It wasn’t until later that night that she began to feel sick: her throat was raw, and she developed a blinding headache; her feet and ankles burned and itched. She made no conscious connection to radiation, partly because she knew nothing about the effects of the radioactive alpha and beta particles in the dust that had blown around her bare legs during her hours on the railway bridge, but also because she preferred not to think about it. When the diarrhea began, Protsenko told herself she had eaten some bad cucumbers; the headaches and the sore throat—well, she had gone without sleep for two
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