Since We Are Apart

Chapter 3. Returning Home

The next day I woke up exhausted and tried in every way to push away the events of the previous day, allowing my thoughts to calm down and settle. I needed to think everything through carefully. To replay what was said once more, consult with Doctor Smirnov, and understand what risks I was willing to accept.

It was a relief to finally swap the dull hospital walls of the ward for the familiar home environment. During my absence, Kostya had kept the apartment clean and tidy, but deep down I guessed: my father only slept here. From the clinic, Kostya would go straight to the hospital to check on how I was feeling, and he never forgot to bring something to eat.

The smell and sight of hospital food made me nauseous. Although it was hard to say for sure what was the root cause: the quality of the food and the limitations of regulated recipes, or my heightened sense of smell. No joke, there were moments when I could recognize the scent of laundry detergent from Kostya’s turtleneck just as my father got out of the car in the parking lot. And that was while I was on the third floor in a room with windows facing the inner courtyard. Fortunately, my perception of the world rarely intensified so sharply.

Not only was my father a frequent visitor to the hospital, but classmates came as well — thanks to Stas. Doctor Smirnov, together with Kostya, convinced me that after signs of lycanthropy appeared, I should see people more often in calm settings, and the private hospital room was perfect for that. I not only felt different, but sometimes I saw and heard differently too, as if each of my senses had someone occasionally filtering the input. My vision sometimes widened its field of view, making objects look a little more three-dimensional than I remembered. The colors sometimes played tricks on me, appearing more contrasting. That irritated me the most: I’d look at a raincoat I was absolutely sure I’d bought bright sunny yellow, but it looked orange. I hated orange!

After school, classmates would show up in the ward accompanied by Stas, who kept an eye not so much on the situation as on changes in me. I didn’t mind. Quite the opposite, after a week Smirnov felt like a familiar piece of the furniture. He barely participated in the conversation, just observing from the chair he had claimed on his first visit.

Most often it was Dasha and Tanya who came. As far as I understood, Rostova was still dating Stas, and things between them were going smoothly and effortlessly. At least Tanya never mentioned any disagreements, though perhaps the reason was that “half” of the couple was always present in the room. The girls shared school gossip, which I didn’t even bother to remember. On my first days of visits, heavily medicated with a strange cocktail of unknown drugs for “maintaining health,” I could barely focus on anything. Nothing stirred bright emotions or worried me then. Even the story about the Halloween party felt distant, triggering a personal chain of memories from that day.

As I suspected, the injections from Doctor Smirnov were to blame. He had offered me to try to keep the wolf inside under control with medications—long names I couldn’t remember until I fully figured out how to live from now on. Most likely they were sedatives or something like that. Doctor Smirnov didn’t report the results of his observations or the steps he thought would ease my transformation and, at the same time, convince us for sure that the vampire’s poison had no effect on me. If Kostya discussed my condition with Vladimir, it clearly happened outside the ward. After Galina’s story, I was never ready to fully trust Doctor Smirnov, and I avoided him. The last thing I wanted was to become his new test subject.

Sometimes they took blood from me in the hospital to monitor the ongoing changes and make sure the chosen course wasn’t making things worse.

Before being discharged, Kostya arranged a leave of absence, and at first, this news made me happy. I still wasn’t ready to be alone four walls without supervision, not fully realizing what I was capable of. Emotions gradually returned in the familiar surroundings, and with them came new irritants for my heightened senses. For example, I couldn’t stand the scented candles that had been thoughtfully placed in almost every corner of the apartment. Who thought to buy those with different aromas back in September! I noticed something was wrong immediately when Kostya threw open the welcoming door to the apartment. I couldn’t hold back, even though I tried to pretend in front of my father that the changes hadn’t caught up with me. I had to immediately cover my nose and mouth with both hands. Muttering behind this barrier, I tried to explain to my father what was wrong, and later I led a rescue operation from the entrance hall to gather up and dispose of all the bright jars with their disgusting, stinky scents. Only after the enemies were caught, sorted, and taken to the outdoor bin, and the windows were opened throughout the apartment, did I step over the threshold.

