Ender's Football

Ender felt like he was floating in the hospital corridor now, unconscious.

Slavs with tall noses and deep eyes came and went around: the doctors were holding folders containing medical records, talking in low voices to the numb family members of the patients, and the nurses walked more hurriedly, either pushing carts or Holding an infusion bottle and a needle in his hand, he walked quickly, and when he passed passers-by, he could still bring up a gust of disinfectant smell.There are more patients and family members, and these people are even more diverse. It is difficult to summarize them with a unified characteristic, but they don't smile much after all, making the atmosphere depressing and dull. In addition, the air conditioner in the hospital is powerful enough. It was extraordinarily cold.

He never liked the hospital, which always reminds people of many, many bad things.

Ender sniffed hard in this state, trying to reconnect his senses with reality.

This kind of psychological suggestion really worked. For a moment, the pungent smell of disinfectant broke into Ender's silent world with a woman's voice.

"Ender? Ender? Boy? Can you hear me?"

As the loud female voice tore through the barrier between him and the outside world, Ender felt his consciousness return to his body, and his soul fell to the ground from the floating corridor.

Only then did he come back to his senses, and when he looked up, the concerned look of the neighbor's aunt fell into his eyes.

"Young man, are you all right?" asked the Slavic woman who had kindly brought him here.

It was only then that Ender remembered why he came to the hospital.

"...Thank you," he pursed his lips and replied in Russian, "I..."

He couldn't say "I'm fine".

The woman patted him on the shoulder gently: "Good boy, don't be afraid. I'll accompany you in."

Together they pushed the door open and entered the corner room.

The room was colder than the corridor of the hospital, and after opening the door, there was a dead silence, as if it was not in a different world from the hospital just outside.Ender wiped his eyes with trembling hands. There was no other color in it except white. There were names written on each cabinet, and a figure was lying on the table in the middle, covered with a white cloth.

Ender lifted the cloth with violently trembling hands.

The face of a middle-aged man appeared in front of him.

It was an Asian man, he was lying quietly under the white cloth, his eyes were closed tightly, his skin was sickly pale; his facial features were handsome, his eyebrows and eyes were similar to Ender's, but his beard was slightly scruffy.He was wearing a plaid shirt and a work jacket. The plaid shirt should have been soaked in blood before, and there were large areas of rust-colored marks on his chest and waist. One hand was hanging by his side, but the other arm had been Disappeared, just wrapped around the shoulders with a strong tourniquet.

The lower body was even more unreadable. Just as Ender lifted off a corner of the white cloth, the neighbor's aunt forcefully covered the white cloth back and told him in Russian: "Enough."

Right in front of the corpse, a card was pasted on the yellowed tape, on which a line [National Day, China] was scrawled in Cyrillic letters.

The person who called him before said it was a car accident.

It turned out that this is what the aftermath of the car accident looked like.

Ender's eye circles turned red.

"I didn't expect..." he said, stumbling in Russian, "I should have told him to stay home last night..."

He is 13 years old this year, already a boy with a little self-esteem, but now he broke down and started crying in front of a foreign neighbor who was almost a stranger.Regret, anger, and helplessness flowed out along with the tears, and the eye sockets were like a faucet with a broken switch. The usual self-esteem and indifference of being thousands of miles away have long been left behind.

"dad……"

He carefully touched the dead man's skin, it felt sticky and cold, uncomfortable like a poisonous snake, gnawing at his heart.

An Guoqing, his father, they were still arguing last night, he blamed him for being bad, and wanted to go back to China to see grandma in anger, but today, the person who was still jumping because of his anger yesterday, was lying on the cold bed. On the morgue.

An Guoqing was not a particularly good father. Ever since he suffered a setback in his football career and divorced his wife, he often left An De and went out to drink with his friends, and came home late at night after getting very drunk.He throws his son to his grandma, and he spends his days abroad. He doesn't care whether his son has friends, but only cares about his score in the exam. Most of the time, he is immersed in alcohol all day long, trying to avoid his failure.

But this is his dad.

His father once held Ander's hand and took him to play that little football on the training ground. At that time, he firmly believed in his bright future and promised his son that he would become the main force of the national team. He will go to the World Cup for the country in the future; he is tall and handsome, and he is the most handsome father when he comes to the kindergarten to pick up his children, which made Ander secretly proud for a long time; he took his wife and son to travel around Europe in the year when he was the most vigorous. I want to buy anything good for my wife and children...

nothing left.

