Andrey Evgenevich Bykov

Andrei Evgenievich sat in his office at one o'clock in the morning. The hospital had already fallen into a rare silence, punctuated only by the distant footsteps of the nurses on duty and the beeping of the machines in the intensive care unit.
Bykov rubbed the bridge of his nose irritably and pulled another personal card from the stack. Today he'd gotten around to checking the documents for the new batch.
“Sokolova Alexandra...” he muttered under his breath, leafing through the filed pages.
Sasha had been working under him for a couple of weeks now. She turned out to have a strong character—she didn't cry when he yelled at her, like Varya, didn't act dumb, like Lobanov, and didn't try to get by with bragging, like Romanenko. Something about her tenacity, her stubbornness, and even the way she crossed her arms over her chest when she disagreed with him, always struck a chord with Bykov. Something so damn familiar, it made him feel a long-forgotten sense of déjà vu.
He turned the page—the original birth certificate, which the HR department had requested to issue the pass, and a copy of his first passport were filed there.
Bykov had already raised his pen to write his signature with a flourish when his gaze caught the line in the column “Surname at birth.”
Bykova Alexandra Andreevna.
The pen froze in midair. Andrei Evgenievich frowned and slowly brought the page closer to his eyes, as if checking to see if he was seeing things out of exhaustion.
Below, in the line “Mother”: Sokolova Irina Sergeevna.
In the line “Father”: Bykov Andrey Evgenievich.
Bykov froze. The air in the office suddenly seemed thick and heavy. A flash of 1999 flashed through his mind—noisy, crazy, and Ira... Ira, who had packed her things without explanation, simply writing a short note, and vanished from his life forever. He remembered searching for her. He remembered being angry. But it had never occurred to him... At that moment, the office door creaked softly. Sasha entered without knocking, holding a mug of hot coffee and the case report of the latest patient.
Bykov tore his eyes away from the documents. He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time: at the line of her jaw, at that piercing gaze.