On one of those calm Sundays, I observed the snowstorm from my small room and drank my vanilla tea. A couple of months passed since I graduated from medical school in Moscow. I had never seen a ferocious wind as violent as that in my entire life. I am a doctor in a remote part of Russia, so snow never melts away completely during winter in this village. Because of the weather, only a few people came to visit the hospital. I decided to rest in the room reserved for me and read the books I bought a month ago.
Just as I concentrated on reading the novel, someone banged the door. This was my apprentice, Nikolai, he came here with me to help me educate the locals about STDs. He told me he doesn’t like the city and prefers the quietness of a remote place. He grew up in a village so he likes the down-to-earth aspect of it. He notified me of a woman on the phone and she needed serious help. I picked up the phone in the other room. The woman told me her daughter had a car accident and the car’s wheels chewed up her arm. She had several broken bones and bled like a river. She told me she was in the abandoned village north, but before I could ask her location, the phone hung up.
I estimated her situation to be critical, she could die on the way if I didn’t treat her. I picked my coat on the bed and got dressed. Nikolai picked up whatever equipment he could and put them in the ambulance. I managed to get into it before turning into an ice cube. He opened the AC and we warmed our hands a little bit. As he started the ambulance, he asked me a great question.
“Where to, doctor?”
“To the village 10 kilometers north.”
He made an audible gasp, and I knew why.
“What are they doing in that forsaken place?”
"I have no idea if we'll be late, we'll never get the answer.”
He started the car, and the reality of the situation dawned upon me for a moment. Were they curious adventurers who snuck into an abandoned place for fun? Did someone get killed in an argument and the murderer ran away? Are we driving to our imminent death? I wanted to smoke to calm my nerves down, but I forgot them in the rush. I played with my lighter to divert my attention, but my mind fixated on the girl, half buried under a crimson blanket. I gave up and stared at the white void in front of me.
It felt like hours before the ambulance stopped. I couldn’t see anything from the windows but I decided to drop out and check where they could’ve been. Nikolai stopped me, and the door didn’t budge anyway.
“Where are you going? You’ll freeze to death if you go out, doctor. Let’s search for them in the car.”
We meandered around in the streets, and I poked my head out of the window to find them, but we couldn’t see any signs of them. I couldn’t sit in my comfortable seat anymore, and I bolted out of the car to check the closest building I saw. I screamed for them, but I couldn’t find anyone in that decrepit store. I found Nikolai doing the same thing, we barged into several houses to find no one. The heavy air hurt my lungs and my hands trembled. Our march turned to a slog; my feet turned to an iron block. We searched for them, to no avail.
After five minutes, I heard a scream from the opposite block, and saw the silhouette of the woman waving her hands. I yelled at Nikolai to bring the car there and jumped into the car. The AC warmed my pink hands as the ambulance struggled to go backward. We came close enough for me to notice a pool of blood next to the building. The ambulance got into potholes, but we brought it into safety and I raced into the abandoned building. A trail of blood helped me to find where they were. This was a hospital with needles, glass shards, and gloves everywhere. If I fell to the ground, no doubt I'd get an infection from these things. I hopped like a frog and climbed to the second floor; the woman welcomed me at the end of the stairs. We rushed to the girl and I checked her while asking what happened to the sobbing mother.
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"We've been playing with snow around here, but a car appeared out of nowhere, hit her, and drove away.”
Nikolai arrived and forwarded me alcohol to scrub my hands. I got a pair of clean gloves and checked the arms of the girl; they seemed beyond salvation. I could see the shattered bones from the wound, and the legs seemed to be in a horrible shape. The moment I touched her, she convulsed on the desk and screamed. Her breath grew faint, so Nikolai gave her an oxygen mask. I decided to encase the legs and amputate her arms, they became minced meat. I neither had the experience nor the knowledge to fix these abhorrent limbs back to their shape. The mother protested and even tried to get between me and the girl, but as I stated the obvious, she finally agreed.
She had a beautiful black dress with a ribbon at the back of her hair. I deduced her to be in high school, possibly in 10th grade. Her vanilla perfume mixed with the alcohol awoke a horrible memory in my mind. This seemed too familiar to it. I checked her fingers, and to my bewilderment, they were dark red.
"No," I muttered. I took off my gloves and put her black hair aside to take a clear look at her face. My brain couldn't handle what I saw in front of me. The gloves fell from my hand as I stepped backward. “This is not real,” I told to myself, I pinched my arm, yet she proved my futile attempt to disassociate myself from this place. My sister also had a black dress and painted her nails red on her birthday. She had a momentary interest in the gothic girls and wanted to try it for the first time. On her 16th birthday, a car squashed her and ran away. The only thing left of her was the vanilla perfume fused with the sweet blood scent.
My brain went through the circles of hell within seconds, only to bring me back at the worst moment. The girl stood up despite her horrendous condition and picked up the scalpel next to her. She eyed the room but rested her eyes upon me. Her face churned with disgust, and pointed at me with the scalpel.
Everyone in the room froze for a moment, Nikolai peeked at me and the mother seemed to be in shock. I tossed everything in my mind to the side and realized the danger of the situation. I had no idea how this happened, but I didn't want to die in this forgotten place. I thought a demon somehow took her body, but it was a speculation to make sense of it. The mother snapped out of it and ran to her daughter. She hugged her as she bawled her eyes out. Her happiness didn't last, the girl stabbed her mother in the throat and blood gushed out of her throat. She clung to the child and they both fell to the ground.
Nikolai bailed the moment that happened. In my panicked state, I jumped out of the window and faceplanted to the roof of the hospital. The adrenaline gave me enough energy to ignore my broken nose and get into the ambulance so we could get out alive. I fell to snow again in my clumsiness and finally, managed to enter the ambulance. I had no intention of leaving Nikolai here, so I waited for him in the passenger seat. He showed up unscathed, and I opened the door for him. He didn't stop the car in case the engine froze, so we had no difficulty leaving the town. I looked behind one last time and saw the girl waving her hand. We finally calmed down and talked about it.
“Why did my sister stab her, I have no clue.”
“Your sister? That was my girlfriend!”
We stared at each other. Now we got even more confused about the whole ordeal. I assumed the town had been cursed and we almost became the next victims of it. I reported everything that happened to the police when we arrived at the hospital. Later, police told us that they found the blood puddles we described, but couldn’t find anyone. They found skeletons in the church close to it, though. People speculated a lot of things about us and the event, and the demons gnawing my mind through it.
As time passed, it became a distant memory in my mind, and I had more important things to attend to. Yet, I never forgot how she glared at me. I visited my sister's grave a while ago to feel better, and it worked. Nowadays, I'm trying to survive for the day and accept things as they happened. Sometimes, things happen and you don't have a say in it. Might as well accept them and move on.