The Lung Ward

I want to go back to the Jaw Surgery Ward. I've been transferred to the Lung Ward. The Lung Ward isn't very nice. Lots of people here are on those breathing machine things you see on telly. They're much less glamorous than they look. They constantly make a wizzing bubbling sound, and they make the whole ward feel humid and sticky like a greenhouse. You can't open any of the windows in the lung ward to take the edge off, because cold Siberian air is apparently bad for your lungs(?!).

When I arrived, I walked to the desk and gave them my 'Story'. In this hospital, the wad of documents explaining the various things that are wrong with you is called a 'Story'. I like that. It makes me think of a story on social media, which conjures images of people lying on hospital beds taking selfies and trying to do peace signs with broken arms. The nurse took my Story, glanced at it, and said 'room551putyourfoodinthefridgetoilet'sonyourright'. It was a contrast to the guided tour I got when I arrived in Jaw Surgery. There were occupied beds lining the corridor on the way to my room.

There are six people in my room. I know them all quite well now. Yakovlev, the guy on my right, didn't leave his bed for my first four days in the ward. Whenever he wants something, he'll grab his walking stick and point at the thing he wants, then wave it menacingly at one of us until we bring it to him. He likes to boast that he hasn't washed for twenty days, and you can tell. Recently, he's started leaving his bed to find the nurse and shout at her to change the water in his breathing machine, which he leaves wizzing and churning away day and night at the foot of my bedside table, even when he's not using it. The nurses are all enraged by him, and call him 'grandpa', and he calls them 'bitch' in return. Even now that he's up and about, he doesn't go to the toilet, preferring to wee in a bottle which he keeps on his bedside table without a lid on. The guy in the bed on my left is called 'Kalashnikov', which I think suits him amazingly. He generally keeps himself to himself, shooting people the occasional toxic glance instead. When he does decide to speak, he speaks exclusively in swearwords. They normally aren't directed at anyone in particular, just a little expression of general bitterness. Every night before going to sleep, he'll utter a soft but spiteful 'blyat nakhuy' under his breath.

The first thing I noticed when I went to put my food in the fridge was that there were three pots of smetana in there. It turns out that several of my ward mates take pleasure from just eating the stuff by the spoonful fresh from the pot, which I found strange until I'd been here for five days…

The food isn't very varied. The majority of meals are porridge. Sometimes there'll be a side of cheese or a boiled egg. On good days you might get fish soup, although the bones are left in the fish, which makes eating it a challenge. Yesterday they told me that there were two courses for lunch and I got excited. 'Yup, said the cook. The first course is porridge, and the second course is the first course.' She laughed. I didn't. They leave salt out in pots on the canteen tables, and some people insist on salting their porridge, which I've decided is because they're just desperate to taste something new.

Trust me it's amazing with a bit of salt

People here generally keep themselves to themselves. It's not a very jolly place. One woman said a cheery 'good morning' to the cook at breakfast today, and the cook replied 'if you say so'. I was pleasantly surprised when a young guy in the corridor outside my ward started talking to me in the queue for dinner. 'You heard of Chita?' 

'Yeah I have… Chita. Isn't that the place where that soldier killed a load of his colleagues?' 

'Yeah that's the one!' he was obviously excited that I knew it. 'I'm from there!'

There's one guy in my room who looks like the archetypal Soviet protagonist from some 70s film. He has a shiny bald spot and a big black and grey pointy beard, a prominent brow, a permanently thoughtful expression, a silky bass voice, and always wears a blue and white stripey baggy shirt like a sailor's uniform and Adidas shorts. He also listens to old Russian ballads on the radio late into the night, which doesn't detract from the Soviet vibe he's got going there. His slippers have the Soviet hammer and sickle on them and say 'Russians never surrender'. He gives our ward a more laid-back feel, which I appreciate.

The medical staff all see me as rather exotic, I think. None of them can pronounce my name. A new nurse began her shift two days ago and called me to the 'Drip Room'.

'What brings you here then, Mr Narm… Norma.. Nornon?' She asked as I sat down in one of the armchairs. 'Tourism?'

'Yeah just wanted to have the full Krasnoyarsk experience.' I replied.

She chuckled darkly.

'I'd say BSMP is one landmark you really ought to skip.' She said, flashing me an ominous grin. BSMP is the name of the hospital. Actually, that's a lie. The hospital is called 'KGBUZ KMKBSMP NSK Arpovich Memorial Hospital'. Catchy right? Can't think why they feel the need to abbreviate it to BSMP.

In the Lung Ward, instead of them bringing the drip to your bed, you need to go to the 'Drip Room'. Now this is where the Lung Ward gets seriously dystopian. The Drip Room has two rows of La-Z-Boy style armchairs facing each other, like in a hair salon. The nurse calls you to the room in groups of 6, and you sit there with your drip in front of your chair as she comes round 'plugging you in' one by one. Of course, if this were a hair salon, the customers might be talking to each other. But here everyone just stares at the parking lot out the window with glassy eyes, or else they look up at their drips draining excruciatingly slowly like creepy egg timers.

But the lung ward isn't all bad. I have lots of time, so I'm reading The Idiot in Russian, a big dusty soviet tome which Masha's grandparents gave me when I left Abakan. I'm also re-visiting my First Year Russian textbook which is ABSOLUTE trash. I've got no idea what my uni was thinking when they picked it as the official course companion. I can only imagine they were trying to ensure that everyone experienced the agony which learning such a complicated language ought to entail, just in case anyone was hoping to have an easy time of it. I mean really, the textbook gives you such absorbing texts as business cards and real estate listings to sample immediately after you've learned the alphabet. Like helloo where's the pets and family and shiz? It's as if someone had taken an ordinary school textbook and gone 'this isn't middle aged enough! Plus it's far too clear.' 

Anyway I got sidetracked there… I was trying to be positive. Me and the rest of the people on the ward know each other fairly well by now. Not by name, of course. They call me 'the American'. I've pointed out the obvious flaw in this nickname many, many times, but it appears to have stuck nonetheless. Two of them have managed to procure salo somehow, and they shared it with me at dinner this evening. They also gave me 'razboyniki'. Razboyniki means bandits, and I didn't really know what to expect when I was offered them. Turns out they're a food, of sorts. They looked like slugs and tasted like vinegar. But whatever they were, I was grateful for the change from this evening's dinner option… you guessed it - porridge.

But the thing which makes my Siberian hospital experience bearable more than anything else is the visits from friends. Every day someone comes to cheer me up. Katya brought me dried mango from Thailand and a book full of pictures of bears (the most Siberian get-well-soon gift imaginable), Lena drew me a beautiful picture of a cat who now sits on my bedside table and cheers me on, and, perhaps best of all, Kirill and Masha brought me a shawarma. They were rather apologetic about it. 'Sorry, we asked for mega but the woman at the till misheard us… it's only mini.'