In the Hospital
Автор: admin, 11 Ноя 2012
They entered in the district village at dawn. Volodya saw a milky moonlight dawn with purple solar sphere when sleds stopped at large two-story log house. Here was the district hospital. They woke up a chief physician who was the only one surgeon there.
Tall lean man with red stained mustache left on the porch. It was a surgeon Kaminsky, Pole, exiled here after the war for the reason that he was captured by Germans (Soviet power did not trust to the former captives), he looked at the skinny starved-looking little boy on the sleigh, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, like a cocoon of a butterfly, and saw his pale haggard face, listened Emilian Ivanovich and said to the approaching nurse: "Prepare the operation room ". And at the same moment right in the house something stirred, moved and fussed. Soon Volodya was lying in the emergency room on a cold couch, covered with a sheet.
Kaminsky palpated his belly with his large, soft fingers, and Volodya saw his mustache twitched while he yawned sleepily. Volodya was conscious and felt no pain, just very cold. His hands and feet were numb.
"Jesus Mary - said Kaminski. – I wonder, how are you still alive, lad. Frost saved you”. A nurse entered the room.
"Carefully rub him with alcohol. Do not touch the belly and immediately put him on the table "- ordered Kaminski. Another elderly woman came in a white robe and said: "Nitrous oxide is not present. We have to surgery under local anesthesia. "
“Dog’s blood!" - swore Kaminsky in polish manner and disappeared behind the door. Volodya was listening to the conversation. Numbness passed. He began to feel his arms and legs. "No frostbitten limbs", - said the young nurse, and then Volodya asked the elderly one: "What’s about me?" And she answered: "Purulent appendicitis you got, child. But you might have peritonitis. "- "What is it?" - "Do not worry, darling, do not worry. We'll now have a surgery, and you will live. You only have to wait a little bit. Well, you're a man, be patient. "- "Yes, of course - wearily said Volodya, - I will stand for."
He was dressed in a plain white linen shirt and carried to the operation room. He had to endure a long time: the operation lasted four hours under a local anesthesia - novocaine blockade, which is repeated every twenty minutes. He felt strong and unbearable pain when consciousness returned to him and asked only for one thing - to finish quickly. They gave him a sleeping pill, then made cauterized and placed in the postoperative box-room.
Recovery took place hard. There was a time when it urgently needs penicillin. Kaminsky went to the regional center and miraculously managed to get it there.
Vladimir slowly came back to life. Two weeks later he was transferred to a general ward. Here the eight patients lay, mostly elderly people and old peasants from nearby villages.
Volodya's neighbor was one nice old man with a hernia. He was kind to the boy, fed him with village bacon, cranberries, boiled eggs and another home food.
Volodya being starved in the internate ate all these goodies with relish. He thought that was the royal food. The hospital food is not smart and plentiful, but it was better here. Sometimes they gave boiled meat.
Normally electricity in the hospital was not switched off, although the wiring had been done. The electric light was given only when needed emergency surgery. They start electric engine for a while and give light in the operating room. On the other days, hospital lived with kerosene lamps, as in pre-revolutionary times.
Oil lamps were hanging on the wooden walls in the wards with twisted wicks, and the light of kerosene lamps for Volodya seemed even more comfortable and pleasant. In this light, it was good to hear all sorts of stories and especially the stories of an old neighbor about the war of 1914.
So day after day passed, and Volodya liked the hospital. Nobody drives him anywhere, nobody shouted, not urging. He had a rest and for the first time being in the orphanage really relaxed here.
All the neighbors in the ward were sympathetic to him. They loved to hear his stories about Moscow, where they never had been and they were surprised and outraged when they learned about his life in the internate and offered him their home village meal and offended if he refused. Volodya just not used to such an abundant food compare to the half-starved existence of the children jail.
He did not want to leave the hospital and go back to the orphanage. Chief doctor Kaminsky, as if guessing his thoughts kept him in the hospital for two months. Only on March the 2, he was discharged, and Emelyan Ivanovic again arrived on the same mare Norka.
The early spring began. But spring was not yet visible in the forest where deep bluish-white snow still lay, but trees are shaken off its winter cover. March sun is getting warmer. The snow on the fields and in the village streets melted. The sky was bright blue, and the village roosters now screamed louder and more joyfully at dawns.
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