Stres

Antoni left the office and closed the door behind him. He scratched his bald head and took a few steps forward. He stood in the middle of the corridor, filled with patients waiting for their turn, and pulled up his canvas trousers. Their too-short legs immediately slipped out of their rubber boots.

"Damn it!" the man cursed, leaning forward to straighten the unruly trousers.

Amidst groans and curses, he finally managed to restore them to their former appearance. He straightened and then looked around the corridor for his wife. Instead, he met the stares of the people in the waiting room, clearly indicating that he was not welcome there.

Antoni snorted under his breath.

"Helka!" he called out to the entire corridor.

A few seconds later, a stout, sweaty woman, wrapped in a felt coat, emerged from around the corner. She trotted quickly, dragging a small, grimy boy with an even dirtier thumb in his mouth. Antoni moved towards his wife. Behind him, the office door opened, and the nurse called the next patient.

Helena stopped beside her husband, breathing heavily. Thin rivulets of sweat appeared on her red face.

"Here... Your hat... Take it..." she gasped to Antoni.

The man took the enormous fur hat and shoved it on his head. Then he put on a coat identical to the one Helena was wearing. He glanced around and, spotting an exit, started toward it. Behind him, his wife trotted like a shadow.

They stepped through the glass doors of the clinic, straight into the frosty air. Steaming clouds immediately formed at their lips.

"Maciuś! Piotruś! Natka!" Helena called loudly, raising another powerful cloud of steam. Three smiling children ran out from under the garbage can, their faces reddened by the frost. They clung to their mother's coat and all set off toward the horse-drawn wagon parked near the clinic.

The room slowly began to fill with warmth from the blazing kitchen. A woman was busy with dishes and preparing a meal. Antoni sat at the table, absentmindedly scratching his unshaven cheek.

"Helka, do you want to know what that doctor told me?" he asked suddenly.

"Of course I do. Tell me.

" "He said I was seriously ill..."

Helena stopped cooking and approached the table.

"What do you mean, ill? What are you ill with?" she asked, surprised.

Antoni folded his hands in his lap and sniffed.

"He said I had this... stress..." he replied, his voice trailing off on the last word.

"Oooooh..." Helena groaned and sank into a chair.

A silence fell over the room, broken only by the clock ticking on the dresser. Antoni nodded and examined his hands.

"What is this 'stress'?" the woman asked after a moment.

"Because I know..." the man shrugged.

"So he didn't tell you anything?

" "He did, of course!

" "And what?"

Antoni sighed heavily.

"This is serious, Helka... I'm telling you...

" "Yeah..." The woman stared at her husband with emotion.

"I could die from this..."

The woman covered her mouth with her hand, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, Holy Mother..."

Wiping her tearful eyes with a cloth, Helena left the table and returned to cooking. Every now and then, one of their children would run in from outside, run screaming across the room, then run outside again, leaving lumps of frozen snow on the floor. Antoni stared at one of them. He scratched his beard thoughtfully and watched the melting snow. The puddle, small at first, slowly grew and widened, taking away the crystalline form of the piece of ice.

"Everything passes..." he muttered to himself.

Late that evening, after the children had gone to bed, Helena approached Antoni, who was still sitting at the table, staring at the damp floor. She poured some milk into a mug and handed it to the man. He only shook his head. The woman shrugged and emptied the mug herself. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and quietly hiccupped.

"I'll go to the priest tomorrow," she announced curtly.

Antoni didn't reply.

"I'll ask him to pray for you."

The man remained silent. He only nodded and continued to stare thoughtfully at the wooden floor.

The next day, around noon, Antoni returned from the village headman's office. He brushed the snow off his coat in the hallway, hung it on a nail, and then entered the room. A steaming platter of porridge with cracklings was waiting for him on the table. The man sat down and rested his hands on the tabletop. He merely caressed the metal spoon that lay beside the porridge bowl.

"I talked to Będźwie, the village head," he said loudly.

"Uh-huh," Helena agreed from the kitchen.

Antoni sighed deeply.

"He spoke strangely... He kept moving away from me and looking around... As if he was afraid of something..." he continued thoughtfully.

"Did you go to the parish priest's?" he asked casually.

"Yes, I was. First thing in the morning," Helena replied.

"And what did he say? Did he say anything to you?

" "What was he supposed to say...

" "I don't know..." Antoni shrugged.

He patted the porridge in the bowl with a spoon and played with it, tossing it from one side of the bowl to the other.

"He said he'd pray for you," Helena replied.

Antoni nodded and began to eat. The woman sat across from him at the table and watched him intently.

"Antek..." she began after a moment.

"Well?"

- But this is probably not what young Grążel had, the one who walked arm in arm with other peasants and hugged them in the barns, is it?

At his wife's last word, Antoni choked on his groats. His face flushed and he gasped for air. The spoon he had dropped fell at his feet and rolled somewhere under the table. The man stood up abruptly, then leaned forward. He coughed violently, spitting out the rest of the food that had been blocking his windpipe. Dozens of small pellets of groats splattered all over the table. Helena's face was also covered in groats. The astonished woman was speechless for a moment. She sat in amazement, staring at Antoni. Finally free from the suffocating grains, he wiped his mouth and tearful eyes with his shirtsleeve.

"Where did you get that idea, woman?" he finally asked in an indignant voice.

"I talked to the priest about it this morning..." Helena replied, slowly wiping the groats Antoni had spat out from her face with her apron.

The man clutched his head and sat down heavily.

"Oh Jesus..." he moaned in a thin voice. "Christ! Oh Lord!

" "Antoś, what's wrong with you?" Helena was startled as she saw her husband's furious gaze rising.

"What have you done?" Antoni howled. "What have you done?"

The woman cowered and bowed her head.

"The whole village will be talking nonsense about me now!" he shouted menacingly.

Frightened Helena closed her eyes and began mumbling a bead under her breath.

"She went to the priest! Ask for prayers! Instead of staying at home!"

The man's chest rose and fell just as quickly. His wheezing breath pierced the stuffy air in the room.

"They'll point after me with their fingers! They'll call me some kind of pervert! What have you done, woman? Never again..." Antoni suddenly paled and, with a distant look, sank into the chair. He tensed all his muscles and began to tremble. He placed his right hand on his left shoulder and squeezed it hard. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his face contorted in a grimace of pain and surprise. His eyes clouded over, and a thin trickle of saliva seeped from the corner of his mouth. The man rocked back and forth, groaning and groaning every now and then.

Little Maciuś ran into the room. He stood next to his mother and tugged at the hem of her apron.

"Mom, what's wrong with Dad?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know, son," Helena replied just as quietly. "But I think your father has been hit by a stress attack