Читать книгу Uninvented Stories of Invented People - Svetlana Isaenko - Страница 2

We first met after my internship graduation. It was decorated with colorful autumn leaves under the blue sky, with the blue being distinctive and deep, unlike over the rest of the city. And there it stood sullen and sad, scattered across a hectare of land. Shabby buildings of historical significance were holding on majestically if only not to fall apart. It was saturated with human suffering, condemnation and, moldering bit by bit, rested on the time- worn post-Soviet regimen and principles. The bars on the windows added more to its dramatic appearance. Each building’s perimeter included closed courtyards for patients to walk outside. Ordinary people were afraid to even pass by. Shrouded in myths, it inspired horror. Crossing its territory brought some sort of tension. I was scared by its inhabitants, wandering aimlessly around the area in their strange clothes, with empty eyes and faded faces. Inside, there was a different world, the world with dissimilar rules, but down there inhabited the truth, – the truth of human relationships, of the depth of thought and of the omnifaceted internal pain.

That was the way I first-ever met my dear nut house.

“Maria, welcome at your new place, we are looking forward to fruitful work,” said the woman with bouffant and tired eyes in the personnel department.

Thank you, I’m positive I won’t let you down.

I was introduced to the Head of Department. He was a tall lean man of about seventy with a very pleasant voice and kind eyes. He wore perfectly clean shoes, a well-pressed shirt and a suit out of fashion. He irradiated kindness and tranquility.

“Please, let me introduce myself,” he began in an academic manner, “Oleg Khamsin.”

“Very much pleased, Maria Clover. Nice to meet.”

“Now I will introduce you to the other staff members, but first let me ask you, why you chose to specialize in “psychiatrics” and are You ready to work? “I’ve been a “coterier "" since 19¹, here I am to the call of the heart and helping people is my life mission.”

A picture of how I first got to know that occupation as a third-year student at the Department of Psychiatry, Narcology and Medical Psychology flashed in my mind. It was love at first sight. We entered the psychiatric ward. All the classmates were scared, and it was so much interesting for me to understand, sort out and help, that I could in fact physically feel the mental pain of that woman afflicted with schizophrenia. The empathy went off the scale. For some students it was a show, while at the same time fear for the others, but for me it was a lifetime matter.

^{1 author’s note: a “coterier” is a medical slang for a student who, in addition to basic educational activities, goes into extra detailed studies as a member of coteries, dedicated to various medical fields.}

“Oh… an answer like this is credited. Since the occupation is very much complex, it is going to be tough now and then, both emotionally and physically, but I can see you are a clear of purpose, unafraid of difficulties young lady. I admire such kind of people. Just, please, don’t plan a maternity leave yet, work on and I am confident, you will become an outstanding professional.”

“I appreciate it, Oleg, and it is so nice of you that you give me this opportunity and your confidence in my abilities.”

“The chance is always there, dear lady, though the point is to knock at every single door! But, let us have a walk around the ward.”

The ward was designed for sixty beds. It was refurbished clean and cheap with huge old windows, wind-blown through every single slit, old prewar beds and bedside tables that, together with curtains and bedspreads were definitely taken from the 40-s. Yet plain and sincere people from the staff brought in their charm. Kind and friendly, they did their best willing to calm and ease the sufferings of mental malady patients.

I was introduced to the team – thirty people of personnel. Aides and nurses, they were pure and open-soul people. Their hands belonged to the soil, since almost all of them were from the province. Their simplicity and kindness, mixed with understanding and tenderness were very much endearing. There was a friendly but strict chief nurse and three more doctors: a mad genius Ivan – infinitely literate, intelligent and sincere, but somewhat socially detached, of around thirty; Anna, the same age as Ivan, – a girl with beautiful blue eyes, exquisite figure and red curly hair. She had a graceful posture and a perfect smile, with a very warm energy and zest for life, sparkling in her eyes. The third doctor was Eleonora. A woman of between fifty and eighty with a “bun”, combed over her head, she lowered her spectacles and gave me an appraising look from head to toe, then cutely pulled her face into a smile, meaning “why on Earth did they recruit these?”. She took out an empty box of chocolates, shook it in front of me and added:

“My dear, this is what you came here to work for, beware, make sure not to develop diabetes mellitus.”

Having returned her spectacles onto the snub nose, she indifferently continued her writings. The young doctors gave me a friendly wink providing a non-verbal “let loose,” Oleg affably touched my elbow.

