“Well, the young tattooed man, do you feel better?” The doctor smiled.
“Yes, a little.”
“Well, so sit still, after all!”
“The insides, the stomach, I can’t…”
“Everything hurts? Is the liver infected?”
“Yes.”
“For a long time?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you wrote me this drug here?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The doctor again took up the syringe, Nikto clenched his teeth and closed his eyes.
“Nips a bit, right?”
“I usually dilute it with more than just purified water,” said Nikto.
“I know,” the doctor smiled, “but it's more interesting, isn't it?”
Nikto bent, holding his hands to his forehead, then folded his hands in a boat, covering his eyes.
“Yes, and look at what is with his eyes,” Kors recalled, his face was somehow distorted, “he told me that he didn’t see us.”
The doctor pressed on Nikto’s forehead, throwing his head back, removed his palms from his eyes:
“Look at me, a young man from the very, most “Lower”, below than nowhere.”
“Just don’t shine in my eyes!” Nikto literally shied away from the old man.
“What?! Stop twitching like that!”
“Don't shine in my eyes,” Nikto prayed.
“Don't,” said Vitor Kors, “don't shine.”
“Well,” the doctor shrugged a little offended, “I just wanted to look at the fundus, but we can do without it, as you say. Although, the case is interesting.”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Kors.
“Eyes are definitely redone as unclean. Reconstructed competently, he sees well in the dark, I think, and even sees a little now in the light.”
“You see a little now?”
“Yes,” Nikto nodded.
“Here it is twilight, thanks to the fact that you have closed the curtains, and now stimulants that we introduced to him are acting.”
“Thanks for the clarification, does that mean he needs darkness?”
“Yes.”
“That is, in the afternoon in the light, he doesn’t see anything?”
“Yes, unfortunately. And for a long time, as I understand it. When was this done with you?”
“When were you captured by the unclean?” Specified Kors.
Nikto shook his head.
“No. A long time ago, I did it myself.”
“Yourself?!” The doctor was surprised. “It is commendable, it requires remarkable skills.”
“Yes, he said here that he would like to be a doctor,” Kors said skeptically.
“Really?!” Balthazar Nate was delighted. “How interesting! He wanted to become a doctor, but became a patient!” He laughed at his joke.
No one else supported him.
“Okay, and look again, what is with his throat, he wheezes, you hear? Do you have a cold? Or an infection? Isn’t it all enough?”
“Yes, I hear that he wheezes. Open the mouth, young man, I’ll shine in your mouth, okay?”
“It’s nothing to do with a cold,” he said after a while, moving away, “the vocal cords were cut,”
“What?!”
“I confess that for the first time I see a person with such vocal chords generally talking. By all laws, he should not speak. He can't talk!”
Nikto looked up and for the first time in all this time looked at Kors, and he realized that he had finally seen him!
Their eyes met.
And Nikto looked down. His shoulders slouched again, he froze, cringing in his chair.
“Who are you?”
Nikto flinched at this simple question, as if Kors had hit him. He squeezed his in leather gloves fingers into the lock.
“Get out,” Kors ordered quietly, but in such a voice that the convoy and the doctor literally flew out the door.
They two stayed in a room together.
* * *
“You're not a human!”
“So be it,” Nikto agreed, somehow doomed, “so it’s easier. And you don’t have to blame yourself for the mistakes.”
