I was soon discharged from the hospital.

As a child, when I was 5 or 6 years old (late 70s - early 80s) I managed to get seriously ill with jaundice or, in other words, hepatitis A (Botkin's disease) and ended up in a hospital bed in the infectious disease department of the district hospital.

I remember the endless injections into my soft spot, which quickly ceased to be soft, the endless infusions of glucose through a drip in a vein and the intensive feeding of me with sweets. After three weeks of inpatient treatment, I was finally discharged home.

It is believed that once you have had jaundice, it is impossible to get sick again, but apparently not in my case: not even two weeks later, I was taken again, yellow from head to toe, to the district hospital. This time I remember my parents' anxious and worried conversations with the doctors, their suspicious glances in my direction, and my older brother, who had come with a bunch of sweet treats, asking me about something with a smile, but for some reason furtively wiping tears from his eyes. I remember that I didn't want to get out of bed. Not at all. I guess I didn't have the strength. This time my memory didn't retain any of the injections or drips, just the feeling that time had stopped. It was later, when I was already an adult, I learned from my parents that the question was about life and death.

In that long stretch of time, memory has preserved one very vivid event, which I want to tell you about.

Somehow fragments of phrases began to penetrate my hazy consciousness: ...a feather..., ...a yellow bird..., ...no one should... - it was my mother at the door of my room and a woman in a white robe discussing something in a half-whisper. And then my mother stayed with me for the night! This had never happened before. The next moment: my mother wakes me quietly, it's dark, but it's not night - you can see the lightening sky through the window, the rest of the ward asleep. Mom helps me get out of bed, asks me not to make noise and takes me to the door of my room, quietly opens it, and we are in a little nook between the door and the wall of my room. Then she helps me to undress, puts me facing the window, where the sun is still out, but it is clear that it is dawn. Then, leaning over me, she begins to whisper something melodic and rhythmic, and in her hand appears a small bright yellow feather! Without stopping to whisper, she first runs it down my left leg, from my toes to my shoulders, then down my back, and then repeats the same thing with my right leg. I can still feel the gentle feather touching my arms, my stomach, my chest, my back... The last thing I remember is the feather touching my eyes and my forehead, which sends waves of relief through my body and takes away the pressure from my head.

I was soon discharged from the hospital. This time I did not stay more than 10 days, and that only because it was the right thing to do, although there was no need to keep me in hospital for so many days.

I often remembered this scene from my life, but for some reason there was never a good opportunity to ask my mother what kind of pen it was, what she was whispering about, and in general, how did she know all this? Unfortunately, I can't ask my mother now-she's long gone where the birds of paradise delight her ears. And only recently I found out that it was a feather oriole - an amazingly beautiful bird with yellow plumage, which, although it lives in Russia, but people are rarely seen. Where my mother got the magic feather of this bird will forever remain a mystery to me, as well as the words of my mother's incantation.