The New Dorian Gray

When I woke up, I didn't know where I was. The world seemed distant, like a thick fog, and the vague images in my head didn't add up to a complete picture. All I knew was that I was alive - and that was the main miracle.

"You're in the hospital," the nurse said.

Her voice was calm, but I barely registered it, as I was still in some kind of half-asleep state. I looked up and saw her. At first it seemed to me that I was getting something mixed up, that my memory had finally played a cruel joke on me.

In front of me stood a girl whose features were almost an exact copy of my dead wife's face when she was 22 years old. Black hair, the exact shape of her lips, even those same eyes... I froze in confusion, unable to utter a word.

The nurse noticed my silence and continued softly but confidently:

"Everything is fine. We saved you. You are in the Vancouver City Hospital. A few weeks after you were found on the lake, you managed to regain consciousness."

I found it hard to breathe. A lot of thoughts raced through my head. The lake. The water. Robert. I tried to focus, but the memories were crumbling like old buildings. It was as if my brain didn't want to cooperate.

"Don't worry," she continued, noticing my concern. "The sappers who were sailing around the northern shore of the lake in motorboats found you two days after the disaster. Half-naked, unconscious. They pulled you out of the water.

Disaster... Robert... I froze. Where is he? Why couldn't they find him? Where was he? I tried to ask, but my voice wouldn't come out. My throat was like a dry rag, and I was too weak to speak.

"Everything will be fine," the nurse said, understanding my look. "We did everything possible to bring you to your senses. But your wounds and injuries were serious. That whole situation... The disaster... We found no trace of the other person.

Robert. Where is he? I tried to speak again, but the words wouldn't come. That girl's eyes... she was so much like my wife, so much like her that I felt a lump in my throat.

"Was there anyone else with you?" the nurse asked calmly, but with a hint of worry in her voice. "Maybe the one who was there when they found you? We didn't find any traces of anyone else, just you."

I fell silent. The answer was simple: Robert was gone. He was lost in this catastrophe, just like the monstrous events that had brought me here. I didn't know what had happened to him. It was as if he had dissolved into this terrible reality.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember everything that had come before - the moment when I was with him, when we ran, when we fought those unimaginable forces. But it was all gone. He was gone.

How could I have been alone? Why hadn't he survived? Why was I the only one in this place, with this face of a nurse who looked like my wife, who was no longer even there? How much more could I have survived? And most importantly, why did all this seem unreal?

Tears rolled down my cheeks, hot and bitter, like the memories they brought. Robert... my Juliet... It was all like a crazy dream that didn't want to end. I sat on the bed, rooted to the spot, lost, alone, and didn't know what to do with myself. The doctor's lamps on the ceiling pulsed slightly with their cold light, as if this world was trying to squeeze me out, throw me out.

I didn't understand what was happening. Where was Robert? Where was he? Why was I in this hospital and he was gone? He was there, in our world, in those strange events, but now... now he was gone.

And then she came. The nurse whose eyes were so much like my wife's, the one I had lost so many years ago. She sat down next to me, and I felt her gaze full of compassion - but something was wrong. Maybe I was wrong, but there seemed to be a strange wariness in her movements. She was still looking at me intently, with a slight surprise on her face, as if she were studying me, trying to understand what was going on inside.

I wiped my eyes and tried to pull myself together, but I couldn't. The pain was too strong, and all the memories seemed to flash and disappear in a minute.

"You don't have to worry," she said quietly, her voice soft but unsure. "You've been through a lot. Just relax."

I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. But her words sounded in my head like a strange echo: "We've been through a lot..." Yes, but why do I feel so empty? Why can't I find Robert yet?

I opened my eyes again and looked at her face. It was her look. It was that same indescribable mixture of pain and tenderness that I had once seen in my wife's eyes. She was so much like her... and something about her presence made me feel like I was losing something else, something important.

"You… you seem very lonely," the nurse said, as if she had sensed my thoughts. "I can help you. I… I'm here to help people like you…"

I immediately felt a new stream of pain brewing in my chest. I couldn't help but notice her attention. This woman, this nurse, who was so similar to my wife... Suddenly, in a moment of weakness, in a moment of unbearable melancholy, I felt that she might actually want to help me. But something in me resisted it.

"Maybe I'm wrong, maybe she really just wants to be kind, to help me," I thought, "but I can't accept it. I can't…"

At that moment, her gaze became more wary. She clasped her hands on her chest, and a strange, vague anxiety flashed in her eyes. Something in her behavior changed, and I realized: she noticed how I was looking at her. And now, perhaps, she felt it.

"Are you in love with me, silly bitch?" the darkness of the lump in my chest suddenly spilled out into my voice.

I didn't even realize what I said, but as soon as the words left my lips, I felt like I wanted to shut up.

She seemed to freeze. Silent. Only her eyes became deeper, and for a moment it seemed that there was some kind of shadow in them.