One summer, a bright sunny day was rising on the outskirts of European villages. One of them, similarly unremarkable to the eyes of those who passed by, was on the edge of the steppe and intersected with the verdant nature near the city. The thick green grass along the roads and meadows was absent due to the excessive care of the local farmers, who were outdoors and in their vegetable gardens every day.
The people in this village were considered workaholics, as if every local had been cleaning up their laziness since childhood. Along one of the roads ran a certain young boy. His thick, blond hair was famous in his neighborhood because this boy's father, who was busy at his job, also had that gorgeous hair color. The boy would run around the vegetable garden and pick berries close to the cut greens so that he wouldn't lose his way back home afterwards.
The meadows literally filled half the open space in this county, and the view of the grass clippings was quite ordinary. The boy was approached by his mother with a filled basket of berries from their vegetable garden. Her long blond hair reached to her hips, and her gentle voice gave her features of unobtrusiveness, neatness, and love of life.
"Son, are you done picking?" she asked, and the child proudly showed her a basket full of berries. "My, what a good boy you are!"
"It won't be hard for me to help Mama! My basket is fuller than yours, Mama, and that means I won!"
Mom clapped her thin hands happily. When they got home, they put the two baskets by the hallway.
"Isaac, your daddy is coming soon, you should meet him."
"Yes, yes," the child answered her, as if he had heard these words a hundred times before, and ran nonchalantly back to the road, sneaking through the gate of the house.
The spaciousness of the village had no effect on the behavior of the inhabitants, and all of them, trained in morality, greeted their neighbors — something Isaac had been taught from a young age, so he had a special trait in him to respect adults and not to harm nature. Meeting his father from afar on the road, Isaac ran up to him, slightly limping on one leg. His family was treated with honor and glory because they had historical blood, a kind of life destiny. Their family name had long been renowned in medicine and surgery, and the potential of their lineage was only revealed in that area alone. Their hands were literally cast in gold.
"Siegfried!" happily he ran to his father. His father, a fifty-year-old mature man, was getting around on one crutch, and when the boy ran up to him and put his shoulders to his side, he smiled.
"Isaac, how was your day?"
"We picked strawberries and currants today!" Isaac helped his father with his walking.
"Your mother will try hard to make jam today — just the way you like it."
"Yes, jam and bread is delicious!"
They were both walking toward home, and Siegfried looked out over the vast green field not far from his carefree gaze. Nothing seemed to quell his father's calmness: one look at him could both fear him and expect the imminent, but one thing everyone knew firmly was that Siegfried was deservedly regarded as a good-hearted man.
Isaac, glancing around the field, proudly called it a beautiful creation of nature and compared it to the pure field of glittering gold bullion. The dark-eyed father did not understand the comparison and asked what he meant, but Isaac, pouting his lips, added that he wanted to eat as soon as possible.
Soon after they reached the house, his mother called them in for dinner, after which they sat down together at the kitchen table. Their residential one-story house, though it did not look like a celebrity home, was not outwardly tranquil from its impenetrable compactness. Why have expensive houses when you have one that will never keep you depressed?
"August did a popular Western movie," his mother said softly, to which his father, who was reading the paper, looked back at her with dark eyes.
"I see."
"By the way…" Isaac added. "When is my brother going to visit us? I have never seen him, though he is my own brother."
"He'll never come," the father announced, setting the paper down on the empty chair. "He's not part of the family anymore."
"Because he has betrayed the family foundations that have been embedded in our blood since birth…?"
"Exactly. Isaac, do you understand the cost of such a transgression?"
Isaac withdrew into himself, not taking his eyes off his father. Of course, it wasn't worth it for any boy to cross his father, especially since life experience had affected the human hierarchy since the early days — Isaac simply couldn't respond to anything. His childish brain was against taking his brother's misconduct for granted, but his father was right on the other side. At least, that's what his mind of an eight-year-old child thought.
It was natural to accept the fact that this was not the first time Isaac had heard bad things said about his brother from Siegfried, but he could not believe that in hundreds of years a family member had appeared who refused to go the way of surgery and medicine.
***
After dinner, he and his father went to church to pray. The silence inside would have mesmerized the ears of anyone who entered, and it was just the two of them and no other souls in the church.
"I'm glad," Father appealed, "that you have memorized the principles of church activities and how one should conduct oneself here."
They were dressed in ceremonial, dark clothing, and Siegfried had a silver chain with a golden cross around his neck.
"All because it was you who taught me, Siegfried."
"Promise me, Isaac, that you will never leave our lord. He will escort you through all adversity when you need his help. God treats everyone equally — he has no favorites among us humans. Promise me that you will never betray him."
"I promise," his son assured him.
Lowering his dark eyes, Siegfried continued: "Promise me, son, that you will always be with your mother and help with her limp health… She deserves love like no one else."
"I promise."
Finally, the father ordered his son to promise not to break the family bond, "Become a doctor like me and your grandfather and great-grandfather, for there is boundless potential for medicine in our lineage."