Surprisingly, my father didn’t press me about it. On the contrary, Kostya behaved calmly, and I was grateful to him for that. I don’t know how much longer I can pretend that everything is fine and the episodes of altered perception are rare. It seemed that if I managed to convince my father, I might even believe it myself.

Lavender bed linens in the room looked a rich purple, and I actually liked it better that way. Sitting down on the bed, I began to examine the ceiling. The sharpness of my new vision let me notice numerous scratches and uneven spots on what had once seemed to me a perfectly white surface. I wanted to count every one. To find all that I hadn’t noticed before. I was absorbed in the process until my senses gradually returned to normal, trying hard to remember the difference in sensations.

“My advice is, don’t get too carried away,” my father said. “You could get stuck like that for a week or even two. I remember after my own change, I used to stare at pine needles, guessing how many could fit on one branch.”

“And how many?”

Dad hesitated, taking his time to answer. He lay down on the bed, just like me, resting his hand under his head.

“Seven thousand two hundred ninety-three,” Kostya said indifferently and pointed at a tiny c***k in the ceiling. “See that one over there? Looks like a triangle.”

“More like a rhombus.”

Dad frowned and tilted his head a little to change his angle of view.

“You’re right.”

We kept lying there, quietly studying the ceiling. Well, relatively quietly, if you don’t count the hum of the fridge, the trickle of water in the radiators, and voices from the TV two floors up.

“Dad,” I said, realizing we were alone for the first time since it happened, and decided to ask a question that had been on my mind for a while: “What’s the first transformation like?”

“Are you scared?”

“A little. I don’t know. Does it hurt?”

“More unpleasant than painful. But bearable. Not like they show in the movies.”

“So no bones breaking, no clothes tearing?”

Dad laughed, but it sounded more forced than amused.

“It’s better to take off your clothes. Or at least wear something loose. Ideally, something with ties if you’re shy. It’s unpleasant to struggle out of tight jeans or a fitted dress with thin paws. Just keep in mind, if you stay in your clothes, you’ll look... ridiculous.”

“In what way?”

“Picture a huge black wolf running through the forest wearing a bright pink T-shirt with rhinestones.”

“I never had anything like that!” I tried to defend my wardrobe’s dignity.

“You just don’t remember what your mother used to dress you in at first,” Kostya smiled, recalling.

“Dad, don’t change the subject.”

Dad exhaled loudly.

“It’s not that bones break. They kind of buzz, like at the dentist’s office. It’s an unpleasant vibration, but without the nasty drilling noise in the background. Do you want to know anything else?”

“Yes,” I had another question swirling in my head but didn’t know how to phrase it, so I awkwardly started: “Will I, how should I say, still feel like myself?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you transform, do you remember what happened? Do you understand what you want? Can you influence the process or do you become a helpless passenger under the wolf’s control?”

“It’s not so straightforward,” Dad replied evasively. “You will remember the transformation, think, and feel. The wolf is part of you, not an alien invader taking over your body temporarily. All actions will come from your existing desires and instincts. Here’s the catch: whatever you want to do the most, the wolf will do without hesitation. No guilt will bother it. The wolf knows what it wants and doesn’t accept half-measures. And that can be very dangerous for the people around you. At least, that’s how it has been in our family. The Drozdovs have their own spiritual quirks, merging with their spirit even in normal times. I don’t share their views and wouldn’t recommend you do either.”

“And what about vampires? Are we dangerous to them?”

“To them especially. We’re links in the same chain, I already explained this to you in the hospital. Wolves control the vampire population, maintaining balance. There’s no place for crazed weaklings in the chain. The protégés of Dr. Smirnov are another story.”

“So, there’s no place in the chain for someone like Nik? I thought you liked him before all this.”

“He wasn’t crazy,” Dad said softer, as if still sympathizing with Karimov after everything. “Unlike his mother. I thought the guy had a chance to change, but I was wrong. And that mistake came with a price.”

Mentioning Galina made my neck and cheek muscles tighten. After my transformation, my body felt an almost physical hatred for the woman who had barged into our lives without permission and burned down the foundation of our so-called ‘happiness.’

“If only I had known,” I began thoughtfully, but Kostya interrupted immediately.

