There was a fellow student with whom there was no connection for 20 years, if not more. I found my bikes on the internet and guessed that I was me. They chose time with him to post-talk, organized a video conference with a bottle on each side of the monitor.
How on its own? I ask. Like a child, like a child?

Elenka is Volodina’s wife, she also studied with us. They had such a love in high school – the walls were shaking. Literally shaken, neighbors in the dormitory witness.

Same is okay. There are three grandchildren, three grandchildren, and a fourth is planned. The elephant is dead.
Sorry, I did not know.
In general, this is a positive story. They lived long and happy and all that. When she became ill, her son was still in the ninth class and her daughter was in the sixth. They were late, we first bought an apartment, and then we took them. It was always checked on clocks, mammograms, tests and everything that was recommended. Olga is very organized. She kept a diary all her life, starting from eighth grade. From the hand, in such thick notebooks with springs. I bought these notebooks for 100 or 200 pieces and I recorded something every day. Not everybody, but once a week.

Well, it was checked, checked and suddenly - the crashes, immediately the third stage. They did MRI - there are also metastases, that is, the fourth. Doing the operation is meaningless, say goodbye. We are, of course, there and there, in this dispenser, in that, in Germany, in Israel. In Israel, such a Russian doctor says: "I can't cure it, it's late, but I will try to extend life. Do you want?” As in a hotel with hourly payment: “Will you extend?” – “We will” – “For how much?” – “For all!”

There is, says the doctor, a chemotherapy protocol, entirely new, just tested. Drop hell poison once every three weeks. At a price, of course, like the Crimean bridge. How much time to do? And for the rest of life, how much the body will endure. It lasts who year, who two, more than four so far has not been done. It is chemistry, not vitamins.

We signed up for this chemistry. Later it turned out that in Moscow it is also done, and even for free, by OMS. You just have to find the right doctor and convince him. Not really vitamins. I understand why people don’t last long. On the day of droplessness, the feeling is normal. The second day was bad. And from the third to the seventh, only to die sooner. Nausea suddenly turns out, all organs and even bones hurt, it is impossible to breathe, all joints are broken, all mucous membranes are inflamed and bleed, neither to sit nor to lie down, neither to eat nor to drink, nor vice versa. And then two weeks like nothing, until the next dropper.

And in this mode she lived not a year, not two, not even four, but almost eleven. Three dissertations were written on it, doctors came to see from other cities – a unique case. She cried that he would not see how Yurk would finish school, and he had time to finish the institute, get married and have two children. Yulia graduated from the university and married her mother. I and Olynka visited half the world, all the theatrical premieres were all touring. Previously, everything was postponed, it was spent on repairs, then on future cars-apartments for children, and then I didn't care about the money. There are them, there are not them – I am a man, I will earn. If you want to go to Paris, go to Paris. You just need to guess to fly off on the eighth or ninth day after the dropper, and return to the next. Choose a route without physical activity. We didn’t have to go to Kilimanjaro, but we went to Kenya on a safari. There is good, the car is lucky, the giraffes themselves climb the window.

“Woloda,” I ask, “why do you think Olya lasted so long and others couldn’t?” Others also have children, everyone wants to stay with them longer. Just lucky or what?
Luckily of course. Plus the right lifestyle, there was good health before the beginning of chemistry. But the most important thing is her diary. She is responsible, every small thing has to be brought to an end. When the chemistry began, there were about a quarter of empty pages left in the next notebook. And when she cried that she could no longer, that she would refuse the next chemistry, that it was better to die than to suffer so much, I told her, "Here, write this notebook to the end, and then I will let you go, die for health." And the notebook did not end and did not end, so it remained printed for three quarters.
How is it?
Do you remember the story “The Last Letter”? There, the girl decided that she would die when the last leaf of plush fell out of the window. But he did not fall, and she also held on and eventually recovered. And then I learned that this last sheet was not real, the artist painted it on the wall.
I remember this story in English school.
We too. Well, I decided, what am I worse than that artist? I’ll give her the last note too. I slowly inserted clean sheets at the end of the notebook. And the written out of the middle was removed, so that the notebook did not appear too thick and always had three-fourths of the written out, a quarter empty. She gradually guessed that there was something dirty here, but didn’t find out anything. I saw it as a small miracle. So I wrote this last quarter of the notebook for eleven years.

Listen, I am a type of writer. I wonder how people feel when death is so close. What was there in that notebook?
Nothing on this topic. If you read it, you won’t even know that she was sick. She wrote about Paris, about giraffes. That Yulka has five, and Yurk seems to have a quarrel with a girl. A recipe for broccoli soup.
Can I post this story on the internet?
and valley.
You know, people don’t like the negative. They want stories to end well. Should I write that she is dead? As if we were talking to you not now, but when Olya was still alive. I conclude with the fact that she is 57, and that 58 will never be, I will be silent.
What is the difference? What if you don’t write that she’s dead, people will think she’s immortal? Readers are not fools, they will understand that this is still a story with a happy ending.
“You don’t understand, Volod, the principles of network literature. But it’s your business, I’ll write as it is.

Here I wrote. I dedicate this story to the bright memory of O.A. Jeremy.