Hello, ambulance? I… I found a baby in the entrance hall. It looks like someone dropped it off. Please come quickly.”
Kristina got up this morning at the crack of dawn: she had to rush to the store while the fresh bread was still available and before her favorite curd snacks— which, in her opinion, were a perfect match with tea—were all snapped up. She quickly pulled on her jeans, a sweater, and on her feet—her old, comfortable sneakers. Outside, it was still gray; the summer sunrise had just begun over the high-rises of their neighborhood.
Approaching the front door, she noticed how the hallway floor was scattered with her nephew’s toys, the little one she sometimes babysits: a small car with its wheels worn off, a plastic tractor without its bucket—they had been left behind from yesterday when a friend had visited with her son. Kristina smiled as she gathered them and put them on the shelf. “It’s nice that sometimes you can hear a child’s laughter in the building, even if it’s not your own,” she thought. She didn’t have any children of her own yet: there was her career, or other reasons. And she didn’t have a husband either—she had recently split up with a guy who turned out to be “not ready” for a serious relationship.
She quickly tossed her wallet and phone into her purse and stepped out onto the staircase landing. The warm air and the sunlight promised a splendid summer day. The girl took the elevator down, stepped into the courtyard—where already some elderly women were bustling about, and two students were smoking on a bench. “Everything seems normal,” Kristina thought. She nodded to a neighbor:
“Hello, Aunt Valya!”
“Hi, Kristina, up early today?”
“Yes, just out for bread.”
The neighbor smiled, adjusted her scarf. Kristina headed to the nearest “Pyaterochka”, fortunately only about a five-minute walk away. After making her purchases, she filled an entire bag: bread, cheese, yogurts, fruits, and a couple of cans of canned peas (just in case she wanted to make a salad). As she headed to the checkout, she estimated that she should be out of the store in about 20 minutes. And indeed, she got into a small line, but she paid quickly.
Finally, she left the store and strode back along the cozy path in the courtyard. She felt a warmth in her heart, knowing a day off was ahead—time to take care of household chores without any rush.
However, as she approached her multi-story building, she noticed something odd: in the entrance, where a glass porch led in, a woman was pushing about with a child in her arms, and a little further away a man was arguing with someone on the phone. Kristina walked past them—the people were strangers to her; perhaps they were guests of someone.
She was already about to enter the building when suddenly she heard a muffled groan or cry echoing somewhere down the staircase. A child’s cry? She stopped and listened. The crying sounded very faint, as if it were half a whisper, almost imperceptible. Her heart skipped a beat: “Could someone have dropped a baby?” She took a few steps inside, leaning against the cool wall.
“Do you hear that crying?” she asked the random people who were following her inside.
“I don’t hear anything,” one man brushed her off.
Another woman shook her head: “Probably just your imagination…”
But Kristina was convinced that what she had heard was real. She decided to follow the sound. Walking a bit deeper into a narrow passage between the garbage chute room and the stairwell, where old furniture was usually piled up, she noticed a small bundle. And from there—indeed—a barely audible child’s voice, crying. With her heart sinking, she leaned down and carefully lifted the edge of the blanket. What she saw shook her to the core: an infant, a tiny baby, maybe just a week old, no more. Its cheeks were pale, its lips blue from the cold or—God forbid—from malnutrition.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, feeling her hands tremble.
The child was wrapped in a haphazard manner in an old, thin blanket, not even properly diapered. “This is just abandonment!” flashed through her mind. “Who could do something like this?!”
Kristina’s heart filled with horror and pity. She immediately dialed 03:
“Hello, ambulance? I… I found an infant in the entrance hall. It looks like it was abandoned…”
Continued in the 1st comment