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Chapter 1

- To Demyan? The guys look at each other with greasy grins. “He’s always lucky with girls,” one complains, and the second unceremoniously picks me up by the elbow and drags me somewhere. I'm even grateful, because my legs can barely support me, and I can get lost. It is unlikely that she would have found Demyan's house.
We go around the hillock, go down to the lowland, dive, it would seem, into an impenetrable thicket, but we come out onto a picturesque clearing with a house in the center and outbuildings on the sides. I do not have time to examine the house and its inhabitants, as I stumble upon Demyan's eyes.
The heart stops and then starts beating wildly. He seems to me even taller than before, powerful, so healthy. Yes, I saw him in full growth several times when he was eager to show his fortitude, being sick.
I can't get used to how huge and powerful he is now. Our past flashes before our eyes. I know the feelings of patients - they do not like carers or those who care for them, especially in an intimate way, as witnesses to their helplessness.
Demyan has never been gentle with me, but now he is full of anger, vomits it out of himself, as if a black cloud is flying at me, his bright, spiky eyes ooze poison. I can feel his hatred from a distance.
This makes me want to tear up. Why is he doing this to me? Why, like last time, is it immediately obvious that he wants to get rid of me?
– Who is this? - the tall blond who came out onto the porch is interested. - To whom did you come? And why does she smell like wolf meat?
- Who? Demyan asks, folding his arms over his chest and walking around me in a circle, sniffing the air. “Really, it stinks. Well, wolf whore, did somersaults and came for more?
From the insult thrown in the face, I became stupefied. Not at all the kind of reception I was expecting. On the other hand, what did I expect?
Demyan could not remain the same.
And did I even know the real Demyan?
I take a step forward towards him, although I cowardly dream of getting out of here.
But I have a mission.
For her sake, I am ready to endure his attacks.
Demyan, hello. I don't know why you're so angry and insulting me, but you need to hear something.
- You do not know? He comes close to me, bows his face. An inky gloom blurs in his pupils, his jaw is clenched, he can hardly control himself. - You werewolf! Came disguised as a poor lamb to kill us all? Do you think that since we know each other, I will let you into the house? Get out!
"I'm not going to kill anyone!" Vice versa! I want to save you all. Demyan, let's talk calmly, shall we? I do not deceive anyone and do not hold a stone in my bosom.
“Maybe we should let the girl have her say?” - offers a fair-haired big man, going down from the porch. Demyan doesn't even look at him, chiseling out the words:
- She leaves. Now.
“I won’t leave,” I say firmly. “You can hate me all you want, but you have no right to decide for everyone whether they need my information or not.
It looks like I hit a sore spot. Demyan's eyes glaze over, he rages even more, his teeth turn into fangs, the hair partially covers his face, his ears are pointed. Real half wolf. I recoil in confusion.
And he steps on me and asks:
“Who are you to even claim the right to be among us?”
- The one who will save you! And I'm not a werewolf, I'm a human.
- Demyan is alive, Vera! It's true!
I close my eyes, wait a second, then open my eyes again. Nothing changed. In front of me are the parents of Demyan, my patient, who died six months ago. It still hurts to remember this, and I want the Belovs to disappear. But they are not going to leave. They sit right on my shabby sofa, in my sparsely furnished little apartment, where loneliness is brightened up only by the big black cat Boris and numerous indoor plants. Smartly dressed, sleek and well-groomed, they look at me as if I am for them - the light at the end of a dark tunnel. And then they try vying to tell me something that I just can’t believe.
“It's hard to explain,” Ignat Alekseevich hesitates.
“We couldn’t tell you then,” Anna Vitalievna picks up.
"Yeah, try it!" I think.
Although I don't really understand what's going on. Demyan Belov, for whom I was a nurse, died six months ago from sarcoma. I left it earlier, before the agony began, because it was the people in front of me who wanted it that way. Too unsuitable for their rich, albeit terminally ill son, a simple poor nurse who, in their opinion, wanted to take advantage of the situation and marry their boy to herself in order to pocket money after death.
I didn’t even want to know how many millions Demyan had, I was never interested in money enough to sell for it or sacrifice my principles. But no matter how trite it may sound, I fell in love with my gloomy, pale and infirm patient. It happens.
And it was not a pity, because Demyan is not the only one I nursed. It just happens that love often comes unexpectedly. We were unequal with him, and I never found out what Demyan was experiencing for me. How much can you find out about a person who hardly speaks, pays no attention to you, or even shouts, insults you.
But, despite the difficult nature of Demyan, I fell in love, but neither my love, nor care, nor a lot of money saved him. I was not officially invited to the funeral. By some miracle, I found out about his death, came to say goodbye uninvited, but I didn’t even manage to approach the closed coffin.
I experienced my grief alone, there was no one to even press me to my chest. I then felt so restless, so unhappy and lonely that life became not sweet, and just recovered, came to my senses, as the Belovs appear, like snow on their heads, with a shocking statement.
“Vera,” Demyan’s mother continues in a voice trembling with excitement, “our relationship did not turn out so well, and I now blame myself for it. You are a good girl and looked after Demyan not just as a nurse, you did your job with all your heart. How to take care of your family. Know that we appreciate and remember it. That is why we turn to you now.
“What you learn,” Belov interrupts his wife, “is the strictest secret. I don't think you'd run to tell anyone, but it's for your own good to keep it a secret. Demyan is alive. We staged his death, that was the condition. We had to go for it.
“Girl, do you hear? - Anna Vitalievna pulls me by the hand, but I can’t get out of my stupor, black dots flash before my eyes. The fall into darkness does not last long, after a couple of seconds I already come to my senses, nodding mechanically.
Let them continue, and I will try to figure out for now how to escape from these two crazy people. Probably, my thoughts are reflected on my face, because Belova sighs heavily.
We thought you wouldn't believe it. This is clear. Who in your place would believe? We should have started right away with the evidence. She pulls a folder out of a bulky bag, lays out large A4-sized photographs with rows of numbers in the lower right corner on top of battered medical journals on the table.