To Sing Frogs Chapter 25d

While I still suspect her methods as less than orthodox, I loved this old woman who worked at Denney’s orphanage. And she loved him, too.

“That’s ludicrous! You actually think Tatiana was giving him booze?”

“No, of course not. I’m sure she had no idea. She was way too worried about following the rules. I can’t speak for the grandma lady though.”

“So you think she was running a bar for children in the back?”

“Come on Amy. Don’t act so surprised. We’ve both heard of people who give their kids extra cough syrup to keep them calm for long drives in the car.”

“You think the old lady was giving him cough syrup?”

“Maybe just cough syrup’s major ingredient. Medicine is expensive and hard to get. In Russia, Vodka is cheaper than bottled water. It wouldn’t take much either.”

Amy looked at the floor. Denney was calming down. “But why?”

“You saw how much she loved him. She wanted him to have a family. She didn’t want us to decide against him because of the tantrums. She wanted us to get to know him first. She knew once we got to know him everything would be fine.” Light streamed across the room from the open window as the sun crept from behind a cloud.

“Grandma’s medicine?” Amy asked gingerly. She looked up at me and a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Grandma’s medicine.” It now seemed so innocent. In fact it was almost heroic. Grandma had pulled it off.

Denney threw three more “stitches tantrums” before it was time for bed.

Amy’s prayer was filled with thanks. Sarah was still waiting for a response. Her prayer didn’t change.

 

 

A mother was singing lullabies in my dream. I don’t know how that woke me up. My eyes began to focus on the faint orange glow emitting from the lamp in the corner. It was adjusted to the lowest of three settings, which eased the transition while I came into consciousness. The singing continued. Soon Amy and Denney came into view. She sat with him on her lap and softly rocked back and forth in the stationary high-back chair.

“Couldn’t resist holding your new baby, huh?”

“He has a fever.”

That woke me up completely. “What else?”

“He threw up.”

“Hepatitis?”

“Probably. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” I exploded from the bed and booted up my computer. “Come on, come on, come on. Wake up you stupid machine.”

Google found about nine million places for me to look. Usually mild symptoms, especially in children. Low grade fever.Nausea. “The Web sites are saying there’s no treatment. It also appears like it shouldn’t be too serious, assuming it’s type A.”

“Should we take him to the doctor in the morning just to be sure?”

“No! They’ll quarantine him. Probably us too.”

We decided to have Amy call our family doctor back in the States. It was still business hours in Michigan. He concurred. Tylenol for the fever. Be extra careful about changing diapers and thoroughly washing hands. Use common sense and get him to a doctor if anything appears really serious. Hepatitis A would pretty much just run its course. We should take him in to get checked as soon as we got home, but the doctor wasn’t overly concerned with the current information.

I had forgotten. A Russian doctor couldn’t be avoided. Denney had his emigration physical planned with Dr. Valentina the next morning. Then we had a passport photo appointment. Afterward we’d rush to the passport office and hopefully they could process the mandatory travel document while we waited. Originally we had planned to leave Vladivostok for Moscow on Wednesday. The delays had forced us to reschedule our flight for Thursday. We wouldn’t make the Thursday flight either if everything didn’t go perfectly. That would bring even more trouble.

The following Monday was a bigger challenge to our exit strategy than Mayday had been. It was V-Day. While the anniversary of victory in WWII is always a big deal in Russia (who lost more people than all other combatant countries combined) this year would be like no other.

It had been exactly sixty years since the end of what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War. The veterans who served their country in that conflict were now very old and would likely not survive for another decade commemoration. President Putin was promising a celebration to beat all other celebrations. He had already declared both the following Monday and Tuesday national holidays. Any practical person who knew Russia also understood it could go far beyond that before government offices got back up to speed.

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