How the Universe Put a Dead Man under My Wheel

How the Universe Put a “Dead Man” under My Wheel

Part One. Vanya

It was a Saturday. The whole day was scheduled hour by hour despite it being the weekend. The day before, something bad had happened. I picked up my oldest cat, and he felt very light ; And then we rushed — through every possible test and doctor — and within six days we had done a CT scan.
This was the first day of tests, the first of six.

I have to admit, I arrived at the clinic unprepared. I had long known that Vanya was a difficult patient. In Moscow it used to take three people and a heavy blanket to vaccinate him, and even a towel didn’t help. But at this clinic we’ve been doing check-ups since last August. And twice this year they handed him back to me saying, “What a good boy you have” and “Well, he grumbled just a little.” So I decided everything was fine and that with age he had changed his attitude toward doctors. Mistake.

While they were measuring his blood pressure, Vanya sat upright on my lap like a little rabbit, his paws on my shoulder, and wailed sadly. “Ooooo. OOOOO. Oooo. OOOOO.” Endlessly. He didn’t even notice the needle in his paw. And then suddenly — he screamed! Right when the needle was already out. And, as if on purpose, the blood in the vial clotted, so they had to insert it again ;. The way he screamed… I think he woke up the entire apartment building where the clinic is located.

I held it together. The nurse and I kept soothing him with words while he literally tried to chew through my arm via the cone collar.

But eventually it was over. We got into the car, and I realised I was shaking from the stress and that I might not even make it home (20–25 minutes with traffic).

Luckily, a university friend of mine lives four minutes from the clinic. We had texted spontaneously the day before and had planned to meet anyway in the coming days. I called her. It was 8:30 pm. She said, “Come over.” I drove there. I walked in with Vanya in his carrier, and she looked at me and said, “Let’s check your blood pressure for fun.” I’m generally hypotensive. It used to be 90 over 60 when I was younger. It evened out with age, but I’ve never seen it above 120–130. We measured it. The monitor showed 160 ;

In short — horror. I was trembling from the unprepared stress, Olya was giving me tea, and I set a timer for ten minutes. We had to remove Vanya’s post-test bandage. The timer rang, and we practically crossed ourselves like atheists before going to take it off.

Vanya screamed as soon as he saw my hand reaching toward his back paw. Thank God my friend has two cats and a dog — she knows what to do. Without a word she brought a huge blanket and threw it over him. He flailed his paws like an octopus and fought. My hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t find the edge of the bandage. We switched places, and eventually we managed.

After that, Vanya followed his own programme deeper into the apartment — we decided not to put him straight back into the carrier. We stayed for four hours; he calmly observed everything from the room of Olya’s younger daughter, Varya. He only grumbled again when he saw the carrier to go home. Octopus paws again — I was putting him in while Olya detached every limb he hooked onto something.

During that time I was given tea, two kinds of coffee, and lemonade. I left with a blood pressure of 130, which is fine.
But that was not the end of the story that evening.

Part Two. “Dead Man”

I left Olya’s place close to 1 am. Without traffic it’s about thirteen minutes straight over the bridge. The roads were empty. On Kondratyevsky there were traffic police, but they had stopped some speeder ahead of me and paid me no attention at all. Not that I had anything to hide.

I pulled up to my building — there was a taxi parked there. We have an archway with gates that open automatically via phone. I couldn’t get through. I flashed my headlights once, like, “You’re blocking the way.” I saw the taxi driver walking from the gate — but instead of getting into his car, he walked toward me. I lowered the window.

“Miss, you probably won’t get through,” he said. “I brought a client who’s dead drunk. I dragged him to the gate, and he’s lying there. Is there anyone strong who could help carry him?”

I looked at the clock — 1:07 am. The whole building asleep.

“No,” I said, “there’s no one.”

He said he had another order, apologised, and drove off. I had two options.