“Well, young and promising professional, let’s go to your workplace,” and he took me to the table opposite to Eleonora, triumphantly handing over “the key to all doors.”

“Oh, woe to me” flashed through my head.

Actually, so it was: in the following years of our joint work, I learnt of all the news from Novoselskaya Street, house 97, new one hundred and nine methods of zucchini stuffing, all the lovers by name through the teenage years, youth, adolescence and “before climacterium”, all types of canned fruit and vegetable. I heard fascinating stories about Beria and Stalin and, certainly, about “good-for-nothing youths.” I heard about her husband’s malignant habits, his smoking on the balcony and his shuffling gait, about his walking stick that he would always loose. However, I patiently endured all the copulation attacks to my pure brain in exchange for the post-Soviet psychiatric school.

I started working in the Department of Borderline and Crisis States. At first, I was very uncertain, scared… you become really scared when human life depends on your decisions. Therefore, nights with medical manuals and guides had become a norm for me.

Oleg always supported me in moments of despair.

“Maria, darling, no one is born a master,” stated he winking encouragingly and raising his finger up.

The Department of Neurotic Disorders, or rather of “Borderline and Crisis States”, where I worked, was truly an amazing place. To some it was a shelter to endure the life storms and a hideaway to the others, it was a cure-all panacea to many, yet above, it was… hmm …hard to explain It’s like when a bird breaks a wing. It flies through its life, hurt and unable to gain altitude. It catches fair winds, picks up wrong routes, and all because of the broken wing. And then, it ends up in a place where the wings are repaired and sufferings relieved. There, it is being nourished and cherished, healed and given a new chance to take off. When the wing heals completely and the bird becomes stronger, it flaps away and you have a delight to watch this flight Those were my inner experiences about the patients in our department. We dealt with treatment of depressive, adaptational, anxious, histrionic (conversion), identity and many other sorts of disorders. I was infinitely happy to observe patients’ progress and recovery. I felt that many of them, having discharged from the department and having repaired their mental wings, were gaining flight altitude…

But not everything was colored pink. There are, certainly, many disadvantages in the psychiatric practice. Starting from danger of being entangled into delirium, threats to the doctor’s life while the patient is being agitated and so on. However, many psychiatrists of grand psychiatry steered clear of neuroses (minor psychiatry), since our patients love to “tire the heart out”.

They adore to come around and take a long time to talk about their sorrows, problems, worries, flaunting that “you are being paid by the state, aren’t you?” Histrionic disorders are of a distinct category. There, you could listen to one and the same round the clock, and six hours later receive a complaint handed in via Mr. Dollton’s secretary.

The aforementioned was our Physician-in-Chief. He was a clearly overweighed man of age with gray balding hair and a coarse tongue to everything and everyone.

Paul Dollton was secretly given a nickname of “Pablo” among the medical coalition, since Columbian cartels clearly lacked one of their soldiers. Everyone was afraid of him, did not respect, but merely feared. He could easily use obscene language at daily briefings and claim all the department chiefs to be moral morons, however, he kept the entire hospital in extreme severity and was not particularly distinguished by loving kindness to the patients. Pablo was the ASScobar.

After meeting with him Oleg always confined himself in his office for a long time. Don’t know if he cried there after that sort of communication, but the smell of sedative Corvalol and Zelenin Drops could be recognized clearly. My acquaintance with Asscobar took place precisely for identical reason.

My first patient had been suffering a histrionic disorder for many years. She asked me to call her Helga. I spent from five to six hours every day conversing with her, or rather, it was her who directed me, merely right away after breaking down the door and saying: “I feel bad, help me!”

Basically, her complaints were about body sensations, pains, aches, “tingles” and “prickles” along the entire edges of her viscera, weakness in lower limbs, “as if the ground is about to crumble out from under me”. She complained of dizziness and of a lump in the throat, about the husband and children, who would never understand and support her, about the country we lived in and reality TV shows, absence of car, poor view from the window, flush toilet, curtains and so on and so forth. Yet, should I have turned the conversation towards her and her personality, all those states passed without a trace.

She loved to bring in her photographs of “youth” and we spent long times looking at them. At such moments she felt alive, but then she thought back of the aliment and all the sensations recurred.

