The Medic

I was on first aid duty at Botkin hospital on the night of the 20th-21st. Botkin is the biggest hospital in the city. I am a surgeon. For the most part I deal with road accident victims, usually drunk, or people who have been beaten up in fights.

Mentally we were prepared for the worst that night. The hospital isn't all that far from the White House. We could hear the sounds of the city. Occasionally the roar of tank motors would drift up.

At about eleven I did the rounds of the wards. Usually everyone would be asleep by this time. Now no one was. The quiet murmur of voices in the ward was broken only by soft moans of pain. But these moans were no worse than the sound of tank engines. No one was really complaining. They were less concerned about their injuries, whether it was stomach problems, arms, legs, than about the situation in the city.

Going by the toilet, I ran into two of our patients who had been operated on about two weeks earlier. They were hiding in the shadows of a dark corner. Seeing me, they flinched. Obviously they hadn't been expecting me. I thought they must have been smoking on the sly. But there was no glow in the dark or any smell of cigarette smoke. When I asked them what they were doing, they admitted they had been getting ready to sneak out and go down to the barricades! They were still dressed in their hospital pyjamas, both of them had slings and were still in bandages. But they were on their way to the barricades.

I threatened to report them to the hospital authorities. But this had absolutely no effect. It took me a long time to convince them not to go. "They need us there!" they answered angrily. In the end, apart from the scuffle down on the Ring Road, there was no attack that night. In fact out-patients was less crowded than it usually is. First aid duty that night wasn't too bad after all.

Irina Ronzhina