I don’t believe in miracle. I believe that everything is possible. There are no explanations otherwise they can be invented because that’s what we do. Everything is possible. It’s even possible to manage the time. There’re irrefutable proofs for this. And they appear predominantly on Christmas days. The dot. I won’t support any discussion.
Recently, I have had a phone call.
“It’s me, Eva!”
Fifteen years ago was the only time when I heard her voice. But I didn’t remember it then. Because I was sitting on the sofa next to a girl whose signs of life were conditioned as if imagined and temporary. I remember how I took her fragile hand and was afraid of that sound and pulsation… The sofa resonated from the noise of her heartbeat. Her hand was shaking in mine – along these stiffed beats… And each of them sounded like a final accord…
In fact, it was the first time when I heard Eva. She is 29 now. And the most important, inexplicable and practically impossible thing is that she is alive.
How to shortly retell you the fifteen years… Well, at least I will try to describe that hour during which we had a talk and this will be the irrefutable proof I mentioned at the beginning.
We both looked back on how we had met in the studio “No Taboos”. Evhenia Pavlivna, the grandmother, brought the doomed child to us. Before that, the story looked like this: Eva was born with the heart in which the vein blood mixed with the artery, the girl was of the grey road color and should have died in a month.
Her young beautiful mom immediately refused from her. And Evhenia Pavlivna, her grandmother, took this grey body. Her son, Eva’s father, was grief-stricken – his wonderful wife, love of his life, left him and never came back. And his mother took this child… What should have she done with it?
Eva was dying every day – and for some season stayed alive. Surrounded by pillows, she lay, having grown up, half-sat and that’s all. One time, Evhenia Pavlivna heard that Swedish cardiologists arrived in the city and examined children. She wrapped the girl up and brought her – but the Swedish doctor looked at her grandmother carefully and said that it could be tried to somehow correct only immediately at birth…
However, a month later their landline rang, Bo Wallenberg, son of the famous Swedish actor Sigward Wallenberg spoke. He headed the Children Scandinavian Mission, founded by his father, obsessed with the help for children. Bo Wallenberg said that Eva was called to Sweden. On the plane, he held oxygen mask for her, lodged them in his mother’s house, then brought them to Peter Jörg, the cardiologist, in Lund. He said that without surgery it would be one hundred percent death. If he had known he wouldn’t have cut into Eva… There he saw the horror that nature had done to her – it bore a little resemblance to life… But since he cut into – he started doing something… Bo Wallenberg found 50 thousand dollars for this surgery.
The doctors postponed the second surgery because it was beyond the realm of possibility… Her organs failed to work, she was lying in intensive care not for one day.
Beyond possible was also the fact that Eva continued to live… And being four years old, she even started walking for the first time… Several years had passed when her cardiogram showed again that… The doctors refused to do anything because it hadn’t been done in any country by any existing man.
Bo Wallenberg brought the girl to Sweden again. Peter Jörg said that the chances are zero but he appointed her for the surgery which was held approximately on the eve of Saint Nicholas Day. During the surgery, her heart cracked… But Peter finished it and put her in intensive care. There, she was lying and screaming from pain – her brittle ribs broke, Eva was lying on several matrasses like the Princess and the Pea, the nurses broke into a cold sweat while making this poor thing bandages along her screams and shrieks, she pulled off the tubes which connected her with life and the nurses smiled and whispered “still a little bit, honey, a little bit…”. The clown visited her, the locals, who were preparing for Christmas on those days, came and played the guitar, sang her in their Swedish language. Bo Wallenberg made her funny faces, desperately amusing her.
Swedish newspapers wrote about her, the programs about her were broadcast on TV. The day of staying at the hospital cost 3800 dollars because she was a foreigner… The grandma stood next to her adjusting a handkerchief to her wounds which was sent to Sweden from one of the temples in Volyn – it was baptized there. Evhenia Pavlivna says it helped her…
People raised money throughout Sweden – they had risen 200 thousand dollars for the child from Ukraine… Bo Wallenberg was traveling around the country, to the Faroe Islands, to Danmark, to Finland, telling about Eva and called on for her rescue. Nobody knew that just at that time his father, Sigward Wallenberg was gravely ill, and also was being operated. And exactly at that time their Children Mission warehouses with cargoes for children burnt… It was a black period… Bo was rescuing Eva – for his part and his father’s…
Eva appeared on that sofa later when a year had passed after her unbelievable salvation and Evhenia Pavlivna was said that the relapse was coming… And a new surgery needs half a million…
Eva’s heart beaten heavily when Bo entered the studio. Back then he together with us addressed the Ukrainians. We just asked: people, the Swedish managed to do it, let’s give it a try, please…
And people started trying! As I understand now, they were humble and poor people – fives, tens, hundred hryvnias were allocated to the announced account. Someone allocated them from pensions. Eva’s school raised two thousand… Two banks sent a thousand, each of them… Counted – ten thousand… Against half a million dollars.
