Contains some obscenities
December 11, 2014, Thursday
00.00
There were three persons in a white office: me, the doctor and the police officer who accompanied me. The elderly doctor smiled a tired smile of a man who was in need of sleep or pension for a long time.
– Good evening, sit down, please.
I put bags with my things on a couch and sat down on a chair opposite to the doctor.
I was sitting and listening to the sounds around me. Something was obviously happening behind the wall. It seemed, they spoke about me. And it wasn’t for the first time already.
– Him… it was him… for sure. And how could he have done such a thing at all? Killing … he is killing her. He is taking revenge on her. Of course! He is taking reveeenge. And those girls with punctured eyes were killed by him … exactly! An arssehole! An aaarsehole! A vile crud, that’s who he is. Of course. A fucking nit. Of course, and that’s why he doesn't respond to her letters. He is getting ready for a murder. Of cooourse! He fell in love … that’s how he loves her. And hates. Exactly! Well, scum! Oh, a crud, what is going to happen soon… An aaarsehole! The silly woman … she is a silly woman, he does plan to kill her. Don't write anything on the Internet, a fool. He will kill you! A crud … a nasty crud, he is. Well, scum. The biggest scum from the scum. Well, that’s all. The end. She should save herself. Only the militia will help now. But not for long. He will kill her all the same. A frigging niiit! He will kill her! Exactly! That's the limit… That’s true, of course … Die! Die, a nit, die! Of course. Why hadn’t she guessed at once… He hates. He hates her and wants to kill her. Well, a crud! Of course!
After long altercations with the police officer concerning some documents and "why have you arrived so late", they, at last, paid some attention to me.
– So. What is it that disturbs you?
– Well, generally my main problem is insomnia. I haven’t slept for three days in a row. Earlier I slept some hours, and even earlier – I hadn’t slept for three more days.
I tactfully held back the fact that I called the police myself about my paranoia. It didn't seem to me as much important as to tell it to the doctor. The reason for paranoia was some trifles that I found on the vk page of one person.
– It’s clear. I will prescribe you a sleeping pill, and the therapist will come tomorrow and you will discuss your state with her.
A long procedure of filling in the documents started, which I even had read before signing them.
– So, that's all. Now you will go with the nurse, she will show you the way. I wish you to recover quickly, – the doctor told me.
00.30
The nurse's aide recognized me at once. No wonder, after all I got into hospital the fourth time already.
– Again you came to us! What’s happened?
– Nothing special. As usual. The insomnia tortured me.
– I see. Well, that’s gonna be alright, you will recover soon. Irina Dmitriyevna will puzzle it out, she was kind today.
We started to sort my things out. It was necessary to leave the most part of things in a baggage room, the mobile phone was taken away to a locker on the nurse's post. It wasn't allowed to take with you anything, except slippers, a toothpaste and a toothbrush. I had taken English books with me in vain – everything was pushed in a bag till the time when I would leave hospital.
– You can take a shower.
Suddenly the nurse came and they started a debate about my pants.
– The linen isn't allowed!
– Well, how is it, the Zeks walk in their own trousers. And can’t she have her own pants?
– It isn’t allowed! Someone will find it, and I’ll be responsible.
Luckily, they let me take a pair of pants and even the socks.
Having vaguely remembered that at men's department it was possible to bring everything with you, even players and computers, I became nervous. It beat me out from a passively sluggish condition of fatalism in which I usually came to the hospital.
– Where were you caught this time? – the nurse asked.
– At the neighbors. I called the ambulance, then the police, and ran away to my neighbors so that not to be killed in my own apartment.
01.00
On the third floor it was gloomy and silent. All patients were asleep long ago. We came into a treatment room where they gave me an injection of sleeping meds. I fainted at once, and they dragged me into the ward. I wanted to tell something, but there was some gurgling in my throat. I already felt bad from such an injection, but nurses did it cunningly: they made cordiamine injection along with phenazepam. Having sat for some time at my bed, they decided that I will survive and left.
December 12, 2014, Friday
6.00
– Get up!
I woke up and didn't realize at first where I was. Sleepy snorting all around. The glow of a night lamp, as on the operating table. Smell of urine.
Then I recalled – it was nadzorka, a supervisory ward for those who just arrived to the hospital and was still rather wild.
– Get up! We make beds. We wash our lower parts!
The elderly nurse's aide shook up the sleepy patients and shouted at them from time to time. I got up earlier, than I was reached by her. I closed a bed with a blanket, put a cover above it, I beat up a pillow according to the hospital standard, a triangle, a corner upward. There was nothing more to do.
