The Hospital

* * *

A crisis manifested in Suliko’s life with absolute suddenness.

“The situation is inescapable,” the woman in the suit told her, bringing a steaming cup of tea to her lips. “The man is a foreigner. He is looking for Suliko. His family will undoubtedly intervene. Once the authorities are notified – and they certainly will be, should the matter not be settled in court – there will be nowhere left to hide from the consequences.”

The crux of the matter was that the previous night, someone had slipped a court summons under the front door of Suliko’s home. As it turned out, an unknown foreign man, who had gotten Suliko pregnant, was suing her for having an abortion. How could things have gone this far? Suliko wondered, especially since she herself could not recall with any certainty who the father of the child might be. Yet, that hardly mattered anymore. The charges had been filed. In response, she had urgently convened a family council.

The gathering took place in the narrow confines of their living room. In attendance were relatives, a few somber neighbors, and the woman in the crumpled suit, who spoke with the authoritative cadence of a lawyer. Suliko – a slender young woman whose nervous energy seemed entirely concentrated within her thick, curly hair – sat in the center of the room, feeling much like an insect pinned to a wall. It seemed she did not fully comprehend the gravity of the situation, as her eyes darted about in confusion while she thought to herself: “What right does that foreign man have to force me to bear a child? My body is my own, and I will do with it as I please.” Out loud, however, she managed to say very little.

“Consequences?” Suliko asked in a thin, trembling voice the moment the woman in the suit finished speaking.

“Financial, moral, and criminal responsibility,” interjected her older aunt, who clearly shared the supposed lawyer’s stance. “They will issue a warrant for your arrest. The compensation alone will bankrupt you, and attempting to evade it... evasion will culminate in a prison sentence. Yes, prison is the only logical conclusion to all of this.”

At that moment, Suliko’s father, her grandfather, and a few neighboring men – who had been sitting with their heads bowed, clutching handkerchiefs and periodically dabbing tears from their eyes – broke into loud wailing and lamentation. Yet the word “prison” hung suspended in the air like a heavy, ice-cold blade, threatening to drop at any unseen moment and sever Suliko’s neck. The astonishing part was that no one even attempted to defend her. No one suggested demanding a medical examination – after all, was it not possible that this foreigner was not the biological father at all? Nor did anyone advise pursuing legal countermeasures. The family council accepted without a fight, as an absolute given, the fact that Suliko was entangled in a catastrophic mess and that the machinery of her punishment had already been set into motion.

A sharp panic took root in Suliko’s chest. She could not go to prison. Nor could she face that man or his faceless, hypothetical family. Consequently, she needed to vanish – not merely from her apartment, but from the entire system of societal obligations. To hide, she had to find a reliable sanctuary; the kind of institution that neither the police nor irate relatives could infiltrate.

The entire family agreed to this resolution with silence and a collective shrug of their shoulders.

* * *

Early the very next morning, Suliko awoke. Pulling an old, yellow backpack from the closet, she packed her clothes and personal belongings and left the house without saying goodbye to anyone. As she marched through the city streets, the paranoid thought that the foreign man was watching her from every passing tram made her heart race. She did not stop until she found herself standing before the immense, gray, monolithic edifice of the city’s central hospital.

The hospital looked more like a bureaucratic fortress of sickness than a place of healing. Inside, a pungent stench of ammonia and boiled cabbage hung in the air. The monotonous, buzzing lighting cast no shadows and radiated no warmth. Suliko approached the registration desk; the boy sitting behind it seemed as if he had been carved out of the pale linoleum laid upon the floor, so seamlessly and invisibly did he blend into his surroundings.

“I am requesting hospitalization!” Suliko declared.

The boy did not even lift his eyes from his ledger as he asked:

“Nature of the illness?”

“A breakdown,” Suliko explained, leaning against the glass partition. “A general, complete nervous breakdown. I am struggling to adapt to the outside world. I am a danger to myself.”

She had expected resistance – a cascade of psychological tests and interrogations from skeptical doctors who would easily discern the truth behind her trembling facade. Instead, a stack of paperwork consisting of six identical forms was shoved into her hands, and Suliko began to fill them out. She checked the boxes confirming acute exhaustion, uncontrollable anxiety, and an inability to perceive reality.

When she was finally ushered into an examination room, the exhausted doctor, burdened with heavy bags under his eyes, barely raised his head to look at her. He checked Suliko’s pulse and swiftly scanned the papers.

“Everything is clear. It is a breakdown, though not acute,” he muttered, signing the bottom of the form and stamping it. “You meet the requirements for hospitalization. Ward Four!”

Suliko felt a surge of triumphant relief. How effortlessly simple it had all turned out to be! As she followed the doctor on duty down the long, dim corridor leading to Ward Four, she calculated in her mind that she would stay here for a few weeks, or perhaps even a month – exactly long enough for the foreign man to abandon his search, and for the looming threat of prison to be lost in the river of time.

Here, she was safe.

* * *

The heavy, double doors of the ward closed with a dull thud behind Suliko, taking the buzzing echo of the corridor with them. Ward Four did not resemble a place of healing in the slightest; it was more like a vast, cold repository for lonely people. The suffocating geometry of the room struck Suliko immediately – in the high-ceilinged, brightly lit hall, rusty iron beds were lined up in endless rows. The space between them was so narrow that a person could barely squeeze a foot through. There were no partitions here, not a single curtain, nor even a slightly shadowed corner. It was a territory where the concept of personal space physically did not exist.

