Phuket Island, Thailand
December 2004
International Hospital
Mother’s voice comforted Slava. Nothing bad could possibly come to him with her by his bedside.
“So you stay here overnight, Slava,” she told him. “It’s not that bad. You’re big enough to manage. We’ll come in the morning and take you home.”
A boy of ten, Slava felt chilly from the burn ointment over his itching skin. As the medicine they’d given him was taking effect, he was overcame by an urge to sleep.
For the first time since their family had come to Thailand, he made no attempt to argue. That surprised Alyona, his younger sister, so much that she stared at him with pitiful eyes.
His stern father forced out a smile and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Hold on, trooper. Tomorrow you’ll feel better, and by New Year, it will fully heal. Why the hell did you have to get into that pool? We told you to stay in the room. We’re almost broke now—because of you. Our insurance doesn’t pay for sunburns. Sometimes you behave worse than Alyona.”
“Why me?” the seven-year-old girl protested. “It wasn’t me who got sunburned. Serves him well.”
“I stayed under the umbrella,” Slava mumbled, licking his blistered lips.
Over the hour he’d spent in the outdoor pool in the afternoon, he’d got sunburned to the point of his skin peeling off. As his parents and sister had been off to Phuket Town to get some stupid silicone pillows from the local mall, he’d hit the pool. The water was incredibly warm, clean, and transparent. A pure blessing to swim in. So much better than any pool he’d been to in Russia: indoor, cold, and overcrowded.
He just couldn’t get enough of that warm water in the hot sun.
“I just got distracted for a moment,” he added in his smallest voice.
It took as much as briefly closing his eyes to doze off—and miss the moment when the umbrella shadow was gone, exposing him to the sun. And here he was, badly burned without even hitting the beach. So unfair.
They’ll pay the next time they refuse to take me to the mall. I’ll throw a worse tantrum than Alyona.
“And please, Dad. I’m not Slava. I’m Tai.”
Tai was the new name he’d given himself two days ago, abbreviating the name of the country they’d come in for vacation. But none of the family seemed to care. They just kept using his old name.
Mother planted a kiss on his cheek and shut the curtain, separating him from another patient in the room.
Father looked around with a sigh. A stay in this large two-bed hospital room was to be paid by family money. All tourists coming to Thailand were warned their insurance didn’t cover sunburns.