On the left of me the same drowsy patients laid down over a blanket again, to get some more sleep, and the nurse's aides were cheerfully whisking them off.
– You will smudge the covers!
On the right the woman with a drunkardy look was picked at her hair with her fingers.
At a window two grannies were vigorously stretching themselves and talking about urgent problems:
– If there is a cheese, I will give you cheese, and you will give me the sausage from your food!
– Er, no, at first you will give me the meat pate that you promised me last week!
– The daughter hadn’t brought it; I’d better give you an egg from the breakfast.
The fat woman, at first sight, – of an uncertain sex, was senselessly looking out of the window. I recognized Nadia, the local poetess, at once. She knew by heart Pushkin and Gumilev and was reciting Yesenin in the lavatory. She had her own poems too.
– Hello! Do you have a relapse? – I asked her.
– Anechka! How is it, you are here again?! And me here in nadzorka again. It’s hard. No wish to get out of bed.
Nadia had been in the hospital for five years. Whether she killed someone, or she had no place to live, – no one remembered anymore, except the therapists.
I had to carry out the boring and hungry two hours till the breakfast, and I crept to my bed.
8.00
The crowd of women in dressing gowns accompanied by nurses came nearer to the dining room. At the entrance there was a nurse who counted the patients’ heads:
– One, two, three, four … and where do you think you’re going, you have a separate diet!
The other nurse who brought up the rear, was chatting on the phone with her boyfriend:
– Thirty three cows! – she declared into the cellphone.
At last everyone was seated. Long wooden tables and benches couldn’t hold all the patients, but somehow the nurse's aides managed to push two people into one place.
– Bunch up, bunch up! Everyone will have a seat!
I was growing nostalgic about the times when patients were driven to feed in two groups.
At first the roll was distributed. Then the most interesting part began: on the iron plates spraying porridge started to fly onto the tables. But the nurses who after all carried plates instead of throwing them around a table, were even more dangerous. I was hit on the ear right away, without having dodged from the undertaken pallet with plates, goodness knows where it from.
The porridge was liquid as water. It was clear that it was really diluted with boiled water after cooking. Today it was millet.
Then everyone was given a slice of butter on a spoon and a slice of cheese, and then – blue-green eggs which, of course, were considered to be fresh. Having remembered that I already had been poisoned by them some time ago, I gave my egg to the neighbor.
– Some eggs!
– It’s always like that here. And who is working in the dining room indeed? Only the drunks. They even forget to put the food into the fridge.
– How is it, drunks?
– They pay them only six thousand rubles, after all. And who will go there? Well, and some patients help.
The ten minutes allotted on food expired, and the nurse's aide started to pep us up:
– Finish your food, it’s not at restaurant here, look at that, they are sitting!
The tea was brought. The cold tea. Probably, the cooks couldn’t turn on the plate and warm up the tea, as they had a hangover. Instead of sugar two candies were given to us. Not expecting such a godsend, the patients started discussing it:
– But is it a holiday today? Perhaps some Christian one?
– No, one cook was dismissed for the theft, now they’re acting like smart asses.
8.20
The queue for drugs stretched along the entire corridor. I wasn’t prescribed any pills yet, and I simply stood and looked out, whether there are any acquaintances of mine, apart from "the old residents". It appeared, there were quite a lot of familiar faces. It seems, all local "elite" of a mental hospital was going to celebrate The New Year’s day in a warm circle of "insiders".
The iron door clicked, and there was an elderly female doctor, Irina Dmitriyevna.
– And here you are, arriving at night, as usual, – she told me. – Moreover, with the police every time.
– It just happens. I am haunted. My acquaintance, he’s been plotting something, I know exactly. I see the secret signs on its vk page!
– I remember, Anya, both about Baku and about a gang on the street.
–I was enticed to Baku by another acquaintance. But all the same, this one is plotting something too. I already wrote to him so that he didn't kill me, I wanted to gain some time. He answered I should let things go hang. It is a hint. It is going to hang me. I need to move away somewhere, and quickly.
– Well, that’s enough, we will talk later at my office. I will call for you.
9.30
Cleaning time.
10.00
The injections.
11.00
And, at last, the most cheerful time in hospital – the tea time. A small holiday. During that time patients were gobbling the supplies brought by relatives or were eating each other’s supplies. Someone had always been stealing my candies and bagels, and often I found there wasn’t everything in a bag with peredachka, that had been there the previous day. But something remained, and we shared our food with