his desk; of voices in the bar. And suddenly, he found himself on the steps of the Metropol in the warm summer air—for the first time in over twenty years.
Rodion, the night doorman, looked at the Count in shock.
“A taxi,” the Count said. “I need a taxi.”
Over the doorman’s shoulder, he could see four of them parked fifty feet from the entrance, waiting for the last of the Shalyapin’s customers. Two drivers at the front of the line were smoking and chatting. Before Rodion could raise his whistle to his lips, the Count was running toward them.
When the drivers noted the Count’s approach, the expression on one’s face was a knowing smirk and on the other’s a look of condemnation—having both concluded that the gentleman had a drunken girl in his arms. But they stood to attention when they saw the blood on her face.
“My daughter,” said the Count.
“Here,” said one of the drivers, throwing his cigarette on the ground and running to open the back door of the cab.
“To St. Anselm’s,” said the Count.
“St. Anselm’s . . . ?”
“As fast as you can.”
Putting the car in gear, the driver pulled onto Theatre Square and headed north as the Count, pressing a folded handkerchief against Sofia’s wound with one hand and combing her hair with the other, murmured assurances that went unheard—while the streets of the city raced past unregarded.
In a matter of minutes, the cab came to a stop.
“We’re here,” said the driver. He got out and opened the back door.
The Count carefully slipped out with Sofia in his arms then suddenly stopped. “I have no money,” he said.
“What money! For God’s sake, go.”
The Count crossed the curb and rushed toward the hospital, but even as he passed through its doors, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. In the entry hall, there were grown men sleeping on benches, like refugees in a railway station. Hallway lights flickered as if powered by a faulty generator, and in the air was the smell of ammonia and cigarette smoke. When the Count had been a young man, St. Anselm’s had been among the finest hospitals in the city. But that was thirty years ago. By now, the Bolsheviks had presumably built new hospitals—modern, bright, and clean—and this old facility had been left behind as some sort of clinic for veterans, the homeless, and the otherwise forsaken.
Sidestepping a man who appeared to be asleep on his feet, the Count approached a desk where a young nurse was reading.
“It is my daughter,” he said. “She has been injured.”
Looking up, the nurse dropped her magazine. She disappeared through a door. After what seemed like an eternity, she returned with a young man in the white jacket of an internist. The Count held Sofia out while pulling back the blood-soaked handkerchief to show the wound. The internist ran his hand across his mouth.
“This girl should be seen by a surgeon,” he said.
“Is there one here?”
“What? No, of course not.” He looked at a clock on the wall. “At six, perhaps.”
“At six? Surely, she needs attention now. You must do something.”
The internist rubbed his hand across his mouth again and then turned to the nurse.
“Find Dr. Kraznakov. Have him report to Surgery Four.”
As the nurse disappeared again, the internist wheeled over a gurney.
“Lay her here and come with me.”
With the Count at his side, the internist pushed Sofia down a hall and into an elevator. Once on the third floor, they passed through a pair of swinging doors into a long hallway in which there were two other gurneys, each with a sleeping patient.
“In there.”
The Count pushed open the door and the internist wheeled Sofia into Surgery Four. It was a cold room, tiled from floor to ceiling. In one corner, the tiles had begun falling from the plaster. There was a surgical table, craning lights, and a standing tray. After some minutes, the door opened and an ill-shaven physician entered with the young nurse. He looked as if he had just been wakened.
“What is it?” he said in a weary voice.
“A young girl with a head injury, Dr. Kraznakov.”
“All right, all right,” he said. Then waving a hand at the Count, he added: “No visitors in the surgery.”
The internist took the Count by the elbow.
“Wait a second,” the Count said. “Is this man capable?”
Looking at the Count, Kraznakov grew red in the face. “What did he say?”
The Count continued to address the young internist.