Chapter Fifteen

Feverish Anticipation

  

    After the hearing, we were giddy. Cyril was nearly ours! Ten more days and he would be Cyril Christian Case and one step closer to home! We couldn’t wait to get him at the orphanage and bring him back to the hotel with us.

    We drove to the orphanage in anticipation. Instead of Sergey driving us madly in the Toyota SUV, Gennady drove us in his Audi. He and Daniel spoke about the Gulag, and hockey — again.

    Upon seeing the “Mikado Club” sign, my heart beat in anticipation. Cyril would soon be in our arms again, this time for good.  

    Once inside the orphanage, we were escorted to the same room we had been in the day before. We sat on the same bench.  

    Hurriedly, a medsestyor was sent to fetch him, and when she came back, holding his small, frail body in her heavy arms, it was plain to see that he was sick. 

    The poor thing had a raging fever. His eyes were glassy and reddish, his cheeks were flushed and he was very, very warm to the touch. Once in my arms, I could actually feel the heat rising from his body. 

    How long had this baby had this fever?  What was going on?

    He was also less active than he had been the day before and he was beginning to fade out. We noticed that he had also begun to develop a slight head twitch that would begin to increase in intensity as the days wore on. The orphanage director was brought in and we were told that Cyril had a “virus.”

    I asked if he was on any medications for this. We were told just some American Tylenol. 

    Had he eaten that day?  We were told that yes, he had eaten, and that relieved me — somewhat.  

    Then fearfully I asked them, “Is this baby going to die on us or something?”  Odd question for me to have asked, but I was afraid.

    We were, of course, reassured that it was nothing but a fever, that the baby would be okay, that it was his last challenge before he found a haven in our home. Just like Automne Heather was told that babies do not go to the hospital to die.

    It was strongly suggested that we did not take the baby from the orphanage in his condition. We agreed and left him there overnight, but only after much soul-searching and going back and forth.

    We went to lunch with Sergey and Lena again, at a quiet place in downtown Perm’ that doubled as a hot night spot. Although we were still in a good mood and picked up the tab as a result, it was a little bittersweet since we would have to wait for Cyril.

    On the way back, we passed a car with a bride and groom in it and, as per Russian custom, a doll of a bride on the windshield.

    They were novobrachnika — newlyweds. It was Friday, the traditional day for weddings in Russia. Lena explained that that allowed you to celebrate for two days straight afterwards.

    It sounded like a lot of fun. She also said that it was considered good luck to pass by a car with newlyweds in it.

    We hoped so. We could use some good signs at this point.

    Back at the hotel, we kicked back, ate food purchased at the nearby rynok (open-air market) watched TV some more and fretted about how serious Cyril’s fever was and what we could do about it.

    We also saw, on Russia’s MTV-equivalent music video channel, the video for the Vladivostok band Mumiy Troll’s newly-released single “Nevesta?” (“Bride?” or, literally, non-virgin). It included a scene of a Lada with a bridal doll on the windshield, which I brought to Dan’s attention to prove that what we had seen that afternoon was indeed a Russian custom.

    It stood out among the songs we heard over there, both musically for the bouncy, Carole King-esque piano riff it was built around, and visually for its slow pace and simple yet effective images. Both were in direct contrast to the tendencies of the Russian music videos we had seen, in which most hit songs boasted a frenetic dance beat and were visually interpreted with flashy, extravagant sets, costumes and frantic cutting.

    To this day, Cyril lives for us in that song.

    In the evening, my mother called from Western New York, to see how things had gone. 

    We told her about the baby. She related that Wendy Stamper had been curt with her and was initially unable (or unwilling) to give her our telephone number at the Hotel Mikos.     

    Wendy had merely told her the BBAS mantra, “everything is fine.” Instead of giving my mother the number for the Hotel Mikos, she gave my mother the telephone number for the other hotel, the Hotel Nichols. My mother ended up calling information to get our telephone number.

    When my mother heard about the fever, she was concerned. She asked if the adoption agency had given us any names or numbers for medical assistance with the child; we told her no.  

    The agency’s responsibility to provide this information is explicitly spelled out in the contract we had signed with them and at no time had they given us any medical contacts for Perm — either when we were there or before we left.

    Now very worried over the lack of medical help, my mother called the American Embassy in Moscow to get the number of a qualified, Western-trained doctor in Perm.  

