Page 70 of Mastermind

I brace for anything to come running out of the doorway. So does Jessica; her hand stays on the butt of her gun inside her jacket. I trust her to decide when to draw it and when to wait.

A rotund woman with red hair and wearing dirty nurse’s scrubs emerges from the door, shaking her fist in the air and letting loose a string of what I can only assume are Ukrainian curses directed at us.

A gaunt man appears in the doorway behind her. She spins around and shoves him back inside, then continues her tirade.

Despite the woman’s intensity, Jessica lets go of her gun, and I breathe a small sigh of relief that we’re not under immediate threat of being attacked by a zombie horde. Although anything is possible at this point.

Jessica holds up her hands. “Hold on. Speak slowly.”

The woman stops cold at the sound of Jessica’s voice. “Americans?” she asks.

“Yes,” Jessica replies.

The woman stops her advance and crosses her arms. “You are not here to relieve me?”

“No.”

“Then you are useless,” the woman snarls before heading to the door.

“Wait!” Jessica runs after her. “We’re here to help.”

“Help me? Who is going to help them?” the woman replies. “For three weeks now, I try to take care of them. Just me since the others left!”

“What others?” asks Jessica.

The woman eyes her suspiciously. “I am not to talk to you.”

“We’re the only ones to talk to because you’ve been abandoned. Nobody’s coming to relieve you.”

The woman curses, not at us, but at the ground. “And what is to be done with them?” she asks, gesturing to the building behind her.

“Let’s figure that out. That’s Dr. Cray; my name is Jessica. What’s yours?”

“I am Nurse Zlate,” she replies.

“May we step inside?” I ask.

“Fine. But do not get too close,” says Zlate, stepping aside to let Jessica and me enter the facility while Mickey waits behind.

The tiles are cracked, and the paint is peeling from the walls in the large open area. Two men sit on a couch, watching a television showing a cartoon. Another sits on a bed, playing with the drawstrings of his pajamas. Each looks listless and lost in their own world. Some of them watch us, but not with any great interest.

The conditions are horrific, but it’s not dirty. Zlate, for her part, has tried to do her best.

At the far corner, there’s a nurses’ station in front of a small office. I can see the edge of a cot inside with a rumpled blanket.

“It’s just been you here?” asks Jessica.

“Yes,” says Zlate.

“And no help from the government?”

She shakes her head. “Help is coming, they told me. Don’t worry, help is coming. But I do not believe them. Not since they sent the wrong medication.”

“Wrong medication?” I ask.

“Yes. They gave me pills and told me to give them to each of the patients,” she replies.

“What kind of pills?”