The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko Read Online Free Page B

which both of our sets of deer eyes were locked into each other, she simply turned around and walked in the opposite direction.
    â€œI’ll come back. Perhaps by then our doll will be ready for a bottle,” she said.
    By the time my eight hours were up, I could change a diaper in ten seconds, which I find impressive for an invalid with one arm and three fingers. I had one diaper left—the one I saved for Max. I waited till the lights went out and the hum of the hospital died down to approximate silence and the daytime nurses left for the night, and which made it easy to slip into the Yellow Room, which is the room that holds all the children under three years old.
    Max is not exactly a flight risk, so his crib doesn’t have a high-gated perimeter. It is actually something between a crib and a cradle. He lives his shitty little life in a tiny blanketed tublike dwelling with walls on either side that are at most a foot and a half high. Lucky for me, this is a height I can scale.
    I wiggled my way out of my chair and maneuvered myself into the tiny padded nest in order to arrive at Max’s tiny meniscus of a body. This was the first time I’d ever seen Max at night. My first thought was that Max makes the same face regardless of whether he is awake or asleep. I’ve watched enough faces on enough sleepless nights to know that faces soften when they sleep, regardless of what thoughts and demons torture their minds when they’re awake. Max, however, looked equally desperate in the stillness of sleep.
    I had no idea what the status of Max’s bowel schedule was, so I gently pulled at his diaper to see if it was brimming with the characteristic heavy brown slop I’d become so intimate with. At the moment, we were pudding-free. So I sat. And waited. And attempted to sing to him in whispers. I sang Russian nursery rhymes like “Brother Ivan” and “The Hare Went Out for a Walk.” I sounded wretched, probably like the ghost of a chap who died at the peak of puberty, but it helped pass the time.
    Then it happened: the aroma of fecal particles diffused into the air. The most intensive training never really prepares you for the reality of the moment. Max’s odd sickle-shaped body made the removal of his diaper far more formidable than I had expected. Eventually, however, I was able to slip it off, but not without leaving fecal streaks throughout his bungalow.
    A part of me panicked, most likely because my reputation was on the line, my pride, my proof that I could, at the very least, tend to another being enough to change a shitty diaper. So I did what I could (with a mixture of saliva and my own sweatpants) to eliminate the streaks of chocolate from Max’s warm linen.
    I could be crazy—actually I most certainly am—but I do believe I saw Max’s eyes ease a fraction when all was said and done. I doubt his dirty diaper had ever been changed with such gusto and love (typically the nurses toss him around like a bag of onions). After I completed my mission I stayed with him long enough to croak out “Granny Ate Peas” and then remounted my chair and disposed of Max’s soiled diaper in the Director’s office en route to my room.
    The next morning, I woke before breakfast hour and wheeled myself back to the Yellow Room and waited smugly for the nurses to make their rounds. Eventually, Nurse Katya arrived at Max’s crib and checked the status of his undergarments. I watched as she manhandled his stiff, bent body, rotated his torso until he resembled a city arch, and opened the flaps of his diaper only to find it empty. Katya closed him up and then opened him right back up again for a second look. At which point she confirmed his clean diaper and scanned the bed frantically for alternative signs of waste. When she found the chocolate streaks, it only enhanced her bewildered look, leading her to scan the room in a panic, while I bit my inner cheek to the