Sapphire Skies by Belinda Alexandra Page B

in a village that was invaded by the Germans during the war.’
    Lily glanced at Babushka, who was asleep now with Laika tucked under her arm. Everyone who had lived to that age had a story to tell, but Lily sensed that this old lady’s tale was an exceptional one.
    Even after two days, Lily and Oksana couldn’t coax Babushka to tell them her name. When Lily had first met her in Pushkin Square and again at the building site, she had been articulate and alert. The shock of the bomb in the underpass seemed to have caused her to retreat into herself. She mumbled words that sounded as if they could be names of places or people but Lily couldn’t catch them.
    Each time the telephone rang, Babushka jumped as if she’d been given an electric shock. So it surprised Lily that Babushka showed no resistance when she and Oksana took her to Doctor Pesenko’s surgery. She submitted meekly as the doctor weighed her, took her blood pressure and a blood sample, felt her neck and legs, and then listened to her chest before sending her with a nurse down the hall for an X-ray.
    When she had gone, Doctor Pesenko invited Oksana and Lily to sit down opposite his desk. ‘She’ll need more tests, but everything so far indicates that she has a chronic heart condition that’s been left untreated,’ he said, taking his own chair. ‘The most I will be able to do for her is give her medication to help alleviate the symptoms.’
    ‘Do you mean her condition is terminal?’ Oksana asked.
    Doctor Pesenko nodded. ‘I’m surprised she’s kept going this long. She’s malnourished, which doesn’t help, of course.’
    ‘How long do you think —’ Lily broke off as she felt herself choking up. Babushka must have sensed that her health was worsening; that’s why she had been so desperate for Lily to take Laika.
    ‘She might have six months. She might have three days,’ replied Doctor Pesenko. ‘It’s difficult to predict. I’m going to try to pull some strings and see if I can get her into a hospital — a State or charity one — for further tests and palliative care.’
    The nurse came in with the X-ray results in a folder. ‘I’ve left the patient lying down in the examination room,’ she told Doctor Pesenko before leaving again.
    Doctor Pesenko opened the folder, took out the X-rays and studied them. He put them on the light box so that Oksana and Lily could see.
    ‘There is evidence of pulmonary congestion,’ he said, pointing to the lungs. ‘But there is something more unusual. You see, her heart is further to the right than it should be.’
    ‘Why’s that?’ asked Oksana. ‘Is it something she was born with?’
    The doctor shook his head. ‘I’ve only seen this twice before. In one instance the displacement was the result of a chest injury sustained in a car accident. The other was in a man who had been so badly beaten by thugs that his heart was punched out of place.’
    ‘I wonder if something happened when she was in the concentration camp,’ said Lily.
    Doctor Pesenko wrote out several prescriptions and handed them to Lily. ‘What are you going to do with her until I can find a hospital bed?’ he asked. ‘This woman is going to die and most likely in the near future.’
    Lily sensed that Oksana was looking at her. She was under no illusions about how difficult it was to care for someone who was dying but she felt compelled to help Babushka. ‘She can stay with me,’ she told Doctor Pesenko. ‘If Oksana doesn’t mind?’
    Oksana nodded. ‘Of course not. Yulian is moving out of his apartment tomorrow. It’s bigger than yours, Lily — you can use it until we can get a place for Babushka in hospital.’
    ‘So we are conspirators,’ said Doctor Pesenko with a gentle smile. ‘Three people willing to help an old woman we know nothing about.’
    ‘You know,’ said Oksana thoughtfully, ‘dying animals often come to me. I believe they are angels in disguise, because in caring for them I find that they always