Потерянный во времени на английском
Prologue
[Saturday, October 12, 23:40]
He woke up from his own scream.
His heart was pounding somewhere in his throat. His hand automatically groped for the glass of water on the nightstand—his fingers were trembling so badly that half of it spilled onto his T-shirt. The cold ran down his chest, and it helped. It helped him understand: he was here. In his apartment. In his bed. Where else?
And where else? — repeated the inner voice that usually stayed silent.
Alexei turned on the night lamp. The room looked completely ordinary: scattered medical journals on the table, unfinished coffee in a mug, on the windowsill—a violet that his mother had given him three years ago. Intact. So nothing had changed.
A phone was in his hand. He didn't remember picking it up. The screen was lit: the notes app was open. There, under the heading "14:10 — note for myself," stood one sentence.
"Patient Vera will die in three days. Tell her that you forgave her."
Alexei dropped the phone onto the blanket as if it had burned his fingers. Vera—as in Vera Sergeevna? That same Vera from room 12? He'd been her attending physician for two months now. She never died. She... she was alive this morning. No, not today. He'd seen her on Wednesday. Today was... what date was it today?
Phone back in his hand. 23:42. Thursday, October 12.
He exhaled. Just a nightmare. Just a night terror, a symptom of exhaustion, he needed to take a vacation.
But the note in the app was made today—at 14:10 in the afternoon, when he was definitely in a session with Vladimir Petrovich, not writing nonsense about a patient's death. Or was he? He closed his eyes and tried to remember the morning. Breakfast. The drive to the clinic. The appointments.
Nothing. Instead of memories—a strange gray noise, like from a broken television.
Alexei got up from the bed and walked to the mirror. The reflection was worth looking at: a rumpled face, dark circles under his eyes, on his neck—an incomprehensible scratch. Fresh.
"Bogdanov, you're a psychiatrist," he whispered to his reflection. "You know that hallucinations don't sting. And don't leave marks."
The scratch was real. And the note on the phone was too.
He didn't know then that in two days, Vera Sergeevna would indeed die—quietly, in her sleep, with a smile. And that before her death, she would manage to whisper to the nurse: "Tell the doctor... let him not search for the truth. It will devour him."
He didn't know that the night of October 12 would be the first of many when he lost time.
