Daybreak | F. Dostoyevsky

11 | Reforget

Mayumi woke up coughing.

There was smoke; smoke everywhere, and people, strewn across the grass like ragdolls, or toys in the aftermath of a child's temper. But they weren't toys. And this certainly wasn't caused by a child.

Had she been unharmed, Mayumi would have been thinking of who would be the most likely perpetrators. But she wasn't. When she touched her hand to her head, it came back red. Everything was blurry, and when she tried to stand up, she sank to the ground. It took her three tries to finally manage to stagger around upright.

"Dostoy—" she began to croak out, but then was hit with a coughing fit so violent that, when it was done, she tasted blood in her mouth. Or maybe the blood had been there before that. She didn't know. She couldn't tell. She didn't care. She didn't care about anything. Her memories felt clouded by a fog. Why was she there? What was this place?

Then she saw him: lying on his side, his white shirt torn and bloodied and dirty, and bile rose up her throat, but she didn't know why. She turned to the side and retched. There was blood. She touched a hand to her stomach. There wasn't blood. At least, she didn't think so. Had she wiped the blood off her hand before? Or had it always been there?

She was kneeling down now, next to him. Fyodor's hair was covering his face, and she brushed it away. His eyes were closed.

Was his chest still rising? She couldn't tell. But what she could make out was the large gash on his side that was gushing out blood like a stream. It must have been from the fragmentation. Had she been fully coherent she would have been able to piece that together. But again, she wasn't. It felt like nothing was going through her mind at all. At least, nothing was staying.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, someone was screaming her name.

It had been like this too, hadn't it? On that fateful day where everything changed. A bang. Not a whimper. Or was it a whimper, and not a bang, that Eliot poem. She didn't remember. Who was it that read it to her even? Was it a mentor in the past? Was it her? Was it him? Was it her dead father or missing mother?

"Fyodor."

She was shaking him. Why was she shaking him? But suddenly he lurched forward and coughed, and he kept coughing; blood, all over his hands. He was gasping too, like he had been drowning, his shoulders heaving up and down. He had been in front of her when the bomb detonated. He had taken most of the blast and shielded her, no matter how unintentional.

"Fuck. Fuck, Fyodor, you need a doctor."

"No," he gasped out, "no. No doctors. No hospital—don't." He tried to slap her hand away when she tried to steady him and staggered backwards. "Don't touch me." Then, almost feverishly: "Ty dolzna derzhat'sya podal'she...ty dolzna derzhat'sya podal'she."

Mayumi didn't understand a single word, but she knew one thing: they had to get out of there. She reached for him but stumbled, and they both ended up on the floor again, in a tangle of limbs. She tried to stabilise herself with one arm on the ground but ended up touching something warm and wet, and not understanding until Fyodor cried out.

"Fuck," hissed Mayumi, jumping back as if burned, but then everything got so jagged and blurry at the edges that she thought she was almost going to faint. "I'm sorry."

"I said," murmured Fyodor weakly, his eyelids drooping shut, "I said...ne trogay menya. What do you...ne ponyal...I don't..."

Mayumi was suddenly struck by the parallel between this situation and that damned day that happened in the past, and then, quite suddenly, its possible consequences. If she left him there, if she didn't do anything, Fyodor was going to die. It was as simple as that.