They spent the first few days in Moscow with a friend who was arranging for Pavel to enter a special clinic.
Only now did Pavel realise how much easier it had been to be brave when he had his youth and a strong body. Now that life held him in its iron grip to hold out was a matter of honour.

It was a year and a half since Pavel Korchagin had come to Moscow. Eighteen months of indescribable anguish.
In the eye clinic Professor Averbach had told Pavel quite frankly that there was no hope of recovering his sight. Some time in the future, when the inflammation disappeared it might be possible to operate on the pupils. In the meantime he advised an operation to halt the inflammatory process.
Pavel gave his consent; he told his doctors to do everything they thought necessary.
Three times he felt the touch of Death's bony fingers as he lay for hours at a time on the operating table with lancets probing his throat to remove the parathyroid gland. But he clung tenaciously to life and, after long hours of anguished suspense, Taya would find him deathly pale but alive and as calm and gentle as always.
"Don't worry, little girl, it's not so easy to kill me. I'll go on living and kicking up a fuss if only to upset the calculations of the learned doctors. They are right in everything they say about my health, but they are gravely mistaken when they try to write me off as totally unfit for work. I'll show them yet."
Pavel was determined to resume his place in the ranks of the builders of the new life. He knew now what he had to do.

Winter was over, spring had burst through the open windows, and Pavel, having survived another operation, resolved that, weak as he was, he would remain in hospital no longer. To live so many months in the midst of human suffering, to have to listen to the groans of the incurably sick was far harder for him than to endure his own anguish.
And so when another operation was proposed, he refused.
"No," he said firmly. "I've had enough. I have shed enough blood for science. I have other uses for what is left."
That day Pavel wrote a letter to the Central Committee, explaining that since it was now useless for him to continue his wanderings in search of medical treatment, he wished to remain in Moscow where his wife was now working. It was the first time he had turned to the Party for help.
His request was granted and the Moscow Soviet gave him living quarters. Pavel left the hospital with the fervent hope that he might never return.
The modest room in a quiet side lane off Kropotkinskaya Street seemed to him the height of luxury. And often, waking at night, Pavel would find it hard to believe that hospital was indeed a thing of the past for him now.
Taya was a full-fledged Party member by now. She was an excellent worker, and in spite of the tragedy of her personal life, she did not lag behind the best shock workers at the factory. Her fellow workers soon showed their respect for this quiet, unassuming young woman by electing her a member of the factory trade-union committee. Pride for his wife, who was proving to be a true Bolshevik, made Pavel's sufferings easier to bear.

Bazhanova came to Moscow on business and paid him a visit. They had a long talk. Pavel grew animated as he told her of his plans to return in the near future to the fighting ranks.
Bazhanova noticed the wisp of silver on Pavel's temples and she said softly:
"I see that you have gone through a great deal. Yet you have lost none of your enthusiasm. Andthat is the main thing. I am glad that you have decided to begin the work for which you have beenpreparing these past five years. But how do you intend to go about it?"

Pavel smiled confidently.
"Tomorrow my friends are bringing me a sort of cardboard stencil, which will enable me to write without getting the lines mixed up. I couldn't write without it. I hit upon the idea after much thought. You see, the stiff edges of the cardboard will keep my pencil from straying off the straight line. Of course, it is very hard to write without seeing what you are writing, but it is not impossible. I have tried it and I know. It took me some time to get the knack of it, but now I have learned to write more slowly, taking pains with every letter and the result is quite satisfactory."
And so Pavel began to work.
He had conceived the idea of writing a novel about the heroic Kotovsky Division. The title came of itself: Born of the Storm.
His whole life was now geared to the writing of his book. Slowly, line by line, the pages emerged.
He worked oblivious to his surroundings, wholly immersed in the world of images, and for the first time he suffered the throes of creation, knew the bitterness the artist feels when vivid, unforgettable scenes so tangibly perceptible turn pallid and lifeless on paper.
He had to remember everything he wrote, word by word. The slightest interruption caused him to lose the thread of his thoughts and retarded his work.
Sometimes he had to recite aloud whole pages and even chapters from memory, and there were moments when his mother feared that he was losing his mind. She did not dare approach him while he worked, but as she picked up the sheets that had fallen on the floor she would say timidly:
"I do wish you would do something else, Pavlusha. It can't be good for you to keep writing all the time like this. ..."
He would laugh heartily at her fears and assure the old lady that she need not worry, he hadn't "gone crazy yet".
Three chapters of the book were finished. Pavel sent them to Odessa to his old fighting comrades from the Kotovsky Division for their opinion, and before long he received a letter praising his ............