YULA (Юла)

The paper trembled between his fingers.

Nikolai Volkov read it three times without truly understanding it, not because the words were complicated—they were the same as always, medical terms, dates, official stamps—but because he couldn’t believe that this moment had finally come.

The discharge.

Three years later.

“Sign here, here, and here,” said the duty nurse, a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun that stretched her features taut. Her tone was neutral, professional, the same tone she used for everything. For serving meals, for administering medication, for strapping on restraints when someone screamed too loud.

Nikolai knew her well.

He knew all the nurses in Ward 4 of Arkhangelsk Psychiatric Hospital No. 7.

He knew the smell of chlorine and watery soup.

He knew the weight of the rough blankets and the sound of the doors locking at night.

He signed.

“Dr. Korov wants to see you before you leave,” the nurse added without looking at him, gathering the papers with a mechanical gesture. “Consultation room. Ten minutes.”

Ten minutes.

Nikolai stayed seated on the edge of the bed—his bed, the one he had occupied for one thousand and ninety-five days. The mattress sagged in the center, molded to the shape of his body.

On the nightstand, a transparent plastic bag held all his belongings: a wristwatch with dead batteries that had belonged to his father, an empty wallet, and a wrinkled photograph.

He picked it up carefully.

It showed an older man, broad-shouldered with a graying beard, standing in front of a log cabin surrounded by trees.

His grandfather, Alexei.

On the back, a note in faded ink:

Medved, 1962.

Medved.

The village where his grandfather had spent his final years.

A place Nikolai had never been to, never visited, but whose image had filled his dreams during the last year of his confinement.

Strange dreams.

Vivid dreams.

Filled with snow and silence.

And a song.

Always the same song.

A lullaby he didn’t remember ever having heard.

“Volkov.”

Dr. Korov’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. The psychiatrist stood waiting by the consultation room door, a tall, thin man with metal-framed glasses and a receding hairline he tried to hide by combing what little hair he had left over to one side.

Nikolai’s file rested in his hands—a thick stack of papers representing three years of observations, diagnoses, medication adjustments, progress reports.

“Sit down.”

Nikolai obeyed. The chair was hard, uncomfortable, designed to ensure that appointments didn’t last a moment longer than necessary.

“Well, Nikolai,” Korov flipped through the file without really reading it, a theatrical gesture he had made many times before, “you’ve completed your treatment. The latest reports indicate a significant remission of positive symptoms. You haven’t reported auditory hallucinations in six months. The visual ones disappeared entirely a year ago. Your response to clozapine has been satisfactory.”

A pause.

The doctor closed the file and looked at him over his glasses.

“You’re ready for a normal life, Nikolai. Don’t waste it.”

A normal life.

The phrase drilled through his skull like a drill bit. What did that even mean? Having a job? Paying bills? Smiling at the neighbors? For three years, “normal life” had been synonymous with “don’t make us lock you up again.”

Because that was what the discharge really meant.

Not a cure.

A dismissal.

He had stopped being a profitable patient. Or perhaps he had simply stopped being an interesting problem. Paranoid schizophrenia was a heavy diagnosis, but a quiet patient who no longer put on a show didn’t justify keeping a bed occupied.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Nikolai said, because it was what he was expected to say.

Korov nodded, satisfied, and handed him an envelope.

“Your train ticket. It leaves at six this evening. We’ve arranged a placement for you in a work reintegration program at your destination. You’ll need to report to the town hall in—” he checked a note, “—Medved. Is that where your family lives?”

“My grandfather lived there.”

“I have no family left.”

The psychiatrist blinked, caught off guard for a moment.

“Well... that does complicate things. But the program is mandatory. Report in, find work, monthly report. You know... structure. Structure is important for people like you.”

People like you.

Another phrase that lodged beneath his skin like a splinter.

Nikolai nodded once more, pocketed the envelope, and stood.

“Oh, one more thing,” Korov stopped him just as he reached the door. “Keep taking your medication. Every day, without fail. If you stop the treatment, the symptoms will return.”

His tone hardened just barely—enough to sound like a threat without openly being one.

“And next time... it might not be so easy to get out.”

The train left on time.

Arkhangelsk fell away behind a dirty haze of pollution and cold, and Nikolai watched the city vanish through the window without nostalgia or relief. The carriage was nearly empty. An old woman dozed in a distant seat. A young soldier, head shaved and gaze lost, sat at the far end.

Outside, the landscape grew steadily whiter, the bare birches like skeletons lining both sides of the tracks.

He had traveled that same route in the opposite direction three years ago. But back then he had been sedated, wrists bound, his mind wrapped in a chemical fog. He remembered almost nothing of that journey.

Only the cold.

And the fear.

Now the cold was the same, but the fear was different. It was a dull fear, shapeless, clinging not to any single thought but to all of them at once. Fear of not knowing how to live on the outside. Fear that the voices might come back. Fear of being alone.

Fear of not being alone.

He leaned back in his seat, rested his head against the frozen glass, and let the rattle of the train rock him. The landscape turned hypnotic: trees, snow, more trees, more snow. The daylight began to fade. At some point, without realizing it, he fell asleep.

And then the dream came.

He was in a forest. Not just any forest: the trees were immense, black firs rising like columns toward a flat, gray sky. The silence was absolute, so thick it could be felt on the skin like a pressure. Nikolai walked barefoot across the snow without feeling cold, without leaving footprints. He knew he was dreaming, but that didn’t make the experience any less real.

A woman’s voice began to hum a song.

It was a lullaby, a simple and repetitive melody, sung so low it was almost a whisper. It came from somewhere among the trees, but no matter which way he turned his head, the song seemed to come from everywhere at once.

It was not a cheerful song.

It was sad, terribly sad, like a weeping held back for so long it had forgotten how to spill. It spoke of waiting. Of waiting and waiting and no one ever coming.

Nikolai tried to follow the voice, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. The trees began to close in around him, their branches intertwining like fingers. The song grew louder, more urgent, almost desperate. And just when he felt he was about to drown in it—

“Medved. Next stop, Medved.”

He opened his eyes.

The train was slowing to a halt. The loudspeaker kept repeating the name of the village, but inside his head, the lullaby was still playing.

And the worst part was that he recognized it.

Not from his earlier dreams.

From before.

From long before.

From a place he couldn’t put a name to.

The carriage door opened with a hydraulic hiss. The air that rushed in was so cold it hurt to breathe. Nikolai slung his backpack over his shoulder, tucked the photo of his grandfather into the inside pocket of his coat, and stepped onto the platform.

Medved.

A wooden sign, eaten away by the elements, announced the name of the village. Beyond the platform, a dirt path covered in snow led into the trees.

No one was waiting.

No one was there at all.

The train resumed its journey. Nikolai stood alone on the platform, with his plastic bag and his wrinkled photograph, as the afternoon sun—it was barely three o’clock—began to set behind the trees.

The song lingered in his head, persistent as an echo.

For the first time since he had signed the discharge papers, he wondered if he was truly cured. And if he was, why did that melody feel so painfully familiar.