Yet, more than the bare walls, Suliko was bewildered by a fact she realized a few seconds later. A deathly silence reigned in the hall, and dozens of gazes were focused on a single point: directly on her.

Every single one of those gazes belonged to a man.

The ward was filled with men of various ages and appearances – some lay motionless wrapped in blankets, some sat on the edges of their beds, while others simply stared into the void. There was not a single trace of another woman in this enormous space. Suliko instinctively backed away, her hands searching for the doorknob, but at that moment, the duty doctor who had brought her here gripped her arm tightly.

“Wait right here!” the doctor whispered in a slightly nervous tone.

Suliko froze in place. The doctor detached himself from her and headed toward the farthest, relatively darker corner of the room. There, across two pushed-together beds, lay a man of colossal stature. Instead of standard hospital linens, he was draped in some dark, velvet-like cloak, and he surveyed the room like a monarch overlooking his domain. The doctor approached him, bowed slightly, almost reverently, and began to whisper. This was the “Chief Patient,” the most influential and oldest resident of the ward.

Suliko watched this scene with bated breath. The doctor seemed to be making excuses, explaining the necessity of bringing in a new patient, while the Chief Patient listened with deliberate calm. Finally, the colossal man gave a barely noticeable but firm nod. Visible relief washed over the doctor’s face. He left the ward with quick steps, without so much as another glance in Suliko’s direction.

As soon as the door closed, a tall, heavy-boned, and stern-faced man rose from the bed next to the Chief Patient. He was dressed in a military uniform. With measured, orderly steps, he walked between the rows, approached Suliko, and wordlessly, with only a motion of his eyes, signaled her to follow him. Suliko clutched her yellow backpack to her chest and obediently followed. The man led her to one of the beds standing in the middle of the room, at the end of a row, and pointed with his finger – sit here.

Suliko sat on the edge of the bed. Right at that moment, a velvety voice rang out from the corner, echoing throughout the entire room.

“Boys,” the Chief Patient began, propping himself up slightly. His voice sounded as if every word had been weighed in advance. “As you can see, we have a new guest. Ward Four has always been distinguished by its hospitality. Let us welcome her as befits our great family!”

“Oh, I agree, I agree, how perfectly you put it! Long live the newcomer!” a shrill, piercing voice rang out from the other end of the room. Everyone looked toward a short, dwarfish man who was standing on his bed so he could be seen better. He was nervously rubbing his hands together and gazing at the Chief Patient with burning eyes.

The entire ward greeted Suliko in unison. She gripped her yellow backpack even tighter. Absolutely every eye in the room was now focused solely on her. It was not a gaze of curiosity. It was a penetrating, collective scrutiny with which a closed, strictly regulated society studies a foreign body that has encroached upon its territory.

A few minutes later, the ward door suddenly swung wide open. A middle-aged woman entered the room, looking nothing at all like a doctor. She wore a gray suit, its collar buttoned up entirely too strictly.

It was the Director of the hospital.

She stopped in the center of the ward, clasped her hands tightly behind her back, and looked over everyone for a few seconds, as if sizing up an audience.

“My friends!” she began in a loud, theatrical tone, “The human mind is the most complex instrument in the universe.”

The men listened quietly. Some did not even look at her.

“Sometimes we think that life is crashing into us,” she continued, “but in reality, it is merely an opportunity. An opportunity to look within ourselves.”

She paused.

“Our hospital exists for precisely this reason.”

Then, with a satisfied expression, she nodded her head and left the ward.

* * *

Thus began Suliko’s new, absurd daily routine – a life passed beneath relentless, collective curiosity and an intrusive, all-consuming attention. The entire ward, under the invisible conducting of the Chief Patient, was constantly focused on her. Suliko only had to sit down on her creaky bed for the neighboring men to immediately turn toward her. Some stared brazenly, while others, feigning coincidence, shifted their beds closer to be near her. Every movement she made was accompanied by whispers and snickers. If she fidgeted, one of them would immediately call out to another: “Just look at how nervous our girl is getting!”; if she coughed, they would ask with feigned concern – yet an obviously mocking smile – if her back was cold or if she wanted some water. Suliko felt like a strange, exotic insect under a microscope.

However, it was the Chief Patient who unsettled her the most. He never addressed Suliko directly. Instead, he spoke to the room. His sharp, booming voice would strike the high ceiling and, ricocheting off it, fall directly upon Suliko’s head.

“How fascinating this modern world of ours is, my boys,” the Chief Patient would say in a sweet but irony-drenched tone, inspecting his fingernails. “Women have become so delicate and sensitive... Life need only impose the slightest responsibility on them, and they immediately seek a safe haven. Isn’t that so? They would rather pretend to be mad, sneak into a sanctuary for the sick, and occupy a patient’s bed, than look an ordinary, helpless man in the eyes and apologize.”

