From Russia with Love

24.02.2020

Wow. This irony is scrumptious. I'm guessing I won't publish this on the blog unless my thirst for fame exceeds all sense of discretion and self-respect.

25.02.2020
I decided to publish it. If you think that turning medical emergencies into a self-pitying sensationalist blog article is distasteful and bordering on offensive, I don't care. They put a needle in my bottom.

Siberia is full of surprises. And polluted air. My latest surprise coincided dramatically with a goodbye party. 

I'd lured a bunch of friends over with the promise of homemade pizza. The actual pizza-making process didn't start until forty minutes before the friends were due to start arriving. Those of you who have made pizza before will know that it takes more than forty minutes to make it from scratch. But I didn't let the pressure get to me, because I wanted it to be a relaxed kind of party, and an uptight flustered Theo doesn't make for a good relaxed party-host.

I took the optimistic approach to party organising, and invited more people than there was space for in the flat. I assumed everyone wouldn't turn up, and that some providential scheme would finish off the organising that I couldn't be bothered to do, and land me with the perfect number of guests. In this regard, the providential scheme really didn't pull its weight. Other than Danil, every single person who I invited came to my party. There was not enough pizza, not enough chairs, and not enough space. We ended up with one half of the guests (who already knew each other fairly well) in the kitchen, and the second half (who also knew each other, but didn't know the people in the kitchen) in the main bedroom, sitting on the bed. I was whizzing between them transferring food and drink. At one point I found myself alternating between playing rounds of 'guess who?' in one room and trying to wrestle my phone back off 'small but powerful' Masha, who had used face unlock to find all the pictures of me when I had facial hair and was showing them to everyone who would look in fits of hysterics.

I was overwhelmed by how kind everyone was. Lena gave me a watercolor painting of me stuck in the snow, Zuzana brought a Slovak chocolate and banana snack which she'd made herself, Yulia brought a badge which said 'Siberia' and had a picture of a bear on it. I caught myself feeling that I just didn't want to leave. The atmosphere was a bit restrained at first, but everyone loosened up as they got to know each other better. I always feel happy when I'm surrounded by friends, but it turns out that it was particularly important having them there on that evening.

At about midnight, the pain in my chest which had been creeping up on me for two days started making it difficult to breathe. In spite of my best efforts to hide the discomfort, my friends noticed pretty quickly that I wasn't in peak form, because I was lying on my bed groaning (also not the behaviour of a relaxed party-host fyi). I protested strongly at the idea of calling an ambulance, but nobody was convinced by my objections, and Max called one anyway.

I just couldn't believe how exquisitely disastrous the timing was. I'd been in Siberia for six months now, but it was in the final hour of a really fun goodbye party with all my friends (probably the last time I would see most of them before I left on Wednesday morning) that this had to happen. It was like the most dramatic 'bye now' ever. My friends made it even more dramatic by coming in one by one to say goodbye to me, as if I were on my death bed.

Max asked if I wanted to watch a film in the hour it was going to take the ambulance to arrive. I opted for Hot Fuzz because it's awesome duh.

The ambulance lady was the one who decided it was a good idea to stick a needle in my bottom. 'You scared of needles?' she asked, thoughtfully. 'Yes, it's logical.' I replied, glad that she'd asked. 'Alright then', she said, then stabbed me in the bum cheek with just a bit too much zeal for me to be convinced of her sympathy.

I have this idea that ambulances should look like space ships on the inside, so I was a bit miffed that this one just had three seats, a stretcher, and a boarded-up sink inside it. It also didn't have any windows, so I was seriously discombobulated when we just stopped and tah-dah you're inside a hospital somewhere.

But there was no doubt as to what country the hospital was in...

'Passport' was the first thing the very stern lady at reception said to me, as I gasped for air like Trump on a marathon. She examined my passport with a look of distaste and then looked back up at me with a questioning but still sufficiently unfriendly visage. 'what country are you from?'

Now I wasn't all that comfortable at this point, as you've probably gathered, but I still found enough calm and oxygen to marvel at her incompetence.

'ah fair question.' I jested. 'You see on the front of the passport I just handed you? It's actually written there! Yeah that's right, in big shiny gold letters.'

I maintain to this day that I was hospitalised by the look that lady slung at me in reply, not by my lungs. 'I'm from Britain', I said hurriedly, taking a swift step back and trying to make myself look as small as possible. 

'Britain?' She asked sceptically, as if I'd said 'The Federated States of Micronesia'.

'Yes. Britain.'

'Britain…' she mouthed to herself suspiciously, still unconvinced.

'Britain!' I said cheerfully, assuming we were playing a game of say whatever the other person just said like I used to do to wind people up in the playground aged eight.

She scrolled through her list of nationalities and, without even looking up at me, snapped 'British Indian Ocean Territory?'

I laughed.

She looked up at me without the slightest hint of amusement.

'No. Just Britain.'

We found Britain in the end. It took a few minutes, but it was well worth it for the receptionist's education. Then began the string of very brusque assesments. There was an admirably short waiting time for most of them. I thought maybe that was because it was 3am on a Monday morning, but then I remembered that people don't normally plan their accidents and emergencies that far in advance (even in Russia), so that probably wasn't it.

