the most final
concluding work

One time, the shut-ins were driven, in groups, to the bathhouse in another building. There, it was necessary to stand under the lukewarm shower in a slippery cast-iron bathtub, disgusting long streaks of slimy-brown rust stuck forever to the flaky enamel in its sides. While you soaped the washcloth left by the previous shower taker, the next one, naked already, pops up by the greenish eggshell of the bathtub with a remarkably intense glare at the rotten concrete in the too low ceiling while giving a twitch to his cheek of not immediately interpretable meaning… The small waffle towel got soaked before you could wipe half of yourself, and the residual moisture got absorbed by the underwear on the way back to the unit…

pops up the next to the greenish eggshell of the bathtub with a remarkably intense glare at the rotten concrete in the too low ceiling while giving a twitch to his cheek of not immediately interpretable

In the afternoon, it was better not to come too near the windows in the hall. A couple of tower cranes were seen thru the panes, slowly turning their beams at distant construction sites, and from the bus station, there came muffled announcing on PA loudspeaker about the departures of buses to indiscernible destinations and wishes of a good voyage. The sun was shining, the snow melting, life was going on out there, but you were on this side of the vertical iron bars…

Saturdays were for reception of visitors to the fifth unit, who were not allowed on any other day of the week. The harsh ringing of the doorbell in the corridor called the on-duty nurse to check who was out there, and then they shouted along the corridor the name of a shut-in to go outside the door and see his visitors.

My parents came on the very first Saturday. I was greatly surprised because I did not tell anything to anyone when leaving for Romny. As it turned out, the following day my landlady informed them of my absence, they called SMP-615 and were told where I got off the bus the day before. At the bus station, someone also recollected seeing me, and the tangle got unraveled…

We met on the landing in front of the door to the fifth unit, one of the long benches was vacant and we got seated along it, in one row. My mother, pushed the fluffy kerchief back from the head onto her shoulders and said, "How's that, sonny?" and she started to cry,

My father, so as to calm her down and in the way of consolation, announced, “Again! Started again!" He did not take off his fur hat, and did not cry, but kept his eyes directed at the bench opposite, where another pair of parents fed all the goodies from their cellophane packet to their shut-in – a crazy guy who did not talk at all because he had been bitten by an encephalitic tick.

I also was eating all sorts of homemade cakes and buns brought by my mother, and Eclair cakes with custard filling from the cooking shop by the Under-Overpass, because she knew what I loved. There was also lard in the cellophane packet to take it with me, but I flatly refused. So, at the end of the visit, my mother handed the bag to the nurse for storing it in the dispenser room shelving. Still and all, I declined going to the dining room when they yelled from the corridor to come and eat deliveries. For the principle's sake…

On the following Saturday, my brother and sister came instead of our parents. My brother had no hat on his head, but he frowned just like our father and said, "Why, Sehryoga? It's no good you do it."

As for Natasha, she did not cry but kept upbraiding me, "Tell me just one thing – you really need it? Well done, good fellow!" She said that Eera did not come, although she phoned her so that she knew.

Eera never came to Romny, but I understood that she had to look after the baby… On March 8, they brought a gurney to the corridor with a pile of free postcards for the holiday. I filled one out to Nezhyn with congratulations and love for Eera. While writing, I was horrified by the ugly quiver in the message lines, and the handwriting was anything but mine. Probably, because of injections…

~ ~ ~

The head doctor of the fifth unit never started whim-wham discussions of my preferences in music, she was busy with curing me. I was injected with iminazine intramuscularly, 3 times a day. An initial couple of days, it still could be tolerated, but later there remained no intact spot in the buttocks. One shot got upon another, sore nodules cluttered my ass and turned it into a terrain of tightly swollen knolls, it became difficult to even walk along the corridor, leaving any orbiting out of question. Besides, the skin down there, denied any time for regeneration, started bleeding, not too profusely but constantly, the hospital underpants soaked thru and stained the pajamas from inside.

The most unbearable was the third, concluding, injection of a day. It was shot at about 9 pm, the tinkling of the steel boxes with syringes pulled on the gurney along the corridor, made my teeth clench in a spasm. The tinkles gradually neared our wardroom, and the on-duty nurse appeared in the doorway with a syringe in her hand. Having done an injection, she returned to the corridor after another syringe for the next shut-in.

Once a nurse missed me and, so as not to remind her, I pretended to be asleep and, when the gurney tinkled away to Wardroom 8, I could not believe my own luck. An hour later, the nurse called me from the doorway, holding a syringe in her uplifted hand, she smiled victoriously, "Hoped to skip it, Ogoltsoff?"

In the manipulation room, before they started a round, those syringes were charged according to the list, and when on the gurney remained an unused syringe, she realized that someone had been missed… You remembered – well done, but why to smile?. At that moment, she reminded me of Sveta from my polygamous past; probably, by her hairstyle…

And I was also injected with insulin intravenously, but at first, the head doctor warned my parents that they should agree to that treatment. Beltyukov, a young but experienced neighbor in the wardroom, told that they extracted insulin from bull's liver, there was nowhere else to get it from. The purpose of those injections was to bring a shut-in to a coma. Many were cured that way, subtracting the percentage on whom the drug worked incorrectly. Still, the number of survivors remained higher. The tricky part was snatching the shut-in off his coma in time.

Shots of insulin were done to me and Beltyukov in the morning, one insertion in the vein inside arm elbow. Then the nurse called the nearest paramedic and he came together with volunteers from the shut-ins to fix us with rags to the iron beds we were stretched on. They fixed only our arms but firmly, so that we could not wring them away when led back out of the current coma.

After about 20 minutes, the nurse returned to the wardroom to fill out some ledger, sitting at the white desk in the corner. That's why it was placed in that improper place – she was watching us like milk on fire not to let it drip over when seething.

Beltyukov and I lay on our beds, side by side, and talked, looking up into the ceiling. He was a sociable guy and somehow resembled Vitalik from the construction battalion or, maybe, not very much so. Then our conversation turned into incoherent exclamations: Beltyukov shouted about the dominance of fucking matriarchy, and I kept proclaiming that all people were brothers and how could you possibly not see it!? Meanwhile, my head was tilting back to see my backbone, only the pillow was always in the way.

It signaled the nurse to put aside her ledger, and give us a shot of glucose intravenously to ward off the upcoming dive into the fatal phase of coma. Then they untied us and gave a glass of water with a thick sugar solution because the mouth was burning awful hot. That does not mean that Beltyukov and I always shouted the same thing, yet such were the core themes of our slogans at uncontrolled chanting when under insulin. On Sundays, they did not inject us that shit…