At such words, a cold sweat would break out over Suliko. Her breath would catch in her throat, and her gaze would dart down to her own knees. Meanwhile, the other men would nod to one another, watching Suliko with sly, probing eyes. There was nothing written in her medical chart about the foreign man, much less about the abortion she had undergone. And yet, the Chief Patient hit the mark with such sniper-like precision, it was as if he were reading Suliko’s thoughts. Was he clairvoyant? Had he somehow gotten hold of the details of her life? Or was he simply so wicked that, through some masculine instinct, he sensed exactly what terrified women the most?

Suliko gripped her knees, while above her head, the lightbulbs continued their aggressive, monotonous buzzing. Having fled to hide from the outside world, she now found herself in the epicenter of a bizarre, suffocating attention. True, no one physically attacked her, no one was outwardly crude to her, but this constant observation, the ironic smiles, and the ambiguous remarks were slowly draining her energy. Suliko was completely disoriented – she simply did not know what to do, how to behave, or what position to assume in this absurd patriarchy.

* * *

Time flowed on. The machinery of the hospital, however, operated like clockwork on an unvarying schedule. One day, the door to the ward opened, and a young man from the administrative department entered the room. He held a thin folder in his hands and surveyed the room with such interest that it was as if he had stepped into a museum.

He slowly approached Suliko’s bed, smiled, and asked in an overly friendly tone:

“You are the new patient, aren’t you?”

Suliko nodded.

The man opened his folder, as if checking something.

“Interesting,” he said in a half-whisper. “Sometimes completely healthy people are the first to realize that life is dangerous.”

He cast a glance around the ward, then looked at Suliko again.

“However, sometimes it also happens that a person simply... reserves a spot in advance.”

He shrugged.

“You know how it is – some people truly need an illness.”

The man closed his folder and calmly walked out.

Suliko was left with a strange sensation, as though the man had been telling a joke whose meaning only he understood.

* * *

To Suliko, the conversations between the patients and the hospital staff were largely vague and inexplicable; however, she soon noticed that Ward Four had its own covert routine, one that almost entirely replaced the official order. Every morning, a nurse would roll a metal cart through the double doors and distribute small paper cups filled with colorful pills to the patients. With an emotionless, insistent gaze, she would watch as the men swallowed their medication, but the moment she stepped out of the ward, a different, shadowy life would begin.

With astonishing synchronicity, the men would spit the capsules hidden in their mouths into the palms of their hands and, forming a silent procession, head toward the corner bed. There lay the Chief Patient – propped up against his pillows as if he were some grotesque idol receiving offerings from an obedient flock. One by one, every man surrendered his allotted medication to him.

“The administration is trying to dull our senses,” the Chief Patient would declare, dropping the pills into a large, dark glass jar resting on his nightstand. “These chemical shackles were invented solely to subjugate you. You do not need them. I myself am your medicine.”

Ultimately, the pills collected throughout the day would be taken away by the head of the department.

Watching from her creaky bed, Suliko found these unfolding scenes not merely absurd, but fraught with mortal peril. She saw how these trembling, hollow-eyed men were surrendering the single lifeline that connected them to life and reality. Naturally, she understood perfectly well what disastrous consequences could follow from all this.

Does survival not lie in order and protocol? Suliko thought. The hospital even possessed a specific mechanism for this – a rusty metal box hung on the wall near the restroom, bearing the inscription: “Patient Complaint and Evaluation Protocol.” Suliko believed that beyond the madness of Ward Four, logic and bureaucratic order still existed. Therefore, one day, she took the appropriate form from the box and meticulously described the daily process of the pills’ confiscation. She dropped the paper into the box, hoping the administration would intervene in time and save these helpless, mentally unbalanced people from an inevitable danger. However, over the next few days, a suffocating silence settled over the ward, and no one from the administration ever appeared.

* * *

Soon, the consequences of the interrupted treatment erupted like a volcano. The terrible blow was dealt to the small, frail man lying a couple of beds away from Suliko – the very man the Chief Patient bullied the most, forcing him to surrender his food along with his pills. In the middle of the night, he began having severe convulsions. His body twisted unnaturally against the iron frame of the bed, and his skin took on the semi-transparent, gray pallor of the dying. His breathing turned into a wet, mechanical rattle that sounded horrifying in the darkened room. He was dying!

When the noise of general panic finally reached the ears of the night shift doctors, the ward filled with blinding light and chaos. Orderlies rushed in with a resuscitation cart and waged a life-or-death struggle to save the man. After the initial procedures, his unconscious body was taken out into the corridor and rushed toward intensive care, though it was already too late.

That same evening, another guest appeared in the ward. The Director returned. She stopped at the door and assumed a somber expression.

“My friends! A sad event has occurred,” she said.

She was silent for a few seconds.

“But human weakness always teaches us something.”

She waved her hand in the air.

“We are not here merely to treat bodies, but also the understanding of life.”

The Chief Patient looked at her calmly, but said nothing. The Director nodded to the room and left.

Suliko spent the entire day sitting up in bed, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. Surely they will investigate now! Surely now they will read my letter and realize the danger was real! she thought to herself.

But when the heavy door opened the next morning and the Head of the Department entered the ward, he did not even glance toward Suliko; he headed straight for the Chief Patient’s corner. The men’s quiet, nervous muttering continued for quite some time. Suliko watched how restlessly the Head of the Department shifted from foot to foot, while the Chief Patient, with deliberate and authoritative movements of his heavy hands, adamantly argued some point.

