Tsitozar

When the first procedure of chemotherapy was starting Lesha planned to do millions of things: to write news for the blog of the department of journalism, a programme for an Internet radio station, to work on net video projects, to read Ulysses, to create art-books, to write scripts, etc. The plans were living in his brain full of blasts preventing him from sleeping peacefully. But very soon it became clear that it would be rather difficult to do all this. In the morning there were analyses, medicine droppers, doctors' visits; dreams were mixed with the reality, blood corpuscles died carrying away the strength. "Suddenly I realized that I was reading Ulysses on my own clothes. I was following the non-existing lines and was trying to understand something. Can you imagine it?" Lesha complained. The only thing he had enough energy for was switching on TV. At that time the channel 2x2 had just appeared which was broadcasting evil cartoons day and night. The main slogan read: "Turn off your brain, turn on 2x2!"; "They should write this at the entrance of the department!" Lesha said.

But soon it became impossible to watch TV. He was fed up with the cartoons and the lack of red blood corpuscles led to a danger of hemorrhage into the retina: he was forbidden to watch TV. We didn't know what to do, we sat bored for hours. We even started to make collages from the magazines which were in the ward. Lesha made a portrait of a frightful but intellectual creature which was immediately recognized: it was Tsitozar, the main medicine which was continuously sprinkled into his veins through the central vein catheter. So Tsitozar became alive and had a shape. We started to make sacrifices to Tsitozar, make up legends about him, talk about him like about a human being. "How has Tsitozar been today? How was his mood?" "He was aggressive. I don't even know why".

"Is anybody going to come to you?"
"Only Olya, Bubble and Tsitozar"
"Who?"