AUSRA GIEDRAITYTE

Chickenpox

A cat named Muffin is lying in the sun near the entrance to an old hospital called the Republican University Hospital of Infectious Diseases. It’s Sunday – not at all the day to get an infection. It looks like even the trees are melancholic here, sadly sinking their branches towards the soil. 

This morning my husband Elijah woke up with spots and high fever. A couple of spots have turned into infinity of red targets. We’ve arrived here suspecting a chickenpox, and are finally waiting for a nurse to come and examine him in a quartz room. 

A duty manager is smoking a cigarette near the entrance. She tells me that each hospital needs to be demolished every twenty years to clean it from its burden completely. She says this building has been here since the war and now it will be demolished for commercial reasons. 

The duty manager whispers. 

“I would never buy a piece of land here.”

 She points her arm towards a deep backyard.

“Some men, women and children are buried under the pine trees over there.” 

She tells me the local government will be removing the hospital staff soon. Some other buildings will rise here one day.

“And though people who buy the land will never know about the burial, I would never live on such a ground. It happened too recently.”

There is an American embassy in front of the hospital. The star-spangled banner is waiting for its windy day. A policeman is walking around as if waiting for something to happen. I park the car by the hospital’s entrance and turn off the engine. Nurses are running around, exiting the building with blood samples every now and then - measles, rubella, chickenpox. The nurses are chatting in Russian between themselves. It seems an ordinary day for everyone. I pray Elijah has not caught measles. It would be dangerous for my early pregnancy. I try to think about something else. I hardly can. I remember it’s been a long time since it rained. I’m waiting. Waiting for Elijah to come out of the building. Waiting for the branches to lift and for spring to come, fully covered in rain.