Q&A

Red came back from her short furlough in the same uncharacteristically passive and sorry state she had been before she left. Pale and quiet she wandered among them, as if not really present. She ate, slept, participated in mandatory activities like cleaning and such, but did it all with a sort of distance the others hadn't seen before.

"Isn't it for the best, really, when you think about it?" Nicky tried to comfort her one day when she and Lorna had come over to Red's cubicle. Chapman was over on her own bunk, reading a book. "I mean, you got to see him off. For all we know he might be in a better place now. Or just… in a big hole of nothing. Either way I'm sure it beats the life he had at the end."

"Yeah, and now, if you ever find someone else, you're a free woman! I mean, after you're not an inmate at a women's prison any more, of course…" Lorna chimed in.

"I think what Oprah and Dr. Phil here are trying to say…" Piper put her book away and sat up, "…is that you must allow your life to on without him, Red. I know it must be hard, but there's no other option. Either you go on or you go under."

"Yeah, what she said," Nicky agreed, and Lorna nodded.

"Yup. Ain't gonna do you no good to act like this anymore, Red, you have to get back to your old self. Start bossing us around again." She sent Red what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but it was answered with a huff.

"I feel dead inside. You girls spewing out all the cliché phrases in the world won't change that. Now leave me alone." Red turned towards the cubicle wall. Nicky stood up with a deep sigh, and left. After a moment's hesitation, Lorna followed her, exchanging a look with Piper on her way out.

Silence followed for a few seconds, and Piper went back to her book. Then she heard Red's deep voice from the other bunk.

"You know what the worst part was, Chapman? You know what hurt the most?"

"I thought you wanted to be left alone…" Piper mumbled.

"What?" Red turned around again now.

"Nothing. Tell me what the worst part was." Piper put her book down once more.

"The thing that hurt the most wasn't seeing how ill he was. It was seeing how well he really was, how he understood everything going on around him." Red closed her eyes. It was painful to talk about this, but she had to get it out. It didn't really matter if Piper or anyone else listened, as long as the words got to leave her lips.

"All these years we've been apart I've tried to convince myself that my Dmitri was gone. That what was left of him was a shell, a person I didn't know, a man who wouldn't miss me if he never saw me again." She opened her eyes. "But when I walked into that room, that ugly, smelly, tiny room, and took one of his hands in mine… He knew who I was. We talked. About the past, about the boys, all the dreams we had. He smiled that sweet smile of his. Yes, he was blind, and he was barely able to move, he breathed like a fish on land, and he was skinnier than I'd ever seen him before. But he was mine, Chapman. My husband. He had been there all this time, and now he is gone."

There was a loud sob, but it came from Piper, not from Red.

"Would you like a hug?" the younger woman offered.

"I'll pass, thanks." Red was able to smile now. It was a sad, little smile, but at least it was there.

"Where you there when he died?" Piper asked.

"Yes. There was only one nurse there that night. That woman was a decent human being if ever I saw one. She could see that we needed all the time we could get. She let me stay with him after visiting hours were over. I stayed all night. At first I sat by his bed, holding his hand. Then after a while, he asked me "What is the matter, Galya? Can't stand the though of a night in bed with your own husband?" He had that same mocking tone as always. So I climbed into bed with him." Red paused for a bit. "When he drew his last breath the next morning, I was still lying there, with his good arm around me."

"Oh, Red…" Piper was blinking a tear from one of her eyes now. "I'm so sorry."

"Since then I have felt… empty. I know deep down that not much had changed. I am here. He is not. Just like always. Still, before I never felt quite this… alone."

"You're not alone, Red, you have your girls in here. And your boys out there…" Piper knew there was a lot of tension between Red and her sons, but she also knew Red still loved them a lot.

"I know. But what Dima and I had, it was different. We were a team, the two of us against all the other bastards out there in this fucked-up world. And now that has gone. It makes me feel very, very…"

"Shitty!" Piper finished Red's sentence for her. The Russian woman nodded in agreement.

"Yes. Very shitty indeed." She yawned deeply. "I need to sleep now." Then she mumbled almost inaudibly: "Thanks for listening, Chapman."

"Good night. I hope you feel slightly less shitty in the morning," Piper tried.

"I wouldn't bet on it…" Red mumbled to herself as she rolled over and closed her eyes.

