by Val M Karren
“Can you show me the injuries please?” she asked in a clinical way.
I pointed like an idiot to my upper left arm above my elbow, under my shirt without saying anything.
“Will you please remove your shirt so I can see what it looks like?” she said again as a matter of routine.
I unbuttoned my shirt and while trying to take my left arm out of the sleeve the nurse noticed the wincing and the slow stretch backward. I showed her the unwrapped gash from twenty-four hours earlier. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was undressed after my shower and was deeply bruised.
“Are you sure you fell?” she looked at me with doubt in her eyes.
“I was mugged,” I reluctantly admitted with a bit of shame in my voice.
“Did they hit you with a metal baton?” she asked specifically looking at the shape of the bruising.
“Yes, I think so,” I admitted again with a whisper. “Hit me twice and or three times with it, and then kicked me a few times. I don’t know how many times.”
“Will you please show me your ribs? Are they as bad as your arm?" she ventured.
“Yes, very bad.” I lifted up my tee-shirt to expose the bruises. She winced but looked carefully.
“I see that you were hit at least twice in the ribs with that baton. So, I would count three hits in total. Did he hit you anyplace else?” She lifted the back of the shirt up to see a bruise but not as dramatic as the others. “That looks to be a bit different, less severe.”
The nurse wrapped my torso tight with broad bandages to support the ribs and treated the gash with iodine that made my eyes water!
“Can’t you all find something other than iodine in this modern age?” I squealed as she dabbed into the wound to disinfect it. My lower arm was streaked brown.
“I”m sorry, can you say that again? I don’t speak English,” she replied to my outburst.
“All is normal. It just hurt, that’s all,” I replied through my clenched teeth.
“I will give you some tablets for the pain. But you should rest for the next three days. No more running for buses!” she commented sarcastically.
“No more buses…,” I repeated with a bit of relief in my voice.
“Did they steal something important from you?” she asked with sympathy as she wrapped the wound with clean bandages.
“Yes, but it wasn’t mine to keep. So, I don’t have to worry about getting it back. I just made them very angry that I had it,” I commented.
“Oh, so they knew you had it and wanted it returned?” she asked further.
“Well, it was never theirs to begin with, but they didn’t want me to have it,” I confirmed.
“And how did they know you had it?" she was a bit confused.
“It’s a long story. Maybe I could tell you another time,” and I stood up and put my shirt back on.
“Sure. Another time then.” And with that she handed me a box of pain killers and held up two fingers, tapped her wrist watch and held up four fingers.
“Two, every four hours,” I confirmed my understanding.
She nodded yes and motioned for me to back up toward the cabin door with her sweet dark hazel almond shaped eyes and perfectly arched eye brows. I extended my right hand to thank her for her care. As she took my hand to shake it I felt her pale soft slender fingers in mine and a zing of electricity up my neck.
“And your name is?” I left the question hanging.
“Lara. My name is Lara,” she affirmed and opened the door and waved me out with a smile.
Being on board the Zhukov again was like being on a different planet. The news of the outside world didn’t reach the cabins and decks of the ship. The days spent on board were a blissful journey over a plane of ignorance. Only when one was able to turn on a television in a hotel suite was there a connection to the outside world. The world could go to war and for six and half days those on the Volga could sail on, not knowing who had been shot or bombed. I kept a low profile for my first evening on board not wanting to get into too many involved conversations. I felt still that I would be safer if I could keep my misadventures to myself. No need to raise suspicions and questions where they didn’t already exist. It was for me the perfect place to hide for a week until I could formulate a new plan for getting to Moscow and on board a departing air plane.
I sat with Nikolai in a corner of the dining room gingerly spooning a delicious borscht into my mouth with my right hand while holding a chunk of black bread in my left hand. Nikolai sat across the table from me drinking a steaming cup of coffee after his dinner. We were speaking in low voices when the ship’s nurse, Lara, took a seat across the table next to Nikolai and looked me up and down.
