“Did someone beat you up?” he asked.
Sasha cringed — he didn’t want to give a simple answer and he didn’t have the energy to tell the whole story.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Lev said.
Sasha nodded.
“Do you have a mobile?” he asked.
Lev quickly opened the top drawer in the bedside table and handed Sasha a phone.
Sasha held it in his hands, wondering who to call.
Not his mother, of course.
I’ll call the bunker, he decided.
When he got through, he told the duty officer who he was and where he was calling from — he realised that he didn’t know the name of the hospital, which ward he was in, the room or even the floor number, which he vaguely guessed at. It seemed like the second. Turned out, it was the third — Lev stepped in with all the information.
“So what e
