The Power of Time - страница 26

Svetlana looked at herself in the mirror. She never saw so much confidence and determination on her face, which looked very serious; it seemed that her sight could see through, creating tingling feeling. She turned away from the mirror, feeling those tingling on herself. Here is a first thing to do! Finally, I need to call my mother and apologize for yelling at her. Why did she let that happen? It is so wrong to do, such a shame! Sveta looked at the phone for some time, even tried to reach it with hand, but kept on procrastinating. It was easy to do but she tried to understand what is disturbing her. When the reason is found, it is easy to cope with pride or flaw. Svetlana enjoyed that working on yourself does not occupy as much time as she thought.

– Hey mom! It is me. How are you doing? I hope you are not very angry at me for yesterday?

Her mother didn’t answer. «More then likely she didn’t expect to hear the apology, – Svetlana thought. – Wow»! – And continued:

– Please forgive me, mom, alright? You know how much I love you. I could not contain myself… Svetlana waited for her mother to stop sobbing.

Maxim slipped from the bed, not washing up at all, and found his old constructor with the iron tube and started to make himself a crutch. «Enough lying in bed! It is time to act and not to waste time on the purposeless storing of fat!» – he told himself. With help of the created crutch, Max limped to the horizontal bar, hang on it and felt a strong pain in all body and head. He has risen on a healthy leg, taking a rest, and then practised again and again, till the pain became tolerant. So he tortured himself till lunch and then made a break to get a meal. Chewing food wearily, Maxim understood that he had a very important task, unrealistic at the given moment. He was ffrightened by the awful comprehension that he was not ready to solve it. Ttherefore, he felt as thought he was getting a failing grade: defenceless and weak. Max was miserable and, being submerged in his thoughts, he poured a glass of hot tea on himself.

Griping teeth, Maxim endured pain from the boiling water which burnt his legs, especially the broken one. At that moment bone in the leg started to ache so bad that he could not even see clearly. However, Max tried to relax and take a control over pain to acknowledge how it worked. Maxim realized that when ache spreaded over the extremity it was tolerable, and when he was contracting one muscle the pain was leaving to other muscles. When straining the whole leg, it is necessary to endure pain all over, and that is a lot more painful. «That means, – Max thought, – that I must choose the hardest path. It is harder to relax when you feel the pain, and the result from overcoming the difficulty is always pleasant. How am I going to help Svetlana if I don’t know what to do? To understand what to do, I ought to think about it all the time and do something. Yes, I need to do well at school, to get prepared for examinations, to read books – all of that is necessary. But when and how»?

Returning to his room, Maxim turned on the music quietly and started to learn new topic in geometry, quite a difficult one. Music was bothering him; no matter how many times he had read the chapter he could not remember it. Max was tired and exhausted, but said to himself that he would learn it. He made the interfering music louder and started to read and memorize again. It was very hard to do, since he was very tired; dizziness and weakness in the whole body challenged him to do two things at once. However, he decided: «If I can’t manage this task, then will I be able to do something else»?! He was not paying attention to anything and didn’t leave the table before the topic was learned. Instead of being happy – he managed to solve the hardest math problems independently, Max said: «It is not enough»! When he stood up from the chair, he almost fell down, snatching at the table to keep balance. Overcoming severe headache, Max understood that he would fall on the floor unless he lay down. It was two footsteps to the bed, but he took his crutch and plodded to the couch, taking frequent breaks. He lay there relaxed, with eyes closed, and tried to regain strengths which were mostly gone. Maxim thought: «How can I lie when there are so many things to do? It will take over five years to accomplish everything, but I only have one year»!