Suddenly.

Ender had nothing left.

The woman behind him suddenly hugged him.

Her body is warm and her arms are strong, the only source of heat in this room.

"Perhaps you don't know, child," she said, her voice cracked, "... Seryozha didn't have a father either, and I've always felt guilty about that."

"...I don't know..." Ender replied in a dazed manner.

The neighbor's aunt hugged him tightly and told him her own story: "When I was pregnant with Seryozha, his father left us because he was drunk and fell into the water... I thought about suicide many times, but later I still decided to survive... Many times, parents and children are just arranged by God to meet in the world. We don't know when God will take back this special encounter, but what I can be sure of is that you are a good boy, God will bless you..."

Tears rolled down her cheeks and onto Ender's shoulders.

"Seryozha has always wanted to be your friend... He's just too shy to take a step forward. Look, boy, what a fine fellow you are... Live well."

Ender didn't believe in God, but he was miraculously soothed by these words.

Perhaps it was knowing that the woman behind him had experienced the pain of the death of a loved one like him, perhaps he had heard some affirmation of life, and maternal love.

"Thank you, Leosha, and you," he murmured, "my mother...she..."

Only halfway through his words, the sharp and piercing air defense siren exploded above his head, hurried footsteps and chaotic voices appeared at the door in an instant, and someone knocked on the door of this morgue: "Go! Don't wait it's here!"

The woman immediately became nervous, she dragged Ander and ran out of the room, everyone in the corridor was running in a panic, with fear and anxiety written on everyone's face.

"What's wrong?" The woman hurriedly stopped a passerby and asked.

"We're fighting!" The person who was stopped was also a middle-aged woman. She looked anxious, but she still advised, "A firefight has started not far away! Run!"

They spoke Ukrainian, which Ender could not understand very well, but he could already feel the uneasiness and anxiety in the air.

"what happened?"

The woman turned to look at him. The boy's face was still wet from tears. He had just lost his father. He was unfamiliar with the place and even the Ukrainian language.And she also has a son, stupid, who is still at home waiting for her to go back.

She knelt down and finished the sentence as quickly as possible: "It may be that there is a war nearby, son, I know that your father's funeral has not been dealt with, but it is best not to stay in the hospital now, I will take you to the hospital." Air-raid shelter, and then pick up Sergey, I will take care of you temporarily, okay?"

Ender was ignorant, he couldn't even hear the Russian word "battle" clearly amidst the loud air defense sirens.The situation in this country seems to be a bit tense recently, but a child who was born and raised in a peaceful environment most of the time, it is hard to imagine what it would be like to be told "there is a fight outside" one day Feel.

He opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.

Ander has only lived in this country for two months, and his purpose of coming here is also very simple, just to live with his father for a while.He can only speak some Russian, and he cannot communicate with everyone in the area without barriers, so he seldom watches various programs and news on TV.He frantically searched in his brain for the sudden siren that resounded through the sky, only to remember that he seemed to have read a piece of Chinese news about the unstable situation in this country a week ago.

He stood still, and the woman was anxious, and took his hand and wanted to go out.

Ander gently brushed her hand away, shook his head: "Auntie, I won't go with you."

"You!" The woman couldn't understand the child's decision, her brows and eyes showed anxiety, "I know it's hard for you to accept the reality now, but this is not a joke! Wait until tomorrow, if tomorrow is safe, we will see your father again !"

"I want to take him home..." Ender said, and there was a miraculous calmness when he said this. In the chaotic situation, this child who had just lost his father was suffering great pain and sadness in his heart, and his mind was full of pain. A thought in the room was extremely firm, "Since it is chaotic outside, I have to leave earlier. I was only living in your country temporarily to see my father, and now he has... I have to contact the embassy and send His ashes were taken home for burial... I'm still a minor, and my guardians are not around now, they will help me, and..."

He thought of his grandma who was far away in the motherland, and another kind of sadness welled up in his heart.But he didn't let this feeling stay in the present too much, and tried hard to recall the string of phone numbers he had memorized.

"I remember the number of the embassy, ​​can you do me a favor and dial it?"