Once I had gotten myself dressed in the attire that had been given to me, my hands immediately went to my soaked and dripping hair, wringing it out from root to tip. I still shivered, petrified of some form of higher up officer walking past and finding me before Viktor could return with the first aid kit that he had promised to bring. Overall, my emotions were a strange mix of excitement, fear, and relief.
I couldn't quite explain it, but I felt as if I could trust Viktor. His deep, warm brown eyes were calming, as was his accent. He had given me clean, dry clothes and had let me sit inside the armored truck that he was in. He even insisted on checking and cleaning the wounds that I had sustained in my attack. Those jagged red lines across my back had been cut there by Billy's belt buckle, and made it very difficult for me to move without sharp, racing pains. With my luck, this was the beginning of a raging infection. But of course, my Russian savior must have thought of that too because he offered to go and get antiseptic and bandages before I had even noticed that I was in pain.
Luckily, he returned with a white plastic box rather quickly. What I assumed was a first aid kid was really very simplistic in appearance. The box was hard plastic, a pure white in color but with lettered in red Cyrillic alphabet. I couldn't read what it said, so it was really all nonsense to me. However, after setting the small package in my lap, he carefully opened it with the swift movement of one abnormally large hand. The inside was pretty standard for a basic first aid kit. It contained alcohol wipes, cotton balls, basic latex bandages, gauze bandages, medical tape, antibiotic ointment, gauze wrappings, latex gloves, and any other components that you would find in such a kit. Once again, his large right hand came into view to take out the alcohol wipes, gauze bandaging, and medical tape.
"Could you turn around?" he then asked, standing outside the truck and leaning inward. His lips were slightly parted, almost in a look of concentration. "And…" His face reddened a bit, looking slightly flustered. "And would you mind lifting up your shirt as well? I do not quite think it possible to give medical care to your own back."
I really couldn't help but laugh at that. My frigid body, still shivering, allowed me a few amused chuckles. "I appreciate it," I inform him with a small smile as I comply with his requests. I tense up as I feel a callused hand on my bare back, even knowing that he was only trying to help. Still, that skin-to-skin contact sent my mind straight back to the dead body about a yard in front of where the truck was parked. I shuddered, and this time it wasn't because of the cold. Somehow, he picked up that something was wrong.
"Did I hurt you?" he questioned. Clearly, he had no problem voicing his concerns. He wasn't quite the representation of a communist that the western world gave its citizens. He had yet to tear open the first alcohol wipe.
Immediately, I shook my head. "No," I assured him, my voice calm and quiet. "You didn't do anything. It's not your fault." And I was telling the truth. He hadn't done a single thing wrong since I had met him not twenty minutes ago. Instead of pressing the issue, he concentrated on carefully cleaning out the jagged wounds along the middle of my back. With tweezers that he had produced from the box as well, I felt him pull out small chunks of rock and gravel from a cut closer to my shoulder blades.
Each time he moved on to a new cut on my back, he wiped that pair of tweezers with antiseptic on a cotton ball in order to keep the wounds as clean as possible. The cleaning agents stung and burn, but the uncomfortable sensation almost felt good in a way. It was like the alcohol was doing more than clean the bacteria from my wound. I felt as if Billy was starting to be cleansed from my body. The wounds were, at least, clean of that monster. The rest of my body would take much more time to recover from the brutal abuse it had taken so quietly.
Though I knew exactly who was cleansing my back, I still could not help but shudder every time his rough skin brushed my bare back. Though I was almost sure that he harbored no hostile intentions, I couldn't help myself. Like Billy, his hands were big and rough and dry. In texture, they felt nearly the same. I was not able to see Viktor's surprisingly clean fingernails putting that slight pressure on my back as he applied the gauze, and as a result the similarities in feel made me cringe. As he smoothed the medical tape in a line perpendicular to my spine, I quietly shrieked. This caught him rather off-guard.
"Are you sure that you are well?" Viktor asked me, understandably concerned by this outburst. Once again, he paused in his work of patching me up because of my reaction.
Taking a deep, staggered breath in an attempt to pull oxygen into my lungs, I began to speak in quite an apologetic voice. I also decided to tell him the truth. "I'm sorry," I mumbled quietly, craning my neck to have another look at the source of that deep, heavily accented voice. "Your hands, they're quite similar to…"
I couldn't quite manage to finish my sentence, but the meaning of it seemed to be understood just fine. His stern, serious face melted into a soft, apologetic expression at these words. It seemed as if he didn't know quite the right way to reply. In the end, he just nodded and quietly continued treating my various back wounds.
Through the long, oddly kind but awkward silence that I endured as Viktor continued to examine my form for any other serious injuries, I had time to really reflect on the gravity of the situation.
Here I was, sitting quietly in the back of a Russian armored military vehicle, my cousin's best friend dead in front of it, with a Russian soldier providing me first aid out of the goodness of his heart. In fact, I almost wished that I could go back to school and mention this next time one of my teachers began spewing propaganda about the "Red Menace" in the east. This menace couldn't be too bad, I would say. One of its enforcers insisted on providing first aid to a total stranger.
It was odd to think about, really, but an invading force from what was considered the most prominent enemy of the United States of America had just been kinder to me than any one of my fellow citizens of the supposedly free and just nation in which I reside. Ironically, a man of the largest notoriously godless nation on the Earth had performed one of the most Christlike acts that I had ever been witness to.