II. A Holy Child
Jenny covered her eyes as I disrobed for more tests, but she would grow accustomed to my partial nudity as the days went on. The doctor gave me a pill to lower my temperature but it was of little use. As she and Jenny conferred about treatment options, I pulled myself back to the examining table. I couldn't sit upright any longer. We decided to call for an ambulance to take me to a hospital immediately. Meanwhile, I sweated all over the table, through my undershirt and black top.
Melodramatically I told Jenny that I wanted to finish Tolstoy's The Cossacks and that if this were my end, she would be in charge of telling countless women that I loved only them. I tried to explain to her the origin of this joke, from a Russian textbook I read when I was a student here before. A man goes into a store and asks for a card that says я люблю только тебя "I love only you." The shopkeep says that won't be a problem, and then the man says great, I'll take a dozen. A classmate and I found this hilarious and used to say "только тебя" to each other as a sign of affection for years after, until, of course, the inevitable. I was too delirious or Jenny was too uninterested for me to flesh out the whole story. Were I more out of it, after the injection the paramedic in the Union Jack sneakers gave me in the ass took hold, I'd have been muttering "только тебя...только тебя..." On the ambulance ride, but life is rarely so dramatic or comically absurd.
Life is funny, if you want it.
Julia said that we ought to think of this as an adventure, an idea I agreed to as a chemical cool washed over my brow while I lay backwards in an ambulance, rails holding me in, but not a belt in sight. The three of us in the back were all foreigners: me, American, and the girls ethnic Russians from Kazakhstan. Surely this kind of thing wasn't what they'd signed up when they came to St. Petersburg, but here they -- we -- were.
At the hospital, the first thing we noticed were the architectural curiosities. There was an intake room a few feet from the door where the ambulance stopped, stocked with a table, two examination tables, a couple of chairs. And there was a toilet. It was somewhat hidden behind a wall but was otherwise was only given privacy from a door leading into the hall -- if it was left open. The girls found that there was a shower in this nook, too. What?
As other sick men came into the room, the girls were sent out, though not before witnessing me going entirely pale upon receiving a quick blood test, which consisted of a very matter-of-fact nurse taking my finger, slicing it open, and leaving with a sample. "You don't like the sight of blood?" mused Jenny as I tried to stay upright.
I was called in to meet with a doctor after their exile, though. Through pantomime and some actual Russian communication, she got an idea of my condition. She spoke some English but didn't use it with me, which was strange.
I let the girls back inside and followed a nurse to an x-ray room. The tech there asked if I knew any Russian at all, which was curious considering that if I understood her question (which I did), the question was moot. These x-ray results were to be an important part of the next several days of my life. I don't recall perfectly how we got from there to the hospital bed, but we hiked across a small part of the medical campus -- I actually had no idea where in the city we were -- and entered a pink bathroom.
Paint was peeling, tiles were broken on the floor, and the tub , while lacking a curtain, did have a wooden board laid across one end. There was a toilet next to the tub, with a seat that appeared to be made from the remnants of a vessel that perhaps Peter the Great once piloted at sea. Across from the toilet, a sink, and just past that, a door to the room itself.
There was an empty bed by the window, I gathered that this was for me. Everything was dark now, though I don't think it was even that late. There were two beds in the room. On the other, the one closer to the refrigerator and hallway, sat a young boy. My inability to tell ages has yet to get me in much trouble, but I figured he was maybe 12-14. I learned later that he was 17. Still, I could tell upon first sight that I did not want to share close quarters with this kid.
He was very excited to have a roommate, especially one that spoke English. He began saying "Mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather -- it's funny English!" I vaguely recall hearing this from a song or a joke or something, but wasn't in the mood. He had a small tablet from which some Orthodox song was playing -- loudly. He explained to Julia all about it, and she pretended to be interested. I immediately requested a different room, but there was nothing available. The kid hopped around the room, talking to everyone about poems he was writing and other things. Jenny checked in with the boss: "He's in a room with...some disabled child..." she explained. I believe the proper term is “Holy Child” for the afflicted.
This was as good as we could manage, according to the hospital staff. The doctors here were experts in high temperatures and infections, so despite appearances. I was in a good place. The girls went to my flat to fetch some essentials: toothbrush, toothpaste, underwear, pajamas, etc. I was baffled that I wasn't given a gown to wear, as this was standard hospital practice for my whole life in the States; your civilian clothes were only worn upon exit. Not so here.
In the ambulance, as I felt more confident in my consciousness, I asked Julia if I'd get to ride in a wheelchair once I got to the hospital. She immediately dismissed this idea as absurd. She was right.
The room was really more like a dorm than what I was used to hospital rooms looking like. I slept on one set of sheets -- actual cotton sheets -- for my whole stay. A washing machine labored not too far away. I had one large feather pillow, also destined for reuse, stained yellow from sweat and oil, but covered in what I gathered was a clean pillowcase. The actual mattress was the kind you'd see in dorms: blue, plastic exterior, relatively firm but soft inside. There were actual, wool blankets in the room, too.
The routine I learned was pretty standard: rise at 7:30 for temperature and perhaps blood extraction, breakfast (bread, cheese, tea, porridge) at 9:00, followed by IV/antibiotic treatment around 10:00/10:30. At 2:00 lunch (bread, soup, beet salad, a cutlet and cabbage, usually) arrived with a warm fruity drink. We were left along until dinner at 6:00, which included bread, a piece of meat or fish and some pasta or soft grain. My mornings eventually included pills to take after breakfast, which I would wash down either with tea or juice.
The juice came from the outside.
Jenny visited me for the first couple of days, bringing snacks and other essentials for me. I was texting her that my companion in the room was intolerable: he would ask me inane questions and play his god music loudly, harassing staff and such. The hospital workers, though, almost all women, were sympathetic to him. Jenny explained to me that I should be patient -- the kid was an orphan. Russian orphanages are unpleasant, to say the least, environments to grow up in. Sure, but did he have to play the god music so loud?
It was interesting to see him write his poems, though, seated at a small table, without revision, for hours at a time. Was I in hospital with the next Pushkin? He would make grammatical errors, though, that staff, who he forced his work upon, would catch. At one point a woman corrected him, saying "I am Ukrainian and know Russian better than you!" I stifled a laugh as I tried to nap in a dark spot as the sun blazed inside the room. He actually gave me a copy of his poems, which I aim to read someday, dictionary in hand. I’m also now the owner of the Bible. In Russian. Didn’t see that coming, did you?
These were the days of hiding under headphones (also from the outside), watching The Larry Sanders Show and other amusements online. Thank god for generous data plans.
The Holy Child explained to me mostly in gestures that he was getting some procedure, possibly like a lobotomy, where something was done to his head through his nose. Maybe he'd already had it, who knows. His nostrils were often green, and not that many doctors seemed to check in on him during the five days we shared that room. His manic movements heated up the room, making it all the more uncomfortable for me. At one point he took to writing Harry Potter fan-fiction.
This was the most annoying part of his antics as he loudly told all passersby about "ALDUS" as if he were responsible for any of these characters. When I first arrived he repeatedly offered me dates. I ate a couple of them but am not much for sweets. He tried to force some other such nonsense on a visiting doctor, detaining her with his "novel" for several minutes. I found this a bit disturbing because she worked in the infectious diseases department. And she was my doctor.
Part III