There’s another courtyard in our block without a barrier, but that’s a 5–7 minute walk. I had the cat. Even though he’d lost weight, he’s still 5.5 kilos. My bags. I desperately needed the toilet thanks to the drink mix at my friend’s place. It was either ;16 or ;20 outside. It felt like ;25 at night these days.

So I decided to just drive forward and see for myself. I opened the gate and drove in. And yes — there was a body. Lying in the fetal position, not right by the gate as the driver had said, but a little farther in, closer to the wall. I realised I could technically pass. I drove a couple of metres forward.

And then — fortunately — I later realised my small height saved me. My stepfather in such situations just drives straight ahead because he can see all the front corners of his car. I can’t. No matter how much I raise the seat, I never see the edges. In tight spaces I ALWAYS get out and check.

So this was normal for me. Except instead of another car or a wall — there was a body. No judgement. Situation exists — pull up, get out, look, continue.

So I looked — and the body… (This is a nightmare.) In those two seconds while I was moving, he had stretched his leg forward. Right under my wheel. Twenty centimetres away. If I had moved just a little further, I would have crushed his leg to pieces. And by the laws of any country on Earth, that’s a criminal case. Cameras everywhere in the yard. No hiding. A complete nightmare.

But thankfully, it didn’t happen.

So I stood there, looking at this whole “beauty.” And then The Voice switched on inside me.

(I paused for coffee.)

The Voice.

I’ve heard that level of voice in myself maybe three times in my life. It activates only in critical, no-way-out situations. If I could, I would sing from that register. But I can’t — at least not yet.

I looked at the body and shouted:

“DUDE! ARE YOU EVEN ALIVE??”

He had been completely unconscious. And suddenly — at my Voice — he came to. He pulled his leg back. And crawled closer to the wall. Exactly what I needed.

“THAT’S RIGHT,” I said. “AND DON’T MOVE.”

I got back into the car and drove past this nightmare. I lowered the window and called out:

“Dude! Are you okay?? Where do you live?? What apartment?”

The body replied something like:

“Sixteeeen.”

Apartment 16.

Turned out he was my neighbour. Same entrance. We’re on the sixth floor, he’s on the fifth. He has a sister — I’ve seen her. She’s permanently alcohol-soaked like Lenin in his mausoleum. Last year she tied bedsheets together and climbed out the window. Her cat jumped onto a nearby structure. She was rescued by police, the cat by volunteers ;;

So I’d met the sister — and now the brother landed under my wheel.

He was covered in mud, in some kind of filth, his face all bloody.

And lying there in the fetal position on frozen ground, he stretched his hand toward me and went,

“Ooooo… aa…”

Like, “Give me your hand.”

I looked at him from inside the car and said, “Dude, I’ll die.”

I rolled the window back up and drove to my parking spot in the third courtyard. Parked. Exhaled. Took out my phone and confidently dialled 911 ;

Victim of American movies. I have to admit, it’s not the first time in a critical situation I forget the Russian emergency number. Usually I just stare at my screen and ask someone nearby to call. But there was no one nearby. Luckily, I’d seen online that 911 redirects. So I called. And it did. A cheerful female voice answered: “112 service.”

I gave them the gate number, called either an ambulance or police — I’m not even sure which — and went home. Collapsed into bed.

In the morning, I woke up to messages in the building chat from 2 am:

“Neighbours, good evening. There is a completely drunk man in a white jacket smashing bottles and crawling on the stairs in our entrance. Does anyone know what’s going on? Should I call the police?”

Apparently “my” police only got him to the entrance and left him there. Didn’t even take him to his apartment.

Where he found bottles — a mystery. Where the neighbours saw a white jacket — I saw nothing but dirt — also a mystery. And the biggest mystery for me, upon reflection, is how he even managed to get through a code-locked gate in that condition ;;

And that Voice of mine — I later realised it has a name.

“The One That Wakes Even the Dead.”

That’s it. ;;

07.02.2026