The air here is too dry and it was really hard to breathe during the night. I felt as if I were back in the airless Moscow, almost. A scary feeling,

But at least I woke up early thanks to that. Couldn't wait to get outside for some fresh air, but with all the ultrasounds and IVs I only managed to take a short walk around noon - 15 photos.

This neighborhood is called Otradnoye (I guess), and even though there's something about joy in its name, the area I walked in today is pretty joyless. Lots of medical institutions around - Medgorodok.







***

As I was taking yet another picture of something ugly, a man called out to me from behind a broken-down fence; he looked like someone who rides around in an ambulance all day. At first, I didn't hear all that he said. But I thought I heard the word 'morgue.' The building behind him, which I had just photographed, could've been a morgue, I thought. He repeated: "Devushka [miss, girl], is that a hobby of yours to take pictures of morgues?"

I erased the picture immediately, without thinking.

A little further on, I saw a chimney. They probably cremate bodies here, I thought.

And this is where I bounced back up from the shock of the encounter with the morgue employee and was able to see it as if through someone else's eyes: a pregnant girl with a camera and a tired man with a difficult job and a weird sense of humor, totally consistent with his occupation; he's enjoying himself immensely as he is scaring the shit out of the very pregnant girl. Hilarious.

***

Some three minutes before the morgue conversation, I had been sms-ing Mishah about something very pleasant: all of a sudden, in the middle of this depressing neighborhood, I smelled New York City. A sweet smell of something being baked in the street, pretzels or something, mixed with some mild stench, totally bearable, coming from a nearby subway station. Made me feel so nostalgic.

There's probably a bakery somewhere close, I'd been thinking. But then I saw the chimney, and for the next two hours, until Mishah wrote me back, I worried about the possibly different nature of the NYC smell. Mishah, however, wrote that there was only one crematory in Kyiv, at Baikove Cemetery, far from here.

***

There're tiny plastic bottles with shampoo and shower gel here, hotel-style. After the morning shower today, I smelled very unfamiliar, and the only place I could locate myself at with this hotel smell all over me was Istanbul, where we do stay at the hotel. This was the first time I felt nostalgic today, and a little bit too hopeful, for some reason - but then I looked out of the window, at the gloomy buildings of Medgorodok and the leaden sky, and knew again that I was in Kyiv, not Istanbul.

The weather this whole past week has been depressing. Somehow, it's the weather I've been imagining we'd have on the day I deliver, and I kept forcing myself to imagine something else, something happier: lots of sun, lots of fresh snow, frost and wind - and me having the baby...