubles then, and that evening the landlady took the ring from her. She said, ‘Pay for the room and I’ll give it back.’ Grandma brought the money, but there was no house anymore—and no landlady…”
Semyon Ivanovich stopped and sank into a chair.
“So that’s where the ring came from…” he said quietly. Tears glinted in his eyes.
Ksyusha sat down opposite him, gently laying her hand on his.
“Grandma later moved to another city,” she said softly. “That’s where she still lives. My parents live there, too. I’ll go back there myself as soon as I get my diploma.”
Semyon Ivanovich lifted his gaze to her, and only then understood why something about this girl had seemed so familiar from the very beginning.
“So then… I have a daughter? And you, it turns out… are my granddaughter?”
Ksyusha nodded, brushing away a tear.
“Yes… it seems so.”
And in that moment both of them understood: fate had not brought them together by accident.
Semyon Ivanovich stood and embraced her carefully, awkwardly, as if afraid to scare away this new feeling, and whispered:
“Dear God… Thank you for letting me learn this in my lifetime.”
Ksyusha pressed herself to him and suddenly felt that the fear she had once felt before the stern chief physician had dissolved without a trace. Before her stood not a strict boss, but her grandfather, who had lived so many years alone, not knowing he had a family.
From then on, everything around them changed. And first of all—Semyon Ivanovich himself.
The hospital staff exchanged glances: where had the strict, harsh chief gone, the one whose gaze made even seasoned surgeons tremble? Of course, he was still demanding, but there was a warmth in his voice no one had heard before. He started smiling more often and even joking sometimes.
“Our chief looks twenty years younger,” people whispered in the corridors.
At home he became a different person altogether. Now he would often sit beside Ksyusha and tell stories from his student days. Now he called her “my little granddaughter,” and the words made her heart ache sweetly.
And then came the day Ksyusha received her diploma. With honors, just as she had dreamed. Semyon Ivanovich attended the ceremony, proud and moved, looking at her the way only the closest of kin do.
After the celebration he said calmly but firmly:
“Well then, my granddaughter. It’s time for us to go.”
“Go where?” she didn’t understand at first.
“Home—to your city. You can’t imagine what it cost me not to rush to Lyuba the moment I found out, but I waited until you finished your exams so we could go together. And I had to wrap things up here. You know, I’ve long wanted to open a small private clinic. And now I know for sure—I’ll open it where my family lives. And you’ll help me.”
Ksyusha gasped.
“Really, Grandpa?”
He smirked:
“Do I joke about things like that?”
At last the day came when they set off for the very city where Lyubasha had once moved.
So that his appearance wouldn’t be too great a shock for her, he decided to stop at a hotel first.
“You go home,” he told Ksyusha. “Prepare your grandmother. I don’t want this to hit her too hard. It’s been so many years… Let her take it in.”
He spoke evenly, but his hands were trembling. For years he had only been able to dream of this meeting, and now it was so close.
Ksyusha agreed. Her eyes, too, showed her excitement.
She arrived home, hugged her grandmother, answered her questions for a long time as she gathered her courage, and then gently said:
“Gran, we’re going to have a guest today.”
“A guest?” Lyubov Viktorovna narrowed her eyes in surprise. “Who? Don’t tell me you’ve found yourself a fiancé?”
“Better!” Ksyusha replied. “It’s a very… very important person. The one you’ve been waiting for your whole life.”
Lyubov Viktorovna turned pale, for the one she had been waiting for had long been gone from this world.
“Grandma, please don’t worry,” Ksyusha said softly, taking her hand. “Grandpa is alive. Alive, do you understand? They lied to you. And this evening he’s coming to us.”
For several seconds the room was silent except for the ticking clock. Then Lyubov Viktorovna sprang to her feet.
“I can’t wait till evening! Where is he?! Where?!”
An hour later she was knocking at the hotel room door.
Semyon Ivanovich opened it and froze. On the threshold stood her—his Lyuba. Older, of course, with strands of gray in her hair, but in her eyes the same gentle warmth he had remembered all his life.
“Lyuba…” he whispered, his voice betraying him.
She pressed her hands to her chest as if afraid her heart would leap out.
“Syoma…”
He took a step, then another, and the next moment they were in each other’s arms as if those madly long years of separation had never existed.
“Alive…” Lyuba whispered, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. “Alive… My God, can it really be true?”
“Alive,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. “And you’re alive—and I won’t ever let you go again.”
And Ksyusha looked at them and understood: here it was—love that doesn’t die from time, or trouble, or distance.
Soon there was another meeting no less moving. For the first time, Semyon Ivanovich saw his daughter—Ksyusha’s mother—whose existence he had never even suspected.
He stood on the threshold feeling his heart about to burst from his chest again. She looked at him for a long time, then stepped closer and hugged him tightly, saying only:
“Dad…” And she burst into tears on his shoulder.
And that was enough for the decades stolen from them by someone else’s lies and by circumstance to cease to matter.
Semyon Ivanovich kept his promise and opened a private clinic. Small, but with the most modern equipment, and run by the principles he had always lived by: honesty, care for the patient, and no cutting corners. Ksyusha went on studying and worked at his side—first helping as an assistant, but over time taking on more and more. He was proud of her and would say:
“Look, Lyuba, what a fine granddaughter we have!”
And in the evenings at home they all gathered together: grandmother, grandfather, daughter with her husband, granddaughter. Laughter sounded at the table, the past was remembered, and plans for the future were made. And each of them understood: life had given them a second chance at happiness.
