The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach

Author:Scott Stambach
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250081889
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

DAY 19

Game Night

I awoke the next morning in a state of “holy shit!” and also to the metallic rapping of Nurse Natalya knocking at my door. “Ten minutes left for breakfast hour, Ivan,” she said, resonating through the metal like a robot version of herself.

“All right, all right,” I said.

“Three times in one week, Ivan?”

“All right, all right,” I said.

“Can I come in? I have something for you,” she said.

My mind has been Pavlovianly conditioned to salivate when Nurse Natalya comes to my room with any somethings. Typically, the somethings are books, but I had a feeling, given the circumstances, that this particular something might be something even better.

“Yes, please.”

Nurse Natalya entered with a large plastic white bag and tossed it onto my bed.

“This is all I have, Ivan. I haven’t used them in years.”

I opened the bag and started pulling out box after box, each one an edition of a game, most of which I had never heard of, with odd names like Underwood, The Hat, Pantomime, The Victory Day, Backgammon, and Great Hooduu.

“Look at this,” she said. “This is Monopoly. I bought it when I visited New York. Twenty years ago, we would have been detained by the Committee for State Security* for owning this capitalist smut,” she said.

“So I’ve been rotting in this dreary hospital for eighteen years, and all the while you’ve been hoarding these games?”

“And who were you going to play with, Ivan?”

“You, for one.”

“Stop being so dramatic. You were too buried in your books to play games with an old lady. You stopped playing chess with me ten years ago.”

“Only because you’re wretched at it.”

“My point.”

“I get to keep these?”

“Long-term borrow.”

“And the ginger twins don’t get to play with them?” I asked.

Nurse Natalya scoffed and waved her hand dismissively.

I started sorting out the boxes on my bed into various categories according to the details listed on the side of the box and almost forgot that Nurse Natalya was still in the room until she started booming on about only five minutes left for breakfast hour, to which I asked:

“Is she there?”

“No, and she won’t be anymore. Not in the morning, anyway—6:00 A.M. dose.”

“I will be fine without breakfast today,” I said.

I found a colorfully stained napkin and a nearly dead pen next to my bed. Then I scribbled some words in my atrocious handwriting. Then I wheeled myself to Polina’s room and slipped the napkin under her door.

I waited patiently throughout the day, extraordinarily aware of every ticktock of every clock in every room in the hospital (despite the limited funding and technology at this hospital, there were a frustrating number of clocks). I took a few bites at lunch hour and a few more during dinner hour. I made an appearance in the Main Room for various TV hours, wandered the halls like a ghost unsure of its destination, and made several trips to the community bathroom, all of which were veiled (and failed) attempts to locate Polina, which I largely expected, given

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