A mother lives with her son. They depend on each other. The mother is a doctor in the hospital and the son is studying at school.
The war broke out and Leningrad was surrounded. On the surface, the lives of mother and son have not changed much: the son goes to school and the mother goes to work.
But then, hunger and cold and enemy shelling attacked the city. People were so weak that they began to try their best to find a way out, including magic drugs.
Barville Ivanovich, the house manager, was the first person to visit his mother. He guarded the empty building where only a few people lived. The suite full of furniture and various belongings was silent, and the owner died or retired.
"Please help," Barville Ivanovich pleaded. "You can take the piano in the third suite or the joinery mirror in the sixth suite. Please give me some powder. My wife's legs are swollen like telephone poles ... and she can't walk. "
Sometimes, despair can make people blind, so mom is not surprised by the housekeeper's words. She knows that edema is the result of hunger, and no medicine can help. But people still believe in their mother and regard her medical skills as a lifebuoy.
"You give her some hot soup to drink. As you know, Barville Ivanovich, the problem is not gunpowder. ...
The housekeeper nodded, his thin wrinkled head. But the next day, he looked at his sick wife and felt very sad, so he knocked on his mother's door again and pleaded:
"Whatever you like, anything will do, as long as it can dredge her blood vessels. ...
There is a female teacher who teaches German in my son's school. She also comes to the hospital to find her mother. She walked with difficulty and her face was like an old parchment. Although the female teacher lives in another district, she asked to be admitted to the hospital. She tried to please her mother, always piteously repeating:
"Your son is very talented ... when I recover a little, I will try my best to teach him German and make him better than me ... really, better." She said sincerely that there was only a little light in her eyes.
But the ward is already crowded with extremely weak patients. What can mom do?
The mother takes care of the patients in the ward as relatives. She got up at dawn, cleaned the room, prepared meager food for her son, and then walked to work in the foggy dawn, because the tram frozen in the snow could not run. Trembling and sleepy, she came to her clinic. She didn't take off her clothes, but reached for the stove to keep warm and catch her breath. Then she slowly took off her clothes, took out a white blouse from the closet and put it on, sat at the table and wiped her face, trying to make her face look alive. In another minute, she will go into the ward to see the patient. At this moment, her mother has changed: there is a cheerful and enthusiastic expression on her face, and the short person with high eyebrows is full of some kind of faith. Her heels creaked, the door of the ward opened, and then her voice sounded:
"Good morning, dear patients!"
The patient has been waiting for her arrival. They turned around slowly, put their faces and hands out of the quilt, and then you asked me to say:
"Hello, big-big-husband ..." Someone must have added, "Our savior."
Let's just call these people "patients" because they are just people who are driven to the brink of death by hunger. They can be saved by strengthening nutrition, but this can't be done. Their number has increased very little, which can only delay their death. Mother knows that as long as patients don't lose heart and their beliefs and hopes don't go out, they can prolong their lives, that is, they may be saved, so she tries her best to instill hope in them.
"It's getting warmer and warmer outside, and spring will come soon." She leaned over and said to a desperate patient.
The winter morning is dark, and the unhealthy body gives off an unpleasant smell. Through this joyless atmosphere, my mother's energetic voice sounded, like a beam of sunshine, reflecting the world of mortals and echoing in the ward.
Mother's words are simple and common, but these words, together with the drugs she prescribed (which she knew didn't bring much benefit), have produced a special and magical effect.
"Well, dear patient. Look at life happily. " After checking the ward, mother said goodbye.
"Our doctor is really good," said one patient.
"As soon as she prescribed the medicine, I immediately felt relaxed."
"Without her, we can't get rid of the disease."
"Once I get out of the ward, I will burn incense to God for her ..."
Indeed, the attending doctor found that under the care of his mother, fewer people died in the ward, and the patients looked better than other doctors.
At the end of winter, an unfortunate thing happened: my son was killed in a shelling.
The son was bombarded when he was walking in the street, and the child hid in a small trench. As soon as the whistle of the shell stopped, he leaned out and shook off the dirt and powder on his coat. The trench is not far from the child's house, and he intends to run home before the alarm is lifted. The adults who stayed with him in the trench stopped him, but he shouted, "It's not far from here!" " "Then jump, quickly ran to the door, climbed the stone steps, pushed open the door, and suddenly heard a deafening explosion behind him.
The child climbed the fifth step of the ladder and a shell hit him. The child's footsteps slipped, then he steadied himself on the steps and saw that he was going to stand up again and run into his suite. However, the child did not stand up, and blood dripped from his ears and splashed on the polished granite.
What desperate and confident language the mother used to face her son's prone body! When the listless mother realized that her son could never stand up again, she lost consciousness, and the people gathered together could not keep her away from her son for a long time.
Everything is in the charge of her relatives. Mom is sitting at home. Despair. People around her are worried that she will lose her mind.
Mom sat at home for a day, two days and three days.
The patients are anxious: what will they do if their mother never comes to them again? No one knows their pain better than their mother. Some elderly patients know that few people understand the language that their mothers understand.
The patients take medicine as usual, take their temperature and receive treatment sincerely, but almost all of them are anxiously waiting: when will their mother come to cure them and leave the hospital?
On the second day and night, the patient's condition in the ward deteriorated sharply and he had to report the situation to the attending doctor.
"Psychological changes ... what can be used to treat this nutritional neurosis? ..... Only by mobilizing the full potential inside the body, that is, what idealists call' faith'. " He said with a smile.
The attending doctor went to his mother's house. They worked together a long time ago, and the attending doctor remembered that she was a girl who loved to laugh during her internship.
He hugged her shoulder silently-her muscles were so tight that her body became like a stone. He didn't comfort her, because any words of comfort could not be accepted by her consciousness. He speaks softly, but firmly, and always repeats such words:
"Listen to me, you are not here. Their situation is terrible, that is, your people. There was an unexpected death last night, and their situation was very bad without you. "
The attending doctor didn't call them "patients" and always tried his best to make his mother understand him. She turned her head to the attending doctor, who repeated the words again.
They went back to the hospital together, and mom came to her clinic without saying hello to anyone. She looked at the mirror for a long time, combed her hair with a comb, put on a white coat as usual, stood on the threshold of the clinic for a while, and then walked to the ward.
"Hello, dear patients!" She said smoothly and happily as usual.
The patients are all in a hurry, like seeing their dear mother, becoming active and laughing. They chatted about the situation these days, crying that a patient in the next bed had passed away and asked her mother to tell her about her illness ... Mother bent down as usual, tidied up the pillow, prescribed a prescription and listened carefully to the patient's illness. ...
Then, she waved goodbye to the patient, resolutely walked into the corridor, bowed her head and ran into Jane's room, closed the door, gritted her teeth, slapped her mouth, and cried with infinite sadness.
"Don't disturb her," said the doctor in charge. "This is her only good medicine."
Soon, the food ration increased. Spring has come in Zhixia. People who have survived the severe winter are no longer afraid of death.
One day, my mother walked into the ward. She looked at the patients she was taking care of and said, "Hello, patients!" " "
Everyone says hello to her as usual.
She is an excellent doctor with good medical skills, but she doesn't say hello to patients like that extremely hard winter, because "Hello, dear patient" is not just some ordinary words. In these words, there is a belief in vitality, which is great, conquering and magical, and this belief is no longer for herself, but for herself.