In Progress: Chornobyl, 1986

In April 1986, a young firefighter named V— drives out to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. He finds one building of the plant destroyed, in ruins known by none to be highly radioactive. He quickly becomes ill, the first onset of the symptoms of acute radiation sickness. In dire condition, he is flown to a secure military hospital in Moscow. His father, Doctor A—, follows.

Twenty years before, Doctor A—’s wife, S—, fled their home in a village near the power plant, leaving behind V—, then two years old. Two weeks after that, she was dead. Though recorded officially as an overdose, doubts remained eternally in the mind of Doctor A—. A meeting with a policeman, there on that night, begins to reveal to him the truth of that fatal night.

Two, three a.m., the road empty that late. The car speeding along the uninhabited roadway, Chornobyl the town behind him. He drove fast, following instinctively the passage, the curves blurred by speed, of the road which guided him. His eyes on the cloud. Vast and in a terrible way spreading, it seemed to him, with every kilometre he drew closer, until it went from a widening crevasse in the immensity of sky around it to all which could be seen. A new and darker firmament.

Seeing now the emergency services, the ambulances and fire trucks, lights flashing but sirens off. A mute cortege. The private cars like his own, driving with such force, such intent towards the scene of what his heart told him was a great disaster. His mind on the fire trucks, their crews, one man amongst those uncountable many who, like himself, tore towards the power plant. One man. His son.

Prypiat the city ahead, the cars not heading there. All of them leaving the roadway for the monolithic towers and ventilation stacks of the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant on the bank of the Prypiat river. The exterior gates wide open. Signs unreadable at night. Something in him drawing the car over to where several others were parked just outside the perimeter, some instinct of self-preservation inculcated in him from his years of Soviet life, which said ‘this will be safer here than closer to the scene.’ Skidding to a halt, engine off, out into the open air. Deep breath. No panic allayed. Metal and the smell of burning.

He began to run.