-Oh, girls! What happened yesterday, if I tell anyone, they won’t believe me,” the girl began her story when she came to work.
She worked as a nurse at the children’s city hospital, because she loved children very much, and she did not have her own. For her, children were a different world, one she adored being in and never ceased to be amazed at. Maybe because she herself was trusting and spontaneous, as a child and was happy about everything with the never-ending enthusiasm of childishness.
– So, I was coming back from my shift yesterday. You know, it’s already dark at this time, of course there are few people in the yards, but the point is not this. I have not yet gone into my yard and I hear in the bushes, someone moves. Probably a cat or dog thought and suddenly from the bushes came a snore. I was frightened at first, but then I thought, what if someone feels bad and needs help? I think, what is there to be scared of? The hour is not so late, if anything… I opened the bushes and there was a young man lying face down. I leaned over to him, turned him on his back, he smells of booze, shook his shoulder: man, man, are you bad? And he just grabbed me by the neck with his hands and how he cried: I feel very good when the girl is near, please help me get up, and he wrapped his arms around my neck, and holds.
– You’re crazy, what if some maniac, – my friend could not stand it and interrupted her story – you’ll get hurt someday, you’re too kind-hearted.
– Quiet, let me tell the man, it’s interesting.
-Of course I helped him up, and he said to me: “But take me to your place, I will be useful to you, I can not stay alone today. I see that the man is not some drunk, decently dressed, and maybe at this minute he needs support.
– The girl is completely crazy. And you’re just dragging a man you don’t know from the street to your house? You’re sick and you’re not getting treatment.
– I’m not sick, his wife left him. She had a fling with his boss and then she left him and the man got drunk with grief and didn’t make it to his house. It turns out he lives in the next yard.
– You’re a piece of work. I wouldn’t be surprised if you left him in your apartment while you were at work.
– He didn’t want to go home. Everything reminds him of his past life.
– Which is exactly what I needed to prove. You come home, you’re our Mother Teresa, and the apartment’s been cleaned out.
– There’s nothing to clean. Old furniture and a TV or something?
And so they all went back to their workplaces.
In the evening the girl came home. It was strange for her to have someone waiting for her at home, because she had lost her mother seven years ago and lived alone.
“Waiting? What did she imagine, or maybe no one was waiting for her at all. And she wanted so much that someone would wait for her or she would wait for someone,” the girl dreamt.
When she opened the door, her heart was jumping out of her chest with excitement.
– I was a little late for your arrival – a man came out to meet you with white roses – thank you for not leaving me in the street, in the bushes.
She could not remember when men had ever given her flowers, except, of course, at work on the eighth of March. When she entered the room, she saw that the man was preparing a festive dinner.
– Well, not much time, but I’ll be right there, – he was fussing and in his bustle, he seemed to her like a boy, so sweet and naive, just like the boys in the department where she worked.
– Everything’s ready, let’s have dinner. Don’t think I’m so insolent that I’ll take advantage of your kindness and embarrass you, let’s have dinner and I’ll go home. It’s very nice to be around you. May I come to you sometimes.
And the girl, surprised at her own courage, suddenly said:
– And I want you to take advantage of my kindness and to embarrass me. You don’t have to come to me. You just don’t go.
