I was left alone in a maternity home when I was first born. Childhood in an orphanage was not sweet. I sat at the window and looked out for my mother. I dreamt about her, so beautiful and kind. It wasn’t easy after graduation either. I lived in a communal apartment and worked at the local factory. My neighbors were unlucky, to put it mildly. They were all criminals, alcoholics, and brats.
One day I came home and saw that the door to my room had been broken into. I, of course, called the police, but the culprits could not be found. I knew who had done it. I went to my neighbors and demanded that they return the stolen money.
– How dare you accuse honest people of stealing? – Shouted the drunken Jessica.
– Get out of here, or I’ll kill you,” her husband threw me into the entryway.
I sat and cried on the bench. I had no one to turn to for help, because I didn’t know anyone in town. My whole life had been spent within the walls of the orphanage. Suddenly an old woman with a dog came up to me and asked:
– “Honey, why are you crying? What happened?
I cried even harder and told her everything. I needed someone to talk to. The woman listened to me and called me in for tea. I didn’t refuse, as there was nowhere else to go.
In the morning we went to the police station. I wrote a complaint. They promised me that they would talk to the neighbors and they wouldn’t harass me anymore. And they did. Jessica came running the same evening, apologizing and promising to pay me back the money she had stolen from my paycheck.
I hadn’t forgotten about Monica-I went to see her every day after work. She was always waiting for me at the window, since she had no other relatives. More than once she invited me to live with her, but I refused. But then I had to give in.
– Anna, I got sick tonight. I fell down, and I couldn’t get up myself. Come and live with me, baby, I can’t live by myself anymore,” the old woman cried.
I agreed. Monica immediately signed over the apartment to me, no matter how much I refused. So we lived together.
One day I woke up and heard a terrible crash. When I ran into the kitchen, I saw my grandmother. She was lying there moaning. I couldn’t get her up by myself, so I ran to my neighbors for help. As it was quite late no one opened the door for me, only one man agreed to go with me.
He turned out to be a trauma surgeon. He told me not to touch Monica until the doctors arrived, because she might have a compound fracture. The neighbor’s diagnosis was confirmed.
At the hospital, they put a cast on the old woman and offered to hospitalize her. However, she cried and asked to go home, the man took her under his responsibility and promised his colleagues to strictly control the home treatment. The neighbor often came running, Monica also joked that he wasn’t running to her, but to me. In fact I liked him a lot too, but I didn’t let him see me like that.
Time passed. Monica got better and went back to her usual way of life. One day I came home, and she was sitting mysterious and sad. She looked at me and said:
– Anna, don’t make plans for the weekend, let’s go to the dacha. I made arrangements with Robert, he drove us so we wouldn’t be crowded on the bus.
I did not understand what was going on with her, because she did not look like herself. However, on Saturday morning we rushed to the cottage, as we had agreed. We worked all day in the garden and in the vegetable garden, and in the evening Robert took to roasting a kebab. After supper he came up to me and held out his ring.
– Anna, I have been in love with you since the first time we met. Will you marry me? – he said.
I was confused and looked at Monica. She cried and nodded her head. In one year I have found a real family, which before I could only dream of. So believe in yourself and never give up!