“I am happy to see you have an appetite. That means you are resting well,” Lara said with a serious face.
“Yes, thank you. The tablets,” I held up two fingers, followed by four fingers, “have helped me very much. Thank you for your care.” I smiled as charmingly as possible.
“So, Kolya here told me that you have been to Kazan before….?” she insinuated.
“Oh, Kolya has been telling you stories has he?” I glared at Nikolai with accusative eyes. He just shrugged back at me and sipped his coffee casually.
“He says that you seem to have a habit of getting very injured. Should we be watching out for you with extra care to make sure you don’t fall again?” Lara was poking a bit of fun and her eyes told me she was enjoying it.
“So, what exactly did Kolya-cuddly-bear here tell you about what happened last year?” I said in a mocking voice directed at my good friend who still showed no embarrassment or discomfort as he sat relaxed in his dining chair, “because I never fell down.”
“What he told me was that you were taken away in an ambulance one morning in Kazan and that you weren’t quite the same after that,” she said in a curious but serious manner.
I had resumed eating my soup and bread and was chewing a bite when she mentioned the medics in Kazan. I stopped chewing and looked at Nikolai again with an annoyed look. I swallowed my bite and put my spoon down on the saucer under the bowl and folded my hands, resting my forearms and elbows flat on the edge of the table and leaned into the table a bit.
“Yes, it's true. I was taken to the hospital in Kazan due to complications from a head injury,” I stated officially. Lara gasped and sat up a bit straighter in her chair.
“That must have been horrible!” she peeped.
“Which part? The head injury, the hospital or the fact that it all happened in Kazan?” I asked with some impertinence in my questioning.
“What happened?” Lara asked again.
I told her the harrowing story as the dining room slowly emptied of passengers
“On the second night of a ten-day voyage to Volgograd, much like this one, I hit my head on the staircase on the low overhang that leads up to the auditorium where they hold concerts and lectures.”
Lara nodded, “Yes I know it.”
I continued. “I didn’t lose consciousness, and luckily I did NOT fall down the stairs after I hit my head. In fact, I was carrying a large speaker in my arms for that night’s entertainment and was still able to finish climbing to the top and set it down. About fifteen minutes later I was a bit sleepy and dizzy and went to lay down in my cabin and I guess I slept the whole night.”
“That is so dangerous!” Lara declared knowing from her training the signs of a concussion.
“The next morning, I felt like I had a sack of rice or flour on my head. It felt like it would push my neck down. I couldn’t wake up and I couldn’t remember clearly what had happened. It was rather scary not to be able to remember. So, I asked somebody to ask the ship’s nurse to come to my cabin and she was immediately very worried. She scolded me for not having called her the night before. She said I had a huge welt on the top of my head, larger than she was comfortable to treat and she told me I should be in the hospital for observation for a few days.” I continued.
“How horrible!”
Lara remarked again, but very eager for me to continue.
“As it turned out every time I would fall asleep, and I guess with a bad concussion it’s hard to even stay awake, that I couldn’t remember anything that happened thirty or forty-five minutes before I fell asleep. As the boat was always sailing down river, each morning I would have to work to help myself remember things.” I paused for a dramatic effect. “Many mornings I would find hand written notes to myself reminding me of where I had been when I went to sleep and where the boat should be when I woke up. The notes would help remember where I was and what was happening, but I could never remember writing the notes the next morning.”
“This was a very serious injury!” Lara covered her mouth with her hands in fright.
“Yes, we had figured that point out, but the thought of spending two weeks alone in a Russian hospital without my short-term memory frightened me more than anything else. I insisted that there was nothing more that the doctors of a hospital could do for me than what the ship’s doctor was already doing. The doctor was very nervous and checked on me every few hours to make sure that I was still lucid. She told me that any digression would men that she would have me removed by Captain’s orders and hospitalised.” I looked to Nikolai for corroboration.
