Nina Pavlovna

 This story happened in Leningrad in 1981. A woman, Nina Pavlovna, had been working at a pharmacy on Vasilyevsky Island for many years. By the time of the events, she was already an elderly woman. She had a family.: her husband is a disabled soldier and two adult sons. She lived happily by Soviet standards, had a light, funny personality, but she was very responsible about her work.

One summer day, finishing a lunch tea party, Nina Pavlovna suddenly changed her face. Her friend, the cashier, was scared: "Stroke?". Ripples ran across Nina Pavlovna's face, she twitched, and her eyes widened. The woman turned her head as if she didn't recognize anything around her. "Ning, Ning, what's wrong with you?!" the cashier grabbed her sleeve. Nina Pavlovna shouted in a low, trumpet-like voice. Suddenly, with a speed unprecedented for an elderly, heavy body, she jumped back and jumped onto the table, pulling her legs up to her chest: "It's burning, burning, burning, oh, mommies, the fire is all around!". She just sat there, swaying from side to side, hugging her knees and howling. Saliva flowed from his white lips.

The paramedics arrived quickly. When the eldest son finally got to the chief physician of psychiatric hospital No. 2, the doctor briefly told him that this was schizophrenia — the patient felt as if she had fallen into hell and hellfire was buzzing around her, her consciousness was twilight and she was unlikely to recognize him, her son. Refuses to eat, force-fed. The son stared for a long time through the barred window of the ward at his thin, insane mother, who was sitting on the bed in a hospital gown, her legs still tucked under her, and swaying steadily from side to side. Her hair was tousled, and her face was white, an expression of horror frozen on it.

Months passed, but nothing changed. After living in the house of sorrow for several years, Nina Pavlovna died one night. And the patient's case would have been closed, as is usually the case with cases of the mentally ill, if not for one "but". The orderly who came to feed Nina Pavlovna in the morning and found her dead screamed in a bad voice — her legs were lowered to the floor, her heels were charred and slightly smoking. After an emergency meeting, it was decided not to indicate this fact in the pathologist's report.