For some reason, I felt sympathy for him, I felt the support and sincerity of his words, and I decided to postpone my escape. Moreover, I did not know where to run to, to whom.

– Joe, Tinky, guys, come to me! –he called out to the dogs, who were playfully frolicking in a pile of fallen pine needles.

We returned to the shelter for lunch.

The next morning, a medical procedure was scheduled, or rather, it was called that. I wasn't invited. All the children were taken to the round hall on the first floor and given pills. All the children ate them. Later I found out that these were new drugs that were tested on children in our shelter. The experiment was sponsored by a certain Duplessis. Indeed, when you are a child, and no one needs a child, when there is no one to stand up for you, you can become an instrument of experiment against your will.

Therefore, the orphanage had a large cemetery, children often died here. And no one cared about it, only about the results of side effects from medications. They kept the strictest records. And the children were simply buried, without even putting tombstones. Only Dr. Reindir tried to resist the shelter's advice, but it was difficult, because he was just a full-time doctor.

He didn't put my stay at the shelter on the register. My stay here, as well as the stay of another girl, was a secret. Only Dr. Reindir and Sister Pauline knew that Mary and I were in the orphanage. There was a reason for this.

Mary, a girl of the same age as me, was the daughter of Pauline, born out of wedlock. Pauline herself did not know who her father was. Seven years ago, she was a prostitute, sleeping with men for food, as she suffered from bulimia. When Mary was born, the doctor who delivered the baby was Dr. Reindir. He felt sorry for Pauline. Her future, if she were left alone in the city with a child in her arms and with her past, seemed unacceptable to him. He offered her a place at the St. Hope Orphanage as an assistant, to which he had just been accepted as a full-time doctor. Paulina agreed for the sake of a better future for her daughter. I studied to be a nurse and suppressed my appetite with pills. Paulina's life has improved. Mary's stay in the shelter was not recorded, since she was not his ward.

The doctor did not record my stay at the St. Hope Orphanage for another reason. When Sister Paulina checked my blood test on the first day of my stay at the shelter, she discovered some oddity. She reported it to Dr. Reindir. And he was also confused.

The composition of my blood was only partially similar to the composition of human blood. But all speed processes. the settling of red blood cells went faster, and the structure of the blood cells itself was different from the usual human one. This was the reason. For which the doctor hid my stay in the orphanage for many years. I became his research muse. He was determined to solve the mystery of my blood. Solve my secret.

Dr. Reindir and Sister Paulina, hiding my secret and their relationship from everyone, got married in a local church in the spring, three years after I appeared in their lives. I have never seen Pauline so happy and Dr. Reindir so calm before. How did the pink-cheeked plump Pauline look like her ivory wedding dress…

Only me and her daughter Mary were invited. That same spring, Dr. Reindir corrected the adoption documents. Mary and I were happy to have this opportunity to become sisters. Now there were officially four of us, and we actually became a family according to the documents. My name was now Sivana Reindir. We moved from Saint Hope to a house allocated to the doctor's family by the orphanage council.