Return of Mischa
Prologue
Emergency room of Johns Hopkins Hospital,Baltimore, Maryland.
What we got here?
A little girl, about five or six years old, Car-train crash, multiple injured, hypertentise and tachycardic…
Oh my God, she looks like chopped!
His heart seemed missed one beat,maybe two. I must be to tired. How long I've been working in the ER? Twenty hours?maybe thirty. Since when did I stop counting time?
But she looks just like Mischa. The nose, the shape of eyebrows. And the red skirt, soaked with blood.
Blood type?
A positive.
2 Units of blood.
Dr. Lecter!
Her heart stopped.
0.5mg adrenaline. Begin CPR.
So tired!His brain was sinking into the bottom of a lake, seeing and hearing through the dark water, through the ices, through the bones on unknown animals on the deep soft bed of the lake.
Her bones were so fragil, he almost felt the cracks under his hands.
No reaction.
1mg adrenaline.
Her lips were as cold as ice. He felt the taste of her blood, like cool thin air after snow.
Still no reaction. It's more than five minutes.
Has been that long? It feels like just a blink. But his eyelide are so heavy now. May it takes years to blink.
3mg adrenaline. Keep on blood transfusion.
Dr. Lector. It's more than ten minutes. Still no reaction.
His brain refuses to work any more. He hears a weary voice saying
Scalpel. I' m going to do internal cardiac massage.
Stop! We already losed her. Shut up! Who is yelling? Terrible rude!He had no time to see, to think.
Scalpel.
His hand was in her chest now. The little heart safely perched in his hand.
Too many blood has been bleeding out. How much blood does a little girl have?
Dr. Lecter! Stop!
That voice sounds familar, just like the chefe of the ER.
He wants to kick them out, all of them, with the lights and the walls, which he spent years to build, are till not high enough, thick enough to shut them all out, to shut the little girl out. He is too tired, too exhausted.
His fingers gently touched her heart through the glove. So tiny, so weak, like a small bird, refusing to beat any more. Where did Mischa's heart go? Disappeared in someone's mouth, someone's smelly mouth with filthy teeth and stains of chewing tabaccos became the grave of her little heart, together with her little arm and legs. Wass that filthy rude two-feet-beasts her grave.
Oh Stop! I can't let that happen again.
Dr. Lecter! Stop! She is dead.
No.
Do you really want to do this again? He asked God which he had known exactly not exist. Let me watch her to be hurt again, to disappear again?and why? Is that is the punishment which he had decided not to care long time ago?Why Mischa has to suffer?
One more try, just one more. he can bring her back. He can. Mischa, please came back!
And she did.
He left the hospital at the dawn. There was a ragged blooded stained doll abandoned beside the trashcan at the entrance of the hospital. He stopped and watched it, tried to figured out if that doll was hers. He stood there thinking untile the cleaning workers took it away.
Now in day time, her resemblance to Mischa was weakened by daylights. Mischa was blond, her hair were like sunshine, like those girls in a Renoir's painting. This girl's was gloomy dark. Mischa had a chubby pink face. her face was pretty pale due to massive loss of blood, and the scar on her left cheek would probably live with her in the rest of her life. Her eyes were still closed. He remembered checking her pupils, but he totally forgot the color of her eye. He was pretty sure they were dark too, as dark as the pond water which had too many dead leaves inside--the little liar. She attacked him when he was exhausted and weak.
How could he confused her and Mischa last night? He felt a little angry that he hadn't felt in years. As if she had lied to him, given him a false promise. Let him believe in a moment that Mischa still had a future.
In a sudden impulsion, he just wanted to tear her breast up , pull off her heart and eat it when it's still warm, still beating. He could easily do that before she even couldn't feel a thing.
He put his hand around her neck, felt the feeble beat from her carotid artery- a beat he trudged thousand of miles and fought so hard with the Death to take back.
She was so small, looked even smaller under the white sheet. He put some extra force on his hand. And in a sudden, he remembered the other thing she and Mischa had in commun - the collarbones, so delicate, so exquisite, like wings of small bird, in fact you could felt the little pulse of the feather.
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the sensation of had her heart in his hand, feel the weak beating in his hand. He should eat her then. More fresh, more delicate. Maybe he should took her away, to a cabin in a high snow mountain, to keep her far away from the damage they were about made to her in those coming days, before she is too broken to be repaired. He might eat her eventually, Her beautiful bones would stay under the ice forever. But she wouldn't suffer from those stinky salivas and filthy teeth and putrefying stomachs and intestines-She deservs much more better than that.
But instead, he looked her for a moment, put a brand new doll beside her pillow, and gently kissed her little face. His lips felt the warm of her cheek, the warm Mischa would never have again.
While with his lips still warm, he left the hospital and quitted practicing medical.
He believed that he would never see her again.
