I am breathing. Still. I gently stroke the stalks of barley with my hand. The wind blows gently across the field. I exhale for the last time as a candle goes out, involuntarily shrouding the room in gloom.
I am pushed into the emergency room. Flat, my upper body rises and falls. Still in a state of shock. Gentle, slender hands push a needle into my upper arm. Shortly afterwards, a water infusion is attached to my right arm. I look up. The young nurse is just leaving the room. Someone next to me is gasping and vomiting. The patient, an elderly lady, gives me an embarrassed look. I look away. The nurse enters the room again. Accompanied by a blond, stately-looking man. He looks unusually good. They walk in my direction. A second young nurse enters the room. "Hello," the man looks at me. I shudder. Clear, large, cold gray-blue eyes fix on me. "-Hello," I reply hesitantly. "I'm Doctor Selvin Quentin. What kind of pain are you in?" The young doctor shakes my hand. A little too firmly. Cold shivers creep down my spine. At first glance, he seemed almost normal, if it weren't for the icy coldness that enveloped his whole aura like an icy stone in winter. Strangely enough, I can't avoid those big eyes. I am... mesmerized by them. Dr. Quentin leans over me. "Pull your sweater up a little, please. I need to listen to your lungs." He had a British accent. I pull my sweater up ashamedly and look away as he feels over my back with the heart monitor and gentle fingers. Then I gratefully pull the sweater back down and our eyes meet. I stare at him as if hypnotized. There's a knock. Only now do I realize that we were alone in the room. The elderly lady had just been dismissed. "Is a Mrs. Stella Jensen stationed here?" The man looks at me questioningly. "Yes!"
Abruptly, as if I had burned myself, I put Stella's diary on the bedside table. Stella's neat handwriting was a little out of joint when she started writing about Quentin. Today was Sunday. I still had to go to church with my two daughters Jana, Helena, Gabriela and her husband Jakob. It was important to me. Even if Jonas Gebb, my son-in-law, secretly made fun of me for it and called me "the weird believing aunt". So what! He was only supposed to. After all, I only went to the Orthodox church once a month. To pray for my dead sister, of course, who had been in the ground for a while. I looked sadly out of the window. It was snowing. Suddenly, the past gripped me with raw and clutching fingers. I saw my sister's face. Her doe-brown, big friendly eyes. Her cheerful smile. Tears involuntarily welled up in my eyes. "Oh dear," I said, pressing a tissue to my mouth. The past had been haunting me more often recently and for good reason. Today was January 10th. The anniversary of Stella's death.
Rebecca Wolff