And she was right. Days, weeks, even months went by, and Red was as unpleasant to be around as ever. Though she had always had a temper, this was a whole new level of irritation. When Sister Ingalls accidentally dropped a piece of her bread into Red's bowl of soup, the entire content of the bowl was immediately poured over her head. When Black Cindy happened to hang her jacket over Red's cubicle wall, she found the jacket hanging in the same spot half an hour later, but finely cut into narrow strips. And when Crazy Eyes mistook the cup of water Red had left on a table in the TV room for her own and took a sip… No, Red didn't throw it at her, she wasn't stupid, but she did snarl in an unusually scary manner, making Crazy Eyes run from the room covering her ears.

"This has got to stop! I mean I get that she's upset, her husband died and all. But it's like she's not mainly sad anymore, she's just fucking mad," Nicky complained to a group in the bathroom one evening. "It's like… I don't know. Crazy Eyes and Pensatucky's love child. On speed. "

"Also, she's not looking like herself. She's kind of… green in the face. And Red's not supposed to be green. Those aren't complimentary colors." Big Boo chimed in.

"Actually, they are, according to some color models…" Piper pointed out.

"Oh shut up, Chapman." Boo gave Piper a comradely push as she passed her on the way out of the room. The others were leaving as well, when Piper grabbed Nicky by the shirt and held her back.

"I was thinking I could talk to Red…" she began.

"Count me out!" Nicky interrupted her, not wanting to be a part of this at all.

"Please, Nicky, come with me. I need someone there so she won't kill me, or at least so that I have a witness if she does." Piper joked. "I think I know what's really going on here. I just want to clear up a few things."

"It'll cost you." Nicky was slightly less unwilling now that there was a promise of change at stake.

"I have some Oreos under my pillow, I'll give you those. There should be five or six left, unless Boo has been by." Piper offered. Nicky nodded as a sign that this was an acceptable trade, and the two of them went to see Red in the cubicle she and Piper shared.

"Red, can we have a word?" Piper had her serious face on, hoping it would trick both Red and herself into thinking that she wasn't scared.

"What she meant to say was; can she have a word?" Nicky corrected her.

"What is it?" Red was in bed reading a book. She didn't even take her eyes of the page as the other two approached her.

"Well… How should I begin?" Piper hesitated. "We all know you've been feeling down lately, and I was just wondering, in the interest that, if I can ask you a few simple questions."

"All the questions in the world can not take away the pain I feel. But go ahead and ask, and I will decide afterwards if I want to answer." Red still wasn't looking away from her book.

"OK, question one. How old are you?" Piper's question made Nicky pull a face. Not only was it a strange question, it was potentially an insulting one. But Red seemed unaffected.

"Old enough that you should know better than to ask," she answered simply and turned a page.

"OK, fine, let me ask this way; that bloody tampon that you gave me once, was that yours?" Once again Piper's words made Nicky react.

"Come on, Chapman, do you want to die, or what? Don't bring up that old story, I'm begging you!" Red however, was still calm, at least on the outside.

"I'm warning you, Chapman, I know where you sleep…" she said, in a sing-song voice, still not turning her head.

"I don't want to insult you, absolutely not, I just… I really need to know… When you had that last night with your husband, did you have sex with him?"

This time, Piper's question set of an explosion. "Chapman?!" Nicky exclaimed, knowing this was going to be bad. Red flung her book towards Piper, then quickly got up and placed a cold hand around the younger woman's chin.

"How dare you?" she growled. "How dare you talk about the relationship between me and my Dima? What gives you the right to stick that pretty little nose of yours into our personal affairs?" She was now pushing Piper towards her own bunk.

"I was just thinking, you've been kind of moody, and you've been sick all the time, and you seem to have a craving for those disgusting cookies with bits of raisin in them from commissary, so I was thinking maybe you're pregnant. Please don't hit me, Red!" Piper begged as Red's continuous walk towards her forced her to drop down on her bunk.

"What?" Nicky giggled. "Come on now. You've gotta be kidding. Red's too old for that kind of stuff. She's a grandma, a babushka, she can't be pregnant, right, Red?"

But Red was like frozen. She stood by Piper's bed, where Piper was curling up in preparation for any hits that might or might not come, but it was as if the red-haired woman didn't even see her anymore. She just stood there for a few seconds, saying nothing, staring into the air in front of her. Then she opened her mouth and mumbled; "Oh God, Dima. What have we done now?"