Save Our Souls. Valentina Basan

She bought a maternity course, learned books about yoni and every day tried to look not only into herself, but also where Valeria Johnson's inexhaustible imagination and thirst for money taught. Dinara gave birth to a boy in the bathroom, in a removable tiny one-bedroom in a hood on the outskirts of Moscow. Every day she chewed cucumber with all her might and tried not to look at sausages made of soy, buckwheat and rice. Dinara's husband Said Gafurov did not share his wife's hobbies, moreover, every day he complained to his relatives about the quirks and hobbies of his half. Relatives shook their heads, ate fatty lamb pilaf and washed it down with green tea. After giving birth in the bathroom, Said threatened Dinara with a divorce, but felt sorry for the little and long-awaited son. Working as a cook in a restaurant, Said saw the family sleeping only late at night when he returned from his shift. He had to support not only them, but also send some of the money to relatives back home.

      Dinara was engaged in self-development and unity with nature. The son was born tiny and very weak, did not take a breast for a long time, turned blue and choked with screaming. Said begged Dinara to call a doctor, but the girl stood her ground – doctors are the biggest evil in the world. Returning from work around midnight, Said listened to the sleeping lump, his son, his baby was not breathing.

      Dinara Gafurova was sitting near the doors of the intensive care unit, white as the wall against which she leaned her back.

      – Live, live, live! Please, Allah Almighty, Lord, Universe, and Mother of God, just live!

      The door of the intensive care unit opened. Dinara jumped up.

      – Are you a mother? – The doctor, a woman in her sixties, took off her gloves, a cap, and then she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes for a long time.

      – Doctor, how is my son? Dinara was sobbing hysterically and trying to calm her trembling hands.

      – Your son is already well. Stable. He has a postpartum injury. It was necessary to go to the hospital immediately, he had severe anemia, and most likely there was oxygen starvation during childbirth. The child is not registered anywhere. Where did you give birth to him? In Uzbekistan, that he is not listed in the lists of newborns?

      – No. In the bathroom. In my flat.

      The Doctor looked into Dinara's eyes for a very long time. Probably a whole minute. The girl could not stand it and lowered her head. The doctor sighed and walked down the long corridor towards the receiver.

      – Doctor, wait, thank you. Thanks.

      – Today your son was saved. Pumped out. And yesterday, the baby died, three years old, also the same conscious raw food eater fed the child to complete exhaustion with pine needles and leaves from trees, the body could not cope with an elementary cold, the temperature did not knock down for several days, they brought almost a corpse here, and took it away after the fact. And we are the doctors to blame; and this so called mother screamed here that her child was killed.

      – I won't do it anymore, – Dinara squeezed tears in herself, but they traitorously rolled out of her eyes, painfully burning the skin of her frozen cheeks, – I promise you. Forgive me.

      – Is there an education? A job? Specialty?

      Dinara shook her head negatively.

      – Come to us as a cleaner, you will enter a technical school; I will transfer you as a nurse after graduating the nurse school. We have a round-the-clock nursery here for infants, anyway, he needs to recover for six months under the supervision of doctors, and here you will have work and connection with your son.

      The girl nodded vigorously, wiping away the tears that blurred her eyes.

      – Thank you, – she bent down to kiss her hand, but the doctor pulled her back.

      – That's enough. Pull yourself together. Come with me, I'll give you books to read from cover to cover. Go to work tomorrow morning. We have a nurse on a binge, you will help me in cabinet.

      Dinara ran beside the doctor like a faithful dog. She wrote a message to Said on the go that everything was fine, and after thinking for a second, deleted the Instagram app from her phone forever.

      The Human Circus.

      Robert with tears in his eyes from pain and humiliation, rubbed his wrists, which had changed from blood-red to a deep purple hue. The places where the skin came into contact with the metal of the handcuffs rotted and abscessed. Pus protruded from larger wounds under pressure, Robert was very afraid that his hand would rot and washed the wounds in a bowl with stagnant, smelly water, which was put in his drinking cage. The bowl was old and broken, the previous occupant of the cage beat this bowl on the concrete floor when he went crazy and attacked the Caretaker. The food bowl was filled with something expired and smelly to the point of vomiting. But never mind, Robert will eat it later, when his stomach is cramped with hunger and a painful spasm. It was always easier for him to eat, or rather to swallow this something, when he crawled up to the grate, where a small door opened and a hairy paw with claws handed him a bowl filled with so-called food, something that does not let him die of starvation. The same paw was pouring water from a bottle into his drinking bowl. He always enjoyed the water more.