After the conversation ended, the Head of the Department turned toward the ward and addressed those present:

“The unfortunate incident that occurred last night,” he began in a voice that radiated fury more than medical professionalism, “was the result of acute atmospheric incompatibility. The patient was unable to synchronize with the collective healing aura of the ward. This was compounded by malnutrition and general weakness. Therefore, his bed will be disinfected.”

No one mentioned the confiscation of the pills.

And then the Chief Patient’s gaze found Suliko. It was a cold, measured gaze, calculated for the total destruction of a human being. He did not yell at her, nor did he accuse her of espionage; he simply decided to erase Suliko from the life of the hospital forever. A silent order was issued in the ward!

From that moment on, Suliko was systematically ostracized. When the men took their daily walks around the perimeter of the room, they formed a living wall, forcing Suliko to press herself against the cold radiator. When the tea cart was brought in, her name mysteriously vanished from the list. If she tried to speak to anyone, the men would uniformly begin humming some dissonant, buzzing melody, completely drowning out her voice.

Suliko was shut out of all hospital activities and turned into an invisible ghost in a room filled with fifty men. As it turned out, not only did the administration fail to appreciate her concern for the patients’ health, but they also threw her to the ward’s executioners to be torn apart. A perfectly healthy woman found herself in a psychological prison, an inescapable trap.

* * *

The news of the patient’s death shook the life of the ward for a single day. Then, everything returned to its old rut, and one day, a general competition was initiated in the hospital. The directive was announced to the ward’s inhabitants by a stern-faced administrator dressed in a gray suit. He stood in the center of Ward Four, unfolded an official notice, and began in an emotionless, monotonous voice:

“By order of the central administration, an inter-departmental unity initiative will commence at the end of this week. Among other things, to encourage unity and stimulate the patients’ diminished mental capacities, a chess tournament will be held in the large conference hall. The participation of selected representatives from each ward is mandatory!”

A quiet whisper swept through the rows of iron beds like a breeze. The men exchanged the impatient, conspiratorial glances characteristic of sworn allies. The Chief Patient, who until then had been leaning against his pillows, periodically shifting his massive body, now sat up on his bed with an expression that suggested he was already arranging devastating combinations in his mind.

“Are there any questions?” the administrator concluded his monologue.

Marginalized and huddled by the radiator, Suliko timidly raised her hand. It was the first time in the last few days she had attempted to speak. The administrator narrowed his eyes as if he had spotted a stain on a clean floor and nodded to grant her the floor.

“I have a procedural question,” Suliko said, her voice hoarse from disuse. “Will the tournament be divided by sex?”

The administrator blinked.

“Divided? Did you hear anything about division anywhere in the instructions? It entails a unified structure. All patients play together.”

“I wonder what she means by dividing by sex?” the dwarf asked probingly, glancing at the other men.

“I merely wondered if men and women would play together,” a frightened Suliko barely managed to squeeze out, but then, as if she had lost her mind, she continued speaking. Words tumbled from her mouth that she not only hadn’t intended to say, but was herself astonished at what possessed her to commit such folly: “For balanced competition, games between men and women should be held separately. It is a simple matter of mental architecture. After all, due to the nature of their temperament, men are less adept at playing chess, are they not?”

She uttered the last few words quietly and with long pauses, as she already fully understood what a colossal mistake she had made.

The silence that followed these words was no ordinary silence; it was a vacuum that pumped all the oxygen out of the room. It was the receding of the ocean that clears the shore of its water masses before a massive tsunami. It was the calm before the storm. And then, this calm exploded all at once, and the vacuum shattered.

A vicious, cacophonous hysteria engulfed the ward. The men threw off their thin blankets, shouting and hurling insults from the other end of the room: “Idiot! Feeble-minded! Wretch! Disgusting maggot! Parasite! Single-celled creature hiding in a men’s sanctuary! Pitiful!” A plastic cup smashed against the wall by Suliko’s head, its ricocheting shards scattering in all directions. A terrified Suliko frantically darted her widened eyes and shielded her face with her hands, trying more to block the words shooting at her like arrows than the objects thrown her way. The bewildered administrator stood petrified in one spot, unable even to utter a sound.

“Silence!” the Chief Patient thundered a moment later.

The shouting ceased instantly, though the men were still panting and glaring at Suliko with undisguised venom. The Chief Patient turned his heavy, terrifying gaze toward Suliko and pursed his lips.

“You are a fool to open your mouth,” he began in a low voice, but this voice echoed unnaturally throughout the room. “Do you think you can insult us and then continue to live here in peace? The ward chooses its own champions, little girl! I assure you, I will personally see to it that your name never makes it onto the list. You will stay exactly where you belong – in the corner – and watch our triumph from afar.”

The men’s wrath continued to simmer for a little while longer, but eventually, the ward returned to its usual hum of passive aggression and tension. The competition was not discussed again, and Suliko’s hopes of participating in it vanished entirely. But who cared about a chess tournament anyway? Suliko was just thanking God that she had survived the attack completely unharmed.