“You couldn’t have known. I thought lycanthropy would pass you by, but... the first full moon will make things clear. For now,” Kostya got up from the bed and stretched with pleasure like a cat basking in the sun, “it’s better to gather your strength. The calmer and clearer your mind is before the change, the easier it will be.”

“How much time do I have left?”

“Plenty of time still.” Kostya glanced back over his shoulder. “Hungry?”

I nodded, and Dad quickly left the room, leaving the door ajar. Another new house rule I’d have to get used to. Privacy was out the window.

I stayed lying on the bed, listening to the kitchen bustle. Breaking down the sounds soothed me. As soon as I stopped analyzing, all imaginable and unimaginable tones blended into a discordant orchestra for my ears. The melody of chaos filled my mind, pushing away annoying emerging thoughts. So far, I only managed to ignore external noise before sleep if I was really tired, which was quite difficult in the hospital room. Daily no-equipment workouts saved me. Kostya showed me some exercises once my body had strengthened enough after the forest incident.

Forcing myself to get up, I sat at the computer desk and turned on the laptop. The monitor’s brightness pressed unpleasantly on my eyes, so I quickly remembered the key combo to soften the light. When interacting with the laptop no longer caused physical pain, I opened the browser and started reading the news from the past week. According to Stas, his father and Kostya had explained my sudden disappearance from the school disco as an unfortunate accident in the forest. I wanted to see in detail how the local papers interpreted the incident because I had to return to school. If my friends, who kept showing up in the hospital room, mostly avoided questions, I couldn’t expect such care from other classmates. I needed to prepare. The stories had to at least match on the main points.

The first website dedicated about half a page to my story. The tone made me smirk at the rather crude delivery. The journalist wrote that supposedly police officer Konstantin Cherny had called his daughter and asked her to pick up the house keys near the school entrance so as not to scare teenagers on the parking lot by the patrol car. But the careless daughter, newly arrived in Ksertom and completely unaware of local customs, was in such a hurry to get back to the dance that she decided to cut through the forest. There, she — that is, me — met one of the local wildlife inhabitants, and the encounter did not end without consequences for the reckless city girl. Former Moscow resident Asya Chernya was soon taken to the hospital thanks to a vigilant classmate, Stanislav Smirnov — a young man from the family of the city founders, well aware of the dangers of the wilderness. He noticed in time that the girl headed into the forest. Stas appeared in the article as a true hero guarding the frivolous newcomers. Smirnov scared off the attacking beast before anything irreversible happened, so Chernya only suffered a serious bruise and a couple of scratches.

When I became a “Moscow resident” was a mystery, but the tone of the article dripped with condemnation. The journalist portrayed me as a member of some narrow-minded class unfit for life outside city comforts. It was strange to read such an article. Isn’t journalism supposed to be based on facts and verification? If the writer cared less about his obvious personal dislike of me and focused on gathering existing information, he would soon notice I actually grew up not in Moscow, but in Rostov. But I suppose the author had his own interests and desires that barely aligned with the truth. I couldn’t blame him. After all, if the journalist had done his job properly, he would have had many questions. Even in the short article, I easily spotted inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts.

For example, my father didn’t work on Halloween at all. I only recently learned that Kostya rarely took shifts in the afternoon and always made sure his days off coincided with the full moon and the day after. So, on the thirty-first, Dad lied once again about an urgent call to work and tried to get deep into the forest for hunting. At the full moon, the werewolf was strongest, so Kostya never missed the chance to track more dangerous and cunning prey in our area. In reality, Dad was indeed not far from the school. As soon as Kostya smelled blood, he dashed toward the forest edge where Nik was trying to trick me into turning at his mother’s command, missing one detail: heredity. Only now, in hindsight, did I understand what was wrong in our relationship and why as soon as Karimov touched me or looked into my eyes, my thoughts would get replaced one by one. The craving I took for heartfelt desire was actually a pitiful manipulation by a blue-eyed vampire.

