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Page 197
being," she said softly in her native language, "I have you to myself. You are my own Russian mystery."
Irene Cullen was, at heart, a Russian romantic. As a girl at school in Odessa, she had fallen deeply in love with a medical student three years her senior. It was Vladimir Bogdanovich Gorenko who had, in effect, guided her choice of a profession. He had been handsome, gifted, privileged, as only the son of a high party official could be. Young Gorenko could never have become seriously involved with Irene Rabinovich because she was Jewish, but he had been pleasant to her in his way, unlike so many others. Irene never saw him again after the day he departed for Moscow University. Her memories of Vladi Gorenko became more selective as time went on, an echo of a happy time, one without trouble. Her memory of him was what she chose it to be.
And when Deputy Bobby Lee Calhoun appeared with the shivering and bedraggled orphan of the storm now in the empty ward, it seemed to Irene that he might almost be Vladi Gorenko, and she would be able to return his kindness. The stranger was a few years older than Vladi had been when Irene saw him last. He was broadfaced and blond, most likely a Great Russian, again like Vladi. But, unlike the Vladimir Gorenko of her youth, the newcomer desperately needed Irene Rabinovich Cullen.
All these thoughts had coalesced for Nurse Cullen when she heard her patient, obviously near to delirium, denouncing someone named Krasny. Who Krasny might be, she had no idea. But the name was Russian and deepened her sense of involvement.
For thirty years, Irene Rabinovich had behaved like the most practical and pedestrian of women. She had been a good nurse, a faithful wife, and a conscientious American citizen. But at heart Irene was still the girl who wept over Tchaikovsky's music and the novels of Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. She resolved to save this derelict who murmured feverishly in the language of her homeland.

 
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