* * *

In the following days, events did not unfold quite as everyone had imagined. The Chief Patient, with his localized tyranny, had failed to properly assess the rigid, unfeeling machinery of the central administration. When the appropriate moment arrived, he handed the list of male patients to the administrator, ostentatiously omitting Suliko. But a few hours later, a second administrator appeared in the ward, holding a stamped summons issued directly in Suliko’s name. Suliko’s original registration documents noted that she was the only woman in Ward Four, thereby satisfying an absurd diversity quota hidden deep within the hospital’s bureaucratic statutes. Therefore, her participation in the tournament was inevitable. The Chief Patient’s power was sidelined by a clerical formality.

When the long-awaited day of the competition arrived, the large conference hall – an enormous, cylindrical space overlooked from above by tiers of observation balconies – filled with people. The entire hospital was gathered there; hundreds of patients dressed in identical gowns leaned against the railings, their pale faces illuminated by the white light streaming from above.

Suliko sat at a table with a chessboard. The men of Ward Four were clustered on the lowest balcony, their faces contorted with hysteria and rage. They muttered curses, digging their fingernails into the metal railings, awaiting her immediate, humiliating defeat.

But to their surprise, Suliko did not lose. She played with cold, robotic precision. She moved her knights and bishops not with passion, but with the inevitable logic of mechanics, trapping her opponents in inescapable snares. She defeated a trembling patient from the pulmonology ward in nine moves. She destroyed the strategy of a retired professor in fifteen moves. Opponent after opponent replaced one another before her, and Suliko pulverized them one by one.

When the final match concluded – with a swift checkmate against a towering patient from the surgical wing – strange, echoing applause erupted from the upper tiers. Suliko stood up, the undisputed champion of the entire hospital.

The men of Ward Four had fallen completely silent. The hysteria had vanished from their faces, and their rage had been replaced by a pale, humiliating sense of defeat. The Chief Patient stood paralyzed among them, his jaws clenched so tightly it was as if his teeth had completely shattered.

When Suliko returned to Ward Four that evening and the heavy door locked behind her, the atmosphere had fundamentally changed. The men no longer encircled her. They no longer hissed. As she walked with slow steps toward her bed, holding the victor’s cheap medal in her hand, the men gave way, retreating to their own beds in a bitter, seething silence.

* * *

The conclusion of the chess tournament coincided exactly with the time when, by all rights, Suliko was scheduled to be discharged from the hospital. The men, for whom her silent, heavy silhouette had already become unbearable, wasted no time. They compiled an enormous report stuffed with absurd details, in which Suliko was described not as an ordinary patient, but as some invisible virus that was destroying the department’s psychological ecosystem. Armed with this stack of papers, they marched straight to the administration, absolutely convinced that by evening Suliko, along with her yellow backpack, would be thrown out onto the street.

But the machinery of the hospital never operated according to ordinary, earthly logic. The complaint penetrated the labyrinths of the upper floors, where an invisible consilium – women dressed in gray suits who had never even laid eyes on the patient – studied every comma and period for hours. Their conclusion turned the ward’s expectations upside down.

When the Head of the Department entered the ward, a nerve in his face twitched with anger. He took his place in front of Suliko’s bed, cleared his throat, and, staring fixedly at the paper, read aloud in a dry, official tone:

“By decree of the medical board, the extreme isolation of the patient and the destructive influence she exerts on collective therapy indicate a deep, irreversible phase of pathology. Discharging the patient at this stage would be evaluated as a failure of the system. Consequently, her term of isolation is automatically extended for one year.”

The air in the ward froze. One year. The men stared at the Head of the Department in stunned, wide-eyed disbelief.

Meanwhile, leaning against the cold headboard of her bed, Suliko watched the trembling paper in the Head of the Department’s hand with bewilderment. It was true that she had originally come here to hide for only a few weeks, but the absurd logic of the hospital had swept her away like an invisible current. The thought of escaping or resisting did not even cross her mind. It was as if this entire ordeal was happening not to her, but to someone else entirely, and she was merely a spectator.

* * *

With their hopes in the hospital’s bureaucratic machinery dashed, and the prospect of evicting Suliko through official channels removed from the agenda, the men of Ward Four changed their strategy. A ruthless campaign of psychological terror began. They turned every square meter surrounding Suliko into an invisible weapon.

Peace vanished from the ward completely. Now, whenever Suliko headed for the restroom or sat by the fogged-up window in the corridor, a loud chorus staging theatrical performances would follow closely on her heels. The men pretended to converse with one another, but their words were directed straight at the back of Suliko’s head.

“Oh, what a pure aura we had, just a short while ago,” one man would complain to the ceiling, sighing demonstratively.

“Do you remember that harmony? When it was just us?” a second would chime in.

“Allowing certain individuals into this temple of healing was a catastrophic clerical error,” a third would reply, his voice dripping with venom. “Wherever they set foot, they ruin everything.”

However, it seemed that the patients of the ward were not the only ones participating in the orchestrated aggression.

One evening, when a tense silence hung in the ward, the door opened quietly and a male employee from the administrative department entered. It was as if he had dropped by purely by chance. He held a few sheets of paper in his hand.

He quickly scanned the room and stopped at the table.

“Apologies for interrupting,” he said with a light smile. “I am merely checking statistical data.”

He glanced at Suliko for a second, then turned back to the others.