But later – let everyone who collected those fives and tens know! – this money was the lifeline in connection with Eva!
When it became clear that there wouldn’t be any surgery but would be the end – a surgeon from Strasburg, Bernard Eisenman arrived in Ukraine.
He understood everything when saw… But he called Eva to Alsace later. She was fourteen years old. The documents for departure were being prepared hastily so the grandmother was called and said, “Eva goes alone! Choose. You won’t get the documents. Either alone or this is the end…”.
Abroad? Alone? In this condition?…
Eva said that she would get there alone. She learned French at school well. Father bought her mobile phone. They discussed everything and decided. Eva was confessed by the priest and he said, “You will never be alone! The guardian angel is with you”. The boys-classmates ran after the train which took her to Kyiv, they were waving and crying.
Eva got there. On her way, she helped adults, who didn’t know the language, to find the necessary bus, stopover, the route.
Then Eva disappeared. It was written then in Ukraine that the children were kidnapped for organ transplantation – and the grandmother started panicking… While Eva was being operated at Strasbourg University. Twelve hours… On Saint Nicholas’s Eve. (For years since that time, I’ve often loved walking for some time around this university – and only now I know why).
When Eva took the phone bought by her father – it was the third day after the surgery. She was already walking along the corridor. The money collected by Ukrainians were spent on the daily communication with grandmother, on her “lie down, kid, take care, kid, what do you need kid, love you, kid” from far Lutsk. The connection was expensive but without it, they couldn’t survive.
Eva and grandmother met Christmas together.
I talked with Eva and we tried to laugh more rather than cry. Eva said to me that nothing in this world happens by chance. And there’s no such a woman in the world as Evhenia Pavlivna. If somebody has to shoot a film or to write a book about love, the one shouldn’t imagine anything, it would be enough to simply come to her.
So they live with Evhenia Pavlivna together. Now the grandmother is seventy-eight. She is very strong because her presence is needed. And only now I found out that Evhenia Pavlivna is lieutenant colonel of the police. Every day she stands by the window and looks at the street waiting for Eva to go home…
Eva has four birthdays now.
Lately, fantastic Sigward Wallenberg has passed away. And it will be easy for him on the cloud from our grateful thoughts…
Eva called on Christmas days. It was just the time when Lutsk newspaper had chosen her the beauty of the day. I saw her and recollected this story. Eva is incredibly beautiful.
“They say I’m her replica… my mother’s… And you know… It’s my woe… It seems that the father can’t look at me for a long time because he still remembers her…”
And suddenly Eva told me, “Mother abandoned me – and that’s for good. She couldn’t have saved me… And I wouldn’t be able to help her now – and she must be definitely helped…”
Eva saw her mother one time when signing the waiver of her, necessary for the organization of treatment. There was sitting a beautiful lady in the room, the girl was asked whom she wants to live with… She was asked carefully so that she didn’t suffocate, as if it was something ordinary and usual…
Eva burst into tears here, remembering, – she was later told that that beautiful lady was her mother, and the girl with the heart breaking her breasts, didn’t sleep for a month – how couldn’t she recognize her! “How couldn’t my mother recognize me…”
But we agreed with Eva to cry only in extreme need – only to not to bear the load at heart… We’d better talk. Often. Whenever we want. Even at night.
Eva’s heart is no longer bumping, but ticking as a big clock. She got used to this sound. Everyone got used to it. And once, on the lesson at university, while writing the test, the silence fell, this ticking sounded throughout the hall and everyone was whispering, “Who is this?”. Until she calmed them all down, “It’s me!”.
Every ten days she checks this clockwork – and that’s how she lives her whole life until the present moment. Let’s say Eva manages the time.
My wonderful girl Eva has a friend Ihor for ten years. More than everything else he loves the life above the ground. “He lives on the roof”, Eva laughs, “He repairs the roofs and feels good there. I don’t know why he’s still with me…”
But I know.
Once she was said, “You will never be alone! The guardian angel is with you”. He lives not in the sky but on the roof, so what’s wrong about that? This way is closer. One angel is in the sky, and another by the window, watching when Eva goes. And hundreds of those who are reading this now…
I asked Eva if I can tell people about this story. All those who collected those fives or tens, sang songs, ran after the train, played the guitar, made ridiculous faces and amused, took a scalpel in the hands… They all need to know: in the world, there are irrefutable proofs that everything is possible, you can even manage the time. These proofs appear on Christmas days. And here they are!
Eva said, “Yes! Tell them! Let it alleviate people’s lives!”
Olga Gerasymyuk