    She gave them our information and that evening a Mr. Joe Kenney from the embassy called us back with a telephone number for a doctor in Moscow.  Unfortunately, Mr. Kenney told us there was no Western-trained pediatrician listed in the embassy’s database for Perm who could have looked over Cyril, hardly surprising since the city was closed to foreigners during the entire Soviet period. He did, however, give us the name and telephone number of a pediatrician at the American Medical Center in Moscow.

    We were to see Cyril again the next day, and hoped that he would be okay.

    Unfortunately, I nearly overslept that Saturday morning. Sergey and Lena showed up at the appointed time to take us to Cyril, but the time change, the travel and seeing Cyril had made me really tired.  

    Daniel hadn’t even bothered to wake me up on time, so I ended up tossing myself out of bed, tossing on my hat and jeans, and rushing out to the car without even eating or brushing my teeth.

    Once in the orphanage, we were led to the same room and told to wait.  The orphanage director wasn’t there, so Lena went to look for some staff to get Cyril for us.  

    For the first time, we were alone in our section of the orphanage. We decided to take a look around or at least the room off to the right where the babies were housed.  

    In the hall on the way to the room we noticed on the walls handwritten signs talking about tuberculosis, its prevention and its causes. 

    It brought to mind yet another omen ... a few weeks before our trip, Daniel had watched a segment on 60 Minutes about the increasing antibiotic resistance of TB strains in Russian prisons. (Later, when watching the video, we were also struck by the coughing of the babies in the background ... something we hadn’t paid much note to at the time in our joy at having Cyril. Automne Heather, too, would notice the same thing at the beginning of her similarly fateful journey six years later).

    One lone medsestyor was in the now empty day room. She paid our presence no mind. We could see playpens and a few low chairs for the babies. From the day room, we entered the room where the tiny babies were actually housed.

    Daniel and I looked around at this room.  

    In it, there were cribs, lined up, almost in a square. By our estimates, there were about 20 cribs in that room, containing tiny little babies, wrapped tightly up in what appeared to be donated blankets. From time to time one could hear the wail of one of the souls wrapped in those clean, obviously donated blankets.

    You do have to understand that that place was not an obvious hellhole like the ones in those TV reports from Romania. The floors were clean. The rooms were well-lit when they needed to be. It didn’t feel like a place to go and die.

    But still ...

    The eighth circle of hell, Daniel thought. It was clean enough and not horrifying on its face, but it was the essence of the process in plain view. Just this literal warehousing of kids. He could feel an overwhelming sadness ... all the stories behind those kids in this place. To hear them all at once would have induced madness. (Several years later, he finally read this classic Ursula K. Le Guin story. For him, this room in Dom Rebyonka No. 2 is that room).

    That’s what, in retrospect, makes it so frustrating to us that a harmless baby boy was dying in there and no one realized it. 

    We turned to leave, the image of that room forever etched in our minds. It did restore our belief that we were doing the right thing by Cyril in getting him out of this place by purchasing his freedom.

    Lena came up to us and told us how sad it was while escorting us back to the original room.  As soon as we sat down on the bench, the medsestyor brought Cyril out to us again and placed him in my arms.   

    We had the video camera rolling, as we had before. The medsestyor told Lena that the baby still had a slight temperature, and in my arms, the baby lay, still flexing his feet and legs. 

    And also shaking his head every once in a while like he was saying “no.” He was still wearing a diaper.

    We spent about another hour with him, holding him, passing him back and forth, but the spark that he had had on the first day had begun to go out. 

    There was something dull about him. He cried weakly, and there was absolutely no color in his cheeks.

    There was a knock at the door. Lena appeared and it was time to give Cyril back to his caregivers.  

    We were told that we couldn’t take the baby out of the orphanage without the director’s permission, and he wasn’t there to grant it.

    Reluctantly, we carried Cyril back out into the hall and handed him to one of the medsestra on the couches. She took him but there was a look on her face as she held him that was so sad. The other medsestyor cooed over him and said nice things in Russian that made him smile.

    We ourselves left Dom Reybonka No. 2. First we had lunch, where, in another bit of the cultural exchange we were getting with Lena and Sergey, we learned that just as Americans describe coffee as “so strong you could stand a spoon straight up in it,” Russians have a similar expression for sour cream.

    Then, we went to the city’s central market where Lena was looking at some new fur hats to replace the one she currently had.

    Finally, as the sun dipped low in the sky (shortly after 3 p.m. at that time of year and latitude), we were driven back to the Hotel Mikos to briefly explore the neighborhood and spend yet another night without Cyril by our sides in the travel crib that Gennady and Sergei had provided for us. We would be back the next day to take Cyril home.  

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