“Sometimes strange things happen,” he continued. “A patient’s condition is neither severe nor critical... yet they still occupy a bed.”

He folded the papers.

“And yet, they have no shame.”

The man walked out calmly. For a few seconds, no one at the table made a sound. Meanwhile, Suliko was drawing aimless shapes on the windowpane with her finger.

But this was merely a prelude. The real war always began when they sat down for dinner at the communal table. As soon as Suliko took her seat, the men would immediately begin speaking loudly about the ethics of self-awareness.

“If an environment is so obviously toxic...” the Chief Patient would say, striking a boiled potato with his knife as if it were a hammer. The sharp clatter of the heavy knife hitting the plate merged with the shuddering of the table. The dishes rattled.

“...and if the ecosystem so openly rejects a person, by all rights, they should have at least enough elementary dignity to realize they are superfluous here. A civilized being would simply pack their bags and leave. Only parasites need to be thrown out by force!”

The other men sitting at the table would stare fixedly at Suliko with bated breath, waiting for her patience to snap, for her to explode, or, at the very least, for her to drop her fork and leave the room.

Meanwhile, Suliko calmly and rhythmically chewed her bread. Her face resembled an absolutely impenetrable stone mask. It was as if these venomous monologues and the threatening banging of the knife were happening somewhere on another continent. It was obvious that she was completely oblivious to it all, and therefore, she had not packed her bags and had not left the hospital.

* * *

One day, the Director visited the ward once again. As it later turned out, this was her final visit. This time, she stayed longer than usual.

“My friends! Harmony,” she began, “is the foundation of any collective space.”

She pronounced the word “collective” with particular relish.

“When people live in a single space, mutual respect is essential.”

The Chief Patient inclined his head slightly, listening as though with genuine interest.

“Sometimes,” the Director added, “someone might believe they possess a special influence.”

She cast her gaze across the room.

“But in the hospital, the final word always belongs to order.”

For a few seconds, a strange silence descended upon the room.

Then, with a smile, the Director closed her folder and left.

* * *

At morning breakfast, against the backdrop of bowls filled with ground oatmeal porridge, the Chief Patient slowly set down his spoon and stared at his “right-hand man” – the tall man who had sat beside him for years – with feigned concern.

“Have you noticed, boys, how heavy our friend has become lately?” he asked, as if the tall man were not sitting right there. “It is as if our air is no longer enough for him. He is so lost in thought... I suppose Ward Four has become far too small for his colossal ideas.”

“Perhaps our conversations no longer interest him,” chuckled the dwarf, who until now had not taken his eyes off his plate, stealing a glance toward the corner of the room, toward Suliko’s bed. “Or maybe... he prefers a quieter society.”

The rest of the men chuckled hollowly and exchanged glances. The tall man did not utter a word. He sat with his head bowed, stirring his porridge aimlessly with his spoon and blinking nervously.

“Let us not blame him,” sighed the Chief Patient, passing his cup to the dwarf without even looking at his old confidant. “If he prefers to move to another room, we will not stand in his way.”

In the following days, the air in the ward became charged with invisible but suffocating rituals. One day, at noon, while the Chief Patient was sitting in an armchair by the window, the tall man brought him a cup full of hot tea, as was his custom. He had been performing this ritual for a long time. But the Chief Patient did not raise his eyes from his magazine. He continued turning the pages as if it were not a person standing before him, but mere air. The tall man stood with his arm extended for several seconds, until the steam rising from the cup vanished. Then he turned around and walked out of the room.

At that moment, the dwarf slipped out from behind. He held a woolen blanket in his hands. Carefully, with almost slavish reverence, he draped the blanket over the Chief Patient’s shoulders.

“There is a draft in the corridor, do not catch a cold,” the dwarf whispered.

The Chief Patient closed his magazine, smiled warmly at the dwarf, and grasped the edge of the blanket.

One evening, as the ward was preparing for sleep, the tall man stood before the mirror, combing his hair. The dwarf approached him and stood directly behind him, in the reflection of the mirror.

“I wonder what people think about at night when sleep evades them?” the dwarf asked loudly, for the entire ward to hear, staring at the tall man’s tired eyes in the mirror. “Look at how dark the circles under his eyes have become. Perhaps his conscience is bothering him... or maybe he has some new plans he isn’t sharing with us.”

The tall man placed the comb down in front of the mirror but gave no answer. He went to his bed and pulled the blanket over his head. From his own bed, the Chief Patient watched this scene calmly, with a slight, ironic smile.

The ritual of strolling in the corridor had also changed. Now, the Chief Patient marched in front, arm in arm with the dwarf. They whispered quietly and occasionally looked back at the tall man walking alone, which would be followed by loud laughter. The tall man dragged his feet a few steps behind them, as if tethered by an invisible chain to this toxic trio, where it seemed his place no longer existed.

Against the backdrop of this incomprehensible, silent war, Suliko remained a completely isolated island. She sat on her bed with her legs crossed, filling out crosswords, or read the newspaper by the radiator. To her, these whisperings, the scenes played out by the mirror, and the dramas erupting over cups of tea were absolutely alien and uninteresting. The woman simply breathed and took no part in the unraveling of the ward’s internal fabric.

