Tsarina | Ivan B.

The Devil's Advocate

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Sorry for the reader being a bit of a crazy bitch in this chapter! The princess will get more tolerable :)
'•.¸¸.•''¯'••._.•'•.¸¸.•''¯'••._.•'•.¸¸.•''¯'••._.•

The nurse lingered in the brightly-lit threshold, trying to delineate if the contour was beckoning her inwards or signaling for her to leave. Recognizing his inviting motion, the man inside frowned as the nurse rushed in. Unfortunately, his day wasn't over; he'd awaited going home all day, since his wife was preparing his favorite stew.

"Enter." The doctor intoned with a click of his tongue. The nurse wryly smiled, as if to apologize for her unannounced arrival. However, the wrinkling of her nose betrayed her revulsion at the squalid surroundings. Sweeping through the open window's grille, the autumnal wind slipped beneath the textbooks' paper, unfurling the pages to chapter-headers ranging from neuroscience to podiatry. Almost whimsically, it scattered the notes amidst mousetraps and the plumage of an encaged parrot.

"Dr. (L/N)," she began tepidly, "remember the girl in Room 104? It seems like she's recovering. Actually, she summoned me a few moments ago."

"Well, Katyusha, that's splendid news!" the doctor exclaimed.

"Splendid indeed, although her mental state is less than splendid. You see, apparently, she'd gone to a restaurant and scraped her face when she climbed over a fence to get there. She had an ikon pinned to her breast, and demanded that they let her use their phone. When they promptly refused she took a candle and..." Katyusha's voice stopped as she re-examined her notes, "ah, yes, threatened burn down the building."

At this, the doctor's face seemed to contort in concern. He had dealt with many troubled individuals, suffering with just about any affliction. Rarely, though, was he conscripted to treat insanity.

"I took her medical history, and she insisted that
she was, no, is (Y/N) Romanova. Imagine!" Katyusha continued, using overblown gestures to convey the incredibility of the girl's story. "It was a lengthy performance; I asked about her family,
their drinking habits, history of venereal diseases, who died— when and why. Then, she interrupted me! Over and over, she cried: 'they're gone! It was last night— or was it the night before? Oh, god! I don't even know what day it is.' Then, she burst into tears! Pity her, I told her that I would get her help: a doctor and a policeman."

"And have you spoken to a policeman?" Asked Dr. (L/N), folding his hands.

"Pardon?" The question had taken Katyusha aback. "No, nor do I intend to. I want to help her overcome her delusions, not play into them."

"Of course," He agreed and stood up, "but I'm curious, what do you think happened? How is one driven to such extremes of lunacy?"

Katyusha pressed a finger to her lips, deep in thought. In truth, she had no explanation; having come from Kiev, she was unfamiliar with the rural horrors that lay beyond. Tales of decapitations by streetcars and disfigurements from bar brawls were all she had heard of, not this.

In her mind, she conjured up falsehoods of what people in the woods were afflicted by. Rabid animals? Sure! Perhaps she had been mauled by a saw-toothed bear. Or Perhaps when treading the underbrush of her path home, she had been shot by a hunter. Yes! Uralites didn't have the supermarkets like Kiev, they had to hunt. Surely, her silhouette must have been mistaken for a rabid, flat-toothed bear.

"I don't know," Katyusha said before ignorantly blurting out, "Perhaps it was a hunting accident? Maybe she was attacked a wolf or bear."

She was bedridden in Nizny Tagil. At first, (Y/N) laid motionless on the comfortably-sprung bed, watching black flakes— static from her poor health— dance across the ceiling. Her sleepiness had reanimated the trauma in a cartoonish way which made it less disturbing that morning.