“One hundred percent right! Why were you so stubborn? You were in real danger!” Lara seemed more worried a year later than the treating doctor at the time.
“So, by the time we reached Nizhniy Novgorod I had begun feeling much better and the doctor had said that the bruising on the top of my head looked better and the swelling had decreased.” I rubbed the top of my head for effect, “She allowed me to leave the boat for fresh air and thought that being on shore would help me get my sense of equilibrium back. I spent that afternoon strolling the riverfront at Nizhniy Novgorod. The afternoon onshore had improved my mood and my stamina and as the doctor had thought it might. We decided that I could return to work after another day or two when we reached Kazan. So when we arrived in Kazan I went ashore in the early morning to shake hands with the local guides and drivers that were already waiting for us at the docks. While I was discussing schedules and procedures with the drivers I began to get real dizzy and felt my left knee buckle. My right leg began to tremble too. One of the bus drivers reached out and caught me and helped me to sit down on the pier before I collapsed,” I felt out of breath telling so her so much.
“If you had hit your head again the results could have been fatal! It sounds like you were still very unstable.” Lara’s eyes were as large as saucers as she listened and diagnosed my condition. I went on trying to generate a sympathy effect from her, “The ship’s doctor insisted that I go to the hospital to be looked at by specialists. I was petrified to go alone! We agreed that one of our ship’s tour guides would accompany me to the hospital, to be there is case things got worse with me, but she didn’t want to go with me because of it being Kazan and all. She was afraid that the Mongols were still there ravishing all the blond Russian women in town or something. She was just as nervous as I was.”
“I would be nervous too!” Lara declared.
“Well, I can say that I have never met a more hospitable group than the Tatars. I think that Russians are just prejudiced against them. I found them to be very professional. The medic that came with the ambulance, Vasily, was definitely a Tatar. He was very confident in his job and helped me calm down. He asked questions like he already knew the answers. He was good. He knew what he was doing and he did it well. My blood pressure was erratic and my heart was racing. I did not have a temperature but I was noticeably sweating, even though my face was faint and pail. My legs were numb and I could not walk on my own power. Vasiliy spared me the humiliation of being carried off of the boat on a stretcher with all the the tourists watching from the shore. They more or less carried me standing upright down the gangplank with a medic under each arm. I just tried to look like I was waking,” I said giving Lara sad eyes.
“They took me to the Kazan regional hospital and they reassured us, Valya and I, that I would be in good hands, as it was the newest and most modern of hospitals in the province, but when we arrived I had to climb out of the ambulance and hop down from the bumper and then walk down a flight of stairs to reach the trauma ward. Luckily I had help!” I was really playing it up now, although every word was true. She was eating out of my hands.
“The hospital itself was so new that it had yet to be finished. There were piles of rubble, garbage and concrete from the buildings they demolished to build the new hospital. A jack hammer crew was busy pulverising the old foundations of the old buildings. The clouds of dust this caused coated the outside of the building, and was everywhere inside too, on tables, sinks, light fixtures in the beds and the floors. It was filthy!” I went on and on.
“Yes, our hospitals in Russia are horrible places!” Lara agreed with professional embarrassment.
“So, they finally laid me on wobbly gurney and wheeled me from room to room instead of having me get up off the examination tables in each room. This would have been better than walking, had the safety engineers not built speed bumps in every doorway. Yes, each doorway came complete with raised threshold to keep out winter drafts. It made moving from room to room very jarring. Before going through a doorway, I had to lift my injured neck and head off of the pillow, otherwise I would get whiplash. I have great sympathy for those who arrive the victims of a hit and run, or who come with a broken leg or a broken back. Given the chance, I would choose to die on the street where I had been run down, because the hospital is hardly a place of comfort and reassurance for the injured citizen. Better to just stay away!” I thought I had gone too far with that reference, but Lara agreed whole heartedly.