Outwardly, the life of the hospital still followed the same monotonous rhythm, but beneath this illusory solidity, things were imperceptibly shifting. Relationships and influences were changing, and old roles were slowly crumbling. Amidst all this, one more thing became noteworthy: the Director, who until now had appeared regularly to impose her flat, solemn phrases upon the ward, had suddenly vanished. For a while, this remained merely a vague sensation, until one day someone voiced it aloud.

“The Director hasn’t been seen lately,” one man noted in a whisper.

“She is probably very busy,” another replied ironically.

“Do you remember how she used to come and read us lectures?” someone said.

“Yeah,” answered another, “but everyone has their own business here.”

“My friends!” someone repeated mockingly.

* * *

In the days that followed, the tension took on a new, more distinct form. What had previously existed as whispers, oblique remarks, and half-acted scenes now became an almost daily ritual.

Every morning, while Suliko stood by the window stirring her tea, the dwarf would stand before the mirror and, while combing his hair, begin loudly enough for the entire ward to hear:

“I wonder if some people have any sense of shame at all? Sitting here, hiding behind the backs of men, and thinking this is what it means to be a woman.”

During dinner, as Suliko ate her portion, the dwarf would noisily push his plate aside and look up at the ceiling:

“I am suffocating. Some people suck up all the oxygen with their sheer bulk, as if they were the only ones existing in this room.”

One day, that same male employee from the administrative department appeared in the ward again. This time, he walked straight up to the Chief Patient’s bed, but he spoke in such a way that Suliko could clearly hear him.

“Our department has always had very good statistics,” he said calmly.

Then his gaze slid toward Suliko.

“It is highly embarrassing when a patient does not actually belong in the hospital but remains anyway.”

He opened his folder.

“Of course, we do not expel anyone. That would be in poor taste.”

The man placed a finger on one of the sheets.

“But there is a simple solution.”

He laid the paper on the nightstand.

“The form for voluntary discharge is ready. It can be signed at any time.”

He smiled warmly at the Chief Patient.

“Sometimes, a person simply needs to realize it themselves.”

No sooner had he said this than the administrative employee left the ward. A complete silence fell for a few seconds.

Such remarks continued for several weeks, though the words vanished into the air without a trace. The scenes, however, grew increasingly tense. One afternoon, in a narrow passageway of the corridor, the dwarf stepped directly into Suliko’s path. When Suliko tried to step around him, the man suddenly shrank his shoulders, pressed himself against the wall, and cried out in a voice as if a gun were being pointed at him:

“Why are you looking at me like that?! Are you blocking my path on purpose to intimidate me?! Do you think just because you are physically large, I should be terrified and crawl into the wall?!”

Frightened and confused, Suliko stood motionless for a moment, then returned to her spot by the windowsill.

At that moment, the Chief Patient, sitting in his armchair, placed his magazine on his knees, adjusted his glasses on his nose, and sighed with a tired, utterly exasperated voice:

“My God, have you started again?” He shook his head, looking first at the dwarf and then at Suliko, as if trying to pacify two unruly children. Like a true blue helmet – “Can you two not endure even a single day without offending each other? Every morning this endless bickering and tension... It is unbearable. You both must learn to manage your emotions. Have some mercy on us too; we are already exhausted by so much of your fighting.”

This feigned, patronizing tone did nothing to stop what was coming. On the contrary, right after this unfolded what everyone in the ward unanimously dubbed the Great Tragedy – and which, according to them, was the direct result of the patients’ bickering.

The dwarf stood frozen in the middle of the corridor. His chest contracted rapidly, spasmodically, as if he lacked air. He glanced at the Chief Patient sitting in his armchair. The Chief Patient did not raise his head; he slowly turned the page of his magazine and continued reading. At that moment, the dwarf lunged forward with his entire body. He compressed his lips into a thin line, broke from his spot with short, rapid steps, and charged straight toward Suliko, who was sitting by the radiator. His widened eyes were aimed solely at the newspaper spread open before the woman. As he took his final steps, he sharply raised his right arm in the air, tensed his fingers, and leaned slightly forward, indicating that if he maintained this momentum, a collision between him and the newspaper spread in Suliko’s hands would be inevitable.

However, events once again took an unforeseen turn. That day, a sharp, cool scent of chlorine hung in the corridor. An orderly had run a wet mop over the floor just a few minutes prior. There were two steps left to reach Suliko when, before he could bring down his raised hand, the rubber soles of the dwarf’s sandals slipped on the freshly mopped linoleum like skis. He lost his balance, his legs flew up into the air, and his hands, prepared to strike, flailed helplessly as if grasping at the void, before he crashed to the floor with all his weight.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

The fatal dry sounds stacked one upon another. The momentary, deathly silence was shattered by a bloodcurdling scream. The dwarf was writhing on the floor. His right leg and both of his wrists were twisted at ugly, unnatural angles.

Suliko immediately tossed the newspaper onto the bed. Her stoic calm vanished in a second. She jumped up from her chair and instantly appeared beside the convulsing, screaming dwarf. She reached out with both hands to somehow catch him, to help him stand, or simply to check how severe the injury was. But as soon as she approached him, the dwarf’s eyes bulged. Despite his crushed face and broken wrists, he tried to drag his body backward toward the wall, screaming hysterically:

“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! Get away from here!”