Her misfortune was that earlier she had been a successful dancer. Helga had a bunch full of lovers and rich boyfriends, and the whole world was at her feet. However, after lying-in she put on weight, stopped taking care of herself, began making scenes and faulted her husband and children with her “ruined life.” Shortly after, all the sensations joined in.

She got sick and turned to all the doctors. Everyone unanimously declared: “healthy,” and there she ended up in the Department. She equally disliked everything: the ward, the doctor, the catering or the personnel, or herself personally. However, should a handsome man be admitted to the Department, Helga revived and her condition “improved, in a way.”

When she got discharged, she filed grievances against everyone including the Physician-in-Chief, the Head of the Department, all the staff, yet “with an exception to Maria, since she’s still wet behind her ears.”

Such patients’ mission is to make the doctor feel worthless and, unfortunately, no remedy but life is capable to heel them. Although, Pablo thought differently and indicated his willingness to communicate it to me.

When I entered his office for the first time, my knees were literally shaking. I did not have the pleasure to meet him in person before, but had heard a lot of his “kind heart”. He set himself puffing a red Marlboro fag in a huge office of fancy furniture and an operating air conditioner – a luxury itself for us, doctors, since “save the state electricity” was Asscobar’s regular mantra. Huge hands and balding gel styled up gray hair, apparently, “after the fashion”, meticulously piercing gray eyes and a shirt, that did not converge on his stomach, all together added more of unpleasing charm to his already unflattering image.

“My, my, truth did they speak,” I thought.

“Good day, Mr. Dollton,” I began timidly. I heard my voice as if from a distance being treacherously atonal, my heart was leaping out of my chest and my head was spinning.

He was in no hurry to answer. Having scrutinized me acidly in detail and disdain, he then, broke into a smile, exposing his small tobacco-stained teeth:

“Well, hello, ma Cherie,” he hissed. “Not a perfect start to your career.

What are these complaints to everyone here?”

Having taken a sheet of paper by his thick hand, he threw it at me over the table.

“Are you willing ‘un réprimande’ from day one? Then I will arrange, ” pleased with his power and, having recognized something funny in his phrase, he burst out into a vile laugh. He continued through laughter:

“Will be an 'inefficiency' entry in the employment record from the first

month of employment. Once more again like this and I am gonna throw you away, like a useless dog, I am clear?”

“I apologize, I … No need to, I won’t do it anymore, honestly, I didn’t want to …” my tears traitorously ran and there I stood with my head down trying my best to maintain dignity and not to start weeping.

“Dismissed! Dumb nurse…” “Goodbye.”

I shot out of the office like a bullet. His secretary gave me a short scanning glance and continued typing something over the keyboard with her sleek purple nails and a grin on her face. Having got myself out into the street I burst into tears all the same. Annie was walking towards me by that time.

“Sweet Marie, what on Earth has happened?” she gave me a concerned look.

“Nothing at all,” I mumbled somehow trying to pull myself together. “You’ve been to Pablo, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” and there I wept aloud of the offence and injustice.

“Hey, stop, bosses are not elected and we all howl, but have no other. He has tight relations in the Ministry. So many smart doctors resigned because of this, don’t let it get you down! What is important, is that you do good for a noble cause, you save people. And take no offense at the patient or one may think, it is the mad house you are employed with?”

We burst out laughing through tears.

“I confess I got tangled after my today’s conversation with the chief. There was an impression of being captured by Gestapo while accomplishing an intelligence mission.”

“Yes, true, none of us admires to go onto the carpet. Everyone in the hospital takes benzodiazepines after talking to him, but don’t worry, we have a lot of good people, though don’t you trust anyone. They smile at you here, but you still be a prostitute, an alcoholic or a drug addict behind your back. Experts and good people are especially not appreciated. Intrigues, scandals, investigations… A special topic for a coffee break agenda in every department is 'who got laid with whom'.”

“Annie, why are people like that? Why isn’t it possible to live a sincere and heartful life, love what you do and enjoy it? Why?

“Sweet Marie, half of them are wounded themselves. It is you, who has

just come in. I’ve been working here for fifteen years. The nut house absorbs you. You see too much grief every day. You get used to it. A year goes by five, – by two according the law, but – five in fact. You live many lives or otherwise you are not a doctor. You are compelled to empathize and share, love people, and only then you are able to heal. All the rest is a fake. Fine, I got into philosophy. Shall we drink a coffee?”

“Let’s go,” and we walked along the dear nut house, having already realized that a bright pulse of true friendship had arisen between us.