“Yes, this is what patients tell our doctors as well, that they would rather die at home than be put in the hospital,” Lara seemed ashamed.
“The doctors were looking for signs of haemorrhaging either in my head or in my spinal column. The results were inconclusive so they put me in a room, in a bed, while they debated the issue. When the decision was made to keep me in the hospital overnight for observation and more tests I had no more energy to argue. Valya, who had accompanied me to the hospital was growing concerned about the time of day and told she was afraid to be left in Kazan, so she headed back to the boat, but promised to send others back to help me, or if necessary somebody who could come and stay with me.” I pouted a lonely pout.
“You poor thing!” Lara seemed to be on the verge of tears.
“There was thick dust everywhere; on the floor, window sills. There was fuzzy mould along the floor boards and in the refrigerator. My pillow case had been blood stained in the past, the toilet smelled of undiluted ammonia. I did my best to close my eyes and rest while I waited for my colleagues to arrive, but even laying in the bed was impossible because a spring had broken through the top of the mattress and was poking me in the small of my back. I laid on my side on the edge of the bed facing the door and watched and hoped for somebody to come save me!” I told her every gory detail until even Nikolai was looking worried.
“So, I woke up to a knock on the door and was so happy as I thought it was Irina come to rescue me. But it was a group of three doctors. They came to announce their decision. One of them tried to explain it to me in English but it was so poor that I asked them to repeat it in Russian. Instead they handed me a medical book, in English, and asked me to read it. The procedure was called Lumbar Puncture. As I read further through the narration to the dramatic pictures of needles, poking between some poor guy’s vertebrae and muscles I freaked out! They wanted to perform a spinal tap on me!”
“Bozhe Moi! Did you let them do the test?” Lara blurted in horror.
“No, no way! Absolutely no! Even the book said that the chance of death was high in a sterile environment. Seeing that the hospital was so filthy, there was no way I could trust those doctors to stick a needle, even if they had a clean needle, into my spine. If I didn’t have meningitis before t
hey did, I most certainly would afterwards! No, I refused the procedure and made it very clear the answer was no, no, no!” I insisted.
“Did the boat leave without you? Did you have to stay in Kazan?” Lara was very nervous for me.
“No. Soon after that Irina and Richard arrived and convinced the doctors to release me to them and they would take responsibility for my health. The chief doctor made me sign a paper that said that I was taking full responsibility for my own health as they believed I could die before I made it back to Moscow if I was moved. They warned me that flying would further weaken the blood vessels in my head and I could easily die on an airplane with such a head injury. I didn’t care! I signed the document and we caught a taxi back to the boat. Luckily, I didn’t die.” I said as matter of factly as I could and started eating my soup and bread again.
“And so now you thought you could tempt fate and piss off mob bosses,” Nikolai said as dry as ordering bread and cheese at the grocers. “That’s a good plan!”
“Is that who beat you and stole from you?” Lara quickly connected the dots and was shocked.
I held up two fingers, tapped my wrist and then held up four fingers and finished munching my black bread silently with an admitting look on my face as Lara seemed to fume at this revelation. What did she care anyway?
26. On the River
The weather, as the boat approached Kazan had quickly turned hot and dry. The warm air coming up the river valley from the southern regions of the steppe was having the effect of a blow dryer on my hair when I stood on the forward deck enjoying the view of Kazan’s white walled Kremlin come into view. This warm air made the mornings and evening very pleasant to be on deck and out of doors but made the afternoons almost too warm. I had only brought a few pieces of clothing with me from my ransacked apartment when I fled on Friday night and I had taken the wrong things with me. Why did I grab my shapka? It seemed I had clothes for being outside in March, not May. The plan was to be somewhere over Greenland on Monday morning not on the river, not still in Russia. I needed something else to wear and to have my hair cut as we were heading toward the southern steppes where May and June are already too warm for those used to snow and ice only six weeks earlier.