It was 10 years ago, when my younger brother and I were in school. Therefore, in the evening, the whole family gathered in our three-room apartment: Mom, Dad, my brother-in-law, a turtle with a German name and a poppy who was afraid of even his own voice.

A slight immersion in the atmosphere:

Our two-story building fell under some state program of modernization and in addition to being insulated, painted and all residents put plastic windows, it was decided to build a third floor in order to increase the number of apartments for doctors from our village.

Everything is cool, only the thing is happening in Russia, which means the repair is going late in the autumn. The roof of the second floor has been removed, the builders are preparing the site for the superstructure.



In fact the essence. The evening. I’m doing lessons, I’m preparing for EEG. I took a bath, filling a new for my little brother. Meanwhile, instead of the usual evening child rage, it is constantly applied to the pillow. Mom begins to be disturbed by his lethargy, and while she tries to figure out what is happening to him, he begins to be unreasonably sick to all sides of the world.

Dad calls the ambulance, and it should be noted that the village is a happiness for the sick in terms of the speed of reaction to the problem.

An ambulance doctor examines my brother and at the same moment my huge (like the invincible Bruce Willis) daddy falls faint. My mother and I, gently speaking, do not understand what the hell is going on. Mom is even a little angry, like "Dummy, it's not time to lie here, our son is sick." Doctors take the father under the white sleeves, catch his brother and go to the hospital to examine strange symptoms.



Mom tells me to gather some things, asks a lot of questions, and I’m just very tired and want to sleep. I stop thinking about the fact that the male half of the family is in the hospital, I am so warm and just want to lie down for a moment. I wave my feet into the room and see that my mom is already lying on the couch. I take her hand and say:

We’ll sleep a little and do it all, okay?

Heavy as lead. There is a heavy, but pleasant fatigue on the body.

Mother sneezes and asks to call her cousin and tell her that Daddy is in the hospital and he needs to be taken. And then I begin to realize that the number I call from my home phone several times a day, I do not remember at all. I look at the pipe and in some wonderful way (maybe the muscle memory interfered, realizing that I am in a crane) I type a number from five digits.



As in the fog. My mom and I slept so quietly.

My sister and Daddy’s brother came and opened all the windows. We were crushed from the couch, dragged into the car and taken to the hospital to another part of the family.



Sitting on the door of the hospital with green faces and blue fingers, we were told that it was carbon dioxide.

Comrades builders filled our mine with garbage and other remains of the roof of the second floor. The gas column that heated us water for those water procedures that day was slowly killing us.



We sat, hugged together, crying and thanking the forces that saved us that day.

The body of the brother, who was the only one who reacted to the gas by rejection.

Dad and his strange fainting that surprised him more than frightened him.

The sister who opened the windows and saved the bird and my favorite reptile.



We have not won any courts. I don’t even remember that we care so much. My mother said, “The most important thing is to be alive.”



There are three doctors in the parents’ apartment.

Even if we don’t need their help anymore.