By this time, the Chief Patient, having leaped up from his armchair, was already beside them. He wedged his body between Suliko, who was kneeling on the floor, and the screaming dwarf; he shoved the woman in the shoulder with both hands using all his might, throwing her backward.

“Do you see what state you have put him in?!” he shouted, looking up at Suliko, who had risen to her feet, with furious, flashing eyes. Then he waved his hand in the air, pointing toward the radiator. “If you hadn’t been sitting here, lying in ambush, this would not have happened! You terrified him! You deliberately stood where it was wet so he would slip!”

Suliko stood without uttering a word. She looked at the dwarf, folded over in pain, who was now hiding his face in the lap of the Chief Patient.

* * *

The next morning, the short man was returned to the ward – with both arms encased in plaster casts and his bandaged right leg suspended in the air. He lay motionless on the bed, groaning heavily with every breath.

The Chief Patient approached his bed and sat down. He gently stroked the man’s sweaty forehead.

“My poor fellow... what a state this environment has put you in,” he whispered, leaning his head close. “But do not worry anymore. Today I will tell the orderlies to move your bed next to mine. Exactly to my right. I will care for you personally.”

“Oh, what a wonderful idea, I was just about to say the same thing!” agreed the dwarf, whose tears were flowing from the pain, though upon hearing the Chief Patient’s words, a blissful, triumphant smile flashed across his contorted, pale face.

* * *

Time in Ward Four did not pass; rather, it accumulated – heavily and stiflingly, like dust in an unventilated room. When the first year of Suliko’s mandatory isolation expired, the medical board convened in some distant, unseen wing of the hospital and extended her stay indefinitely. No new diagnosis was made, nor did any official review take place – simply, during morning rounds, another stamped piece of paper was brought in, classifying her condition as chronic and indicating the necessity for endless observation.

However, this extension no longer mattered. The hospital, with its vast, tangled hierarchy and endless, dim corridors, had long ceased to be merely a sanctuary – it had become her entire world.

The crisis that had brought her here – the foreign man, the family council, the inevitable threat of prison – now felt more like a rumor lingering from a past life. The tormenting drama of the ward, the psychological warfare, and the daily battle waged to maintain her sanity had completely eclipsed the outside world. The threat lying in wait in the city evaporated, and the intense, claustrophobic reality of the hospital swallowed Suliko whole.

The men, who had once tried to turn her life into hell, now resembled ghosts wandering among the beds. They had expected resistance from Suliko, but found themselves unprepared to counter her stoicism. The Chief Patient, once a terrifying and influential figure, had withered into a spiteful, silent old man who stared aimlessly at the fogged-up windows.

One ordinary morning, distinguished by nothing other than Suliko willing it to be so, she decided to end this strange game.

She did not write a statement, nor did she request discharge papers. She simply got up from her bed, reached underneath it, and pulled out her yellow backpack. Without so much as a glance at the men in the ward, she put on her coat. She walked through the narrow passage between the rows of iron beds, pushed open the heavy double doors, and headed into the corridor. The men had no idea she was leaving.

Suliko was already in the reception area, approaching the revolving door of the main exit. A few more steps and she would find herself in the crisp city air, in the free world, but at that moment, a commotion erupted in the corridor. Led by the Chief Patient, all the male residents of Ward Four were marching in a hysterical procession straight toward the administration wing. They stopped right before Suliko’s eyes, at the reception desk where the Chief Doctor stood, and issued a completely unexpected, categorical ultimatum:

“Either that woman leaves the hospital, or we all leave! Remaining in the same space with her is absolutely impossible! Choose: either her, or us!” the Chief Patient shrieked, a triumphant smile spreading across his face.

Suliko stood by the exit, her bag resting on the floor, her hands tucked into her coat pockets, silently observing this scene. The uproar lasted for a few minutes and drew everyone’s attention. The gaze of the entire hospital was fixed upon them. The Chief Doctor initially stood bewildered, silently watching the spectacle, but soon recovered and brought the situation under full control.

The fact of the matter was that the men had failed to consider one crucial detail: the hospital’s bureaucratic machine could not tolerate insubordination, and blackmail was a direct insult to it. If the hospital turned a blind eye to minor intrigues and corrupt transgressions, it was not because it failed to see them, but because its paramount value – silence – remained unbroken. And when this silence was shattered by the hysterical revolution of the men, the hospital immediately awoke.

The Chief Doctor cast a cold, emotionless gaze over the men and replied with the ruthless logic of the administration: –

“Blackmailing the hospital is categorically unacceptable! We do not speak the language of ultimatums. Since you do not wish to stay here, the door is open. Your collective discharge papers will be prepared immediately.”

A deathly silence fell. Suliko watched how the men’s faces changed, how their triumphant masks slipped away, and how their rebellion transformed into instant capitulation. The orderlies immediately moved toward the men to herd them back to the ward to pack their belongings. Suliko glanced toward the revolving glass door, beyond which the indifferent city lay spread out. Then she looked back at the agitated, shocked men, who were leaving their only safe sanctuary forever.

Suliko grabbed her bag. Slowly, calmly, she unbuttoned her coat, took it off, and hung it on the reception rack. She was a perfectly healthy woman who had looked madness straight in the eyes.