That day, Galina never got to taste the sweet fruit of revenge, paying with her life. I didn’t know the details, and Father wasn’t eager to reveal them, glad that after he appeared in the clearing, his daughter soon lost consciousness and didn’t see what was happening. Nik managed to escape. At least, that’s what Doctor Smirnov, Kostya, and Stas assured me in turn. The strangest thing was that the news about Galina stirred a feeling of regret in me, tinged with a slight sadness for the story of her life and what she had become. No one was able to help a lonely, mad woman like her. I didn’t want the burden of responsibility for her death to fall on my shoulders, but that is exactly what happened: if I hadn’t been in the clearing, Father wouldn’t have tried to save me from Nik, and Galina — wouldn’t have saved her son from the werewolf. Fate brought together two natural enemies in a fight, and only one came out the victor. I often wondered if it was possible to help Galina change, but I understood — the way back disappeared along with the remnants of the vampire’s soul long before we met.

Things were different with Nik. I hated Nikita for the farce that turned my life around 180 degrees. For the deception and coercion, for making me unable to distinguish genuine desires and impulses from false ones. His mother didn’t manipulate me. He could have refused, not dragged me into a dirty revenge story, but Karimov made his choice. Only now do I know how to tell a foreign illusion from my inner voice, but memories — there’s nothing to be done about them. The colorful snapshots turned to gray ashes.

Werewolf blood flowed through my veins from birth and took the vampire poison for a toxin the body hastily tried to expel by using all its resources. Only this saved me from the life of a weakling thirsting endlessly and wandering. I saw how every day it became harder for Nik. I saw the madness inside Galina.

There was no love. Only a farce and an insatiable desire for revenge.

It’s funny how one person can interpret another’s actions to shift responsibility onto someone else. The first days in the hospital, I was wary not only of Doctor Smirnov but also of Father. It was all because of Galina’s story. The idea of being on the side of the bad guys was impossible. A side you don’t even choose, but only live through by right of blood. Kostya — my father. Nothing can change that fact. Only my attitude.

Father couldn’t avoid a frank conversation about past matters. He didn’t dare take responsibility for the doctor’s decisions but sincerely explained his personal motives, willingly answering my new questions. Thus, I learned that the situation with Galina could be viewed from different points of view, each reflecting only part of the overall picture. But when I pieced all the images together, I never got a whole canvas, no matter how hard I tried. Something was still missing in the story, making my guilt bloom ever more lushly and brightly inside.

If Galina’s story of the turning smelled of decay with a stubborn layer of loneliness, Kostya’s vision gleamed with hope and anticipation of a bright future. I remember how on the third day, Father came to the ward with a heavy plastic bag full of various Asian food. There was wok noodles with shrimp and vegetables in oyster sauce, delicate steamed bao buns, and even a small pack of sushi rolls. Placing the containers on the hospital blanket, we started to eat. I caught Kostya off guard with a question about Galina when after long struggles, Father finally managed to pick up noodles with chopsticks.

“Asya, she was bad. Very bad,” Kostya said thoughtfully, picking through the noodles with chopsticks, avoiding looking me in the eyes. “The doctor is a strange man. Sometimes he thinks he acts for the best, without foreseeing all the possibilities. The birth was difficult, and Galina was dying.”

Father paused from time to time, either trying to find the right words or giving me space to speak. But my mind was empty, as was my stomach despite the almost empty disposable sushi pack.

“You don’t know Vladimir well,” Kostya continued. “Children are a sore spot for him. Look, he’s sheltered so many under his wing, and none of them are even remotely related to Doctor Smirnov by blood. He understood too well what they’d have to go through. He thought he could help, and as far as I can tell from the outside, the kids turned out alright. At least I never had problems with their nature. They live their lives, more or less like people, somehow fitting into society. Stas even got a girlfriend from among humans. Although, maybe I’m wrong.”

“You’re not,” I said.

“He’s dating Rostova.”

Kostya scooped up some noodles and with effort took another bite, then started chewing thoughtfully.

“Wait,” he said after swallowing. “That name sounds familiar. One of your girlfriends? Blonde or brunette?”

“With a nasty temper,” I replied coldly.

Kostya looked at me with interest, raising his eyebrows.

“Do you like him yourself?” Kostya’s lips barely held back a smile.

“Who, Stas? Noooo,” I hurriedly denied. “We’re friends. Tanya just doesn’t react very well to it.”