With a look in his father's shaky eyes, Isaac turned to face the huge cross on the wall that towered over the souls of the inhabitants of their neighborhood. A cross that gave hope to people turned away from a happy life. The cross that was always with his father.
"I promise."
When his father felt it was time to tell Isaac the whole truth, for his decade, in private, he opened up to him about working in the medical field and how his family had only been highly competent people who had become in their day the best doctors from around the world. Isaac was charged with continuing the path of his ancestors, which caused him to feel a certain weight on his shoulders. A burden due to the high demands on a ten-year-old boy who had not yet seen the world outside his village.
He had since immersed himself in biology through school books to learn the structures and genetics of various creatures, memorizing the terms at the same time. He sometimes wondered if August had decided to renounce his family duty and become an actor, whether that meant that he had shaken off the branch of medicine altogether, or whether he lacked the ability to do so.
Isaac attended the local Catholic school, where the faith was taught in part. His mother worked in the church, so sometimes she dared to confess God's way to her students — at such times Isaac always listened humbly to her sermon stories.
When he was fifteen, his father was already in the hospital because of his old age. Siegfried's leg was sore and his blood pressure often rose, summoned by incessant dizziness. The outcome ended in a hospital bed. Sitting at the hospital bedside, the son looked more like a grown-up and handsome teenager with expressive blue eyes and tidy hair.
"I am proud of you for your obedience to the Lord," his sick father's husky voice rang out, "and looking at you, son, I can be sure that I will sleep well. All because my abilities have been inherited by my beloved son."
Isaac merely sat still, placing his hands in his lap. His father told him never to deviate from his intended path and to tell his future son to grow up to be a doctor, too. This was more important to his father than anything else. Family heirlooms and inherited abilities were the greatest luxury in their family, and Isaac understood that. He didn't want to offend his father, because Siegfried was not in the best shape as it was, so he decided to finally inherit his position. But despondency did not leave the intrigued son, as if he were stabbed in the chains of fate that gave him no other choice.
Two years later his father died of cardiac arrest.
He was old, and according to Isaac's mother, his health had deteriorated because of work fatigue and the stress of August's departure.
Mother was not in good health either, and she had had difficulties since birth. After several years since August's birth, her health deteriorated rapidly, her immune system was zero, so Siegfried worked tirelessly to help her find peace of mind and heal. In those years, however, coping with chronic illness was incredibly difficult, and no matter how much money was spent on treatment, there was little use in recovery, but no one was eager to stop.
A cloudy funeral took place, attended not only by close friends from the village but also by Siegfried's work colleagues, and everyone mourned the loss. August did not attend the funeral, but no one cared. After the funeral, in the evening, his mother confessed to her son that she was color-blind and explained that it might have been inherited. She added that her father knew about this creation of divine punishment, so she did not hide anything from him. Her warnings reached the ears of her handsome son, and she added that he should watch his health. Isaac could only nod. No one was amused.
After a visit to the doctor, Isaac was diagnosed with deuteranopia: he couldn't tell the difference between green and bright orange (gold).
A few years later he became a full-fledged doctor. His first surgery put a lot of mental pressure on him, causing his hands to shake constantly, his eyes to blur and his teeth to grind, but by coping with his fear, he was able to successfully perform the surgery. A few days later, the patient successfully opened his eyes, and Isaac wept for the first time at his work, his first surgery.
After that, when he performed the following surgeries, he stopped thinking negatively about whether he could get it right and instead thought optimistically about seeing the patient's happy face soon after a successful surgery. So two years went by, and during that time his psyche changed drastically. In particular, he was told that his hands were like butter, that he did his job beautifully, and that all the patients were happy.
During this time he had time to move with his mother to live in town because he was assigned to a public hospital. After he was fired from his job, his mother was less and less able to do anything. During his two years as a doctor, Isaac, 26, managed to both feed himself and his mother and buy her medicine, but by the end of the year her condition began to deteriorate sharply. In early spring her mother's body stopped moving, and she told Isaac to hurry into a relationship and get married because he would soon miss his chance. Isaac understood that this was what his mother wanted, to continue the line, and he gently agreed.
A few months later, Isaac and his colleagues arrived at the temple by invitation, and once inside, the doctors were greeted with a bright embrace. The church supported medicine in every way possible. An upper layer of people from Catholic Charities also met.
In their group was a newcomer to the service from Caritas, just under 25 years old with an Asian appearance that attracted the others.
"My name is Akina Takahashi!"
"Can you tell us where you're from?"
"I'm originally from Japan!"
From the outside she seemed shy and unsettled, which made it clear that she, who had converted to Catholicism, had only recently joined a charity and had gotten a taste of the new life. When she saw that Isaac was awkwardly staring at her, she averted her eyes, to which he responded in kind. After the meeting, Isaac inquired about her on the way out and suggested we meet again, to which she, willfully, gladly agreed. Their manner of speech developed in futile minutes — an awkward, affectionate atmosphere reigned over them in all its glory. The meeting was not long in coming, and they arranged it at a restaurant in the evening for the following days.
"And what is your full name?" Akina finally asked, finding time at the table. They were eating a delicacy of Western cuisine.
"Isaac Zaleman."