First there was a really rude woman. She'd talk at me at lightning speed and then roll her eyes at me every time I didn't understand her. When Max (who'd come with me in the ambulance) also didn't understand her, she rolled her eyes at him too. 

After a couple of questions, she barked 'take your clothes off.'

'Which clothes?'

She rolled her eyes. 

'Your shirt off course'.

The woman in the next room cut to the chase. No 'hello', no introduction, not even a 'come in', she just snarled 'take your clothes off.'

I didn't even ask this time. Just took off the hoodie and shirt and went to sit on the bed. 

'AND YOUR BOOTS TOO MY GOD WHAT ARE WE ANIMALS?' She stuck some things to me. No clue what it achieved and too traumatised to ask. I went to the next room.

Another freakin' needle. This woman hardly said a thing. Just whipped out a massive-ass syringe, looped a piece of fabric around my upper arm, and stuck the needle into my sorry forearm. Not as painful, surprisingly, because I later learned that they were taking a blood sample, which I always imagine as being super ouchie.

Waiting for the x-ray, Max and I spotted a small cargo trolley and a shopping trolley(?!) at the end of the corridor. We looked at each other with raised eyebrows and then made a dash for it. But this clearly wasn't the fun kind of hospital, because some spoil-sports had locked them up against a radiator (booo get a life).

Angery reaccs only

X-Ray woman was a total babushka. Old and hobbling, with a wrinkly face but a definite mischievous glint in her eyes. She talked at me for a few seconds while arranging the machine. It was a proper Soviet-looking contraption which you put a black plate into and stand up against. The image comes up on the black plate after they do some clever magic stuff with it like a giant piece of film from one of those old cameras.

Then we just waited… for an hour and a bit.

A guy with a mashed up face and bleeding fingers hobbled over at one point and said 'give me your phone? Wanna make a call.' Max offered up his phone, but the guy took  it, winced, and handed it back. 'Could you type the number for me? It's just my hands are a bit…' he glanced down at his dripping, scarlet fingers. Max took his phone back. 'Yeah fair enough'.

At 6a.m., someone told me I definitely had pneumonia. I couldn't fly with it, so I'd have to cancel my flights on Wednesday and stay in hospital for ten days. At this point I just wanted a bed more than anything else, so I went up to the lungs department on the fifth floor and threw myself into the free bed that the nurse pointed to. The lungs department reeked of cigarette smoke. The nurse came back a moment later.

'Change of plan, you're going to the jaw surgery ward on the eight floor.'

'Jaw surgery? For pneumonia?'

That's right, there's no space for you here.' She said, re-arranging the covers on my now unoccupied and patently free bed.

The jaw surgery ward was on the eighth floor. Before they let me sleep, I was examined by a doctor one last time, and then they stuck an IV drip into me and I fell asleep.

Max was a hero. Not only did he stay with me all night, he also tolerated my incessant demands to take selfies

Looking pretty hot for a pneumoniac in Siberia amirite?

I like the hospital, but it's not exactly high-tech. The sample jar for my mucus is just a jam jar that's been rinsed out. The sterilising wipes they use are hand wipes from a local fast food chain. There's also no toilet paper. It's a bring your own loo roll kinda hospital. Like a bring your own bottle party, but messier. There's also no toilet seat.

The ward looks positively Soviet. The mug, spoon, and bowl that you get at your first meal in the ward are a random assortment of sizes, colours, and patterns. My bowl has red and pink roses painted onto it. My mug has got a single violet flower. I like to imagine that someone with an aesthetic eye carefully picks bowls and mugs that complement each other, but I kinda doubt it. I can't help but feel it's a bit prison-like as I walk with the other ward-members, also clutching their bowls, spoons, and mugs, to the hole in the wall where a cheery babushka ladles out porridge for everyone.

A while later

Just found out the hospital has a one-star rating on the maps app I use. Excellent news. It's not bad though. I like the staff, and I'm sure I'll miss their Siberian sternness when I'm back in the gushy West. Plus I get maximum interest points from everyone on the ward because I'm foreign, and maximum sympathy points because I'm the youngest guy in the ward. One man has even started trying to encourage me to eat more, even though I always eat considerably more than him anyway. He'll finish his portion of soup that's the exact same size as mine and then start tutting and go 'there's some bread on the side there, at least have some more bread, will you?'

The three guys I'm sharing a room with aren't your average jaw surgery types. I mean they are in that they've got bandages wrapped around their heads, but they aren't in that they seem kind of gentle and nerdy. You'd expect people in jaw surgery to be there because they've got into a fight with a Siberian just a bit bigger, angrier, and drunker than them, but these guys buck the trend. We talk about Brexit, volunteering, and how appallingly lung-clenchingly shit it is that the authorities haven't moved or closed the local factories that are keeping Krasnoyarsk in a medal-winning position in the ranking of world's most polluted cities. After we've chatted for a bit and introduced ourselves fully, Sergey, who's in the opposite corner from me, puts some grapes and oranges on my bedside table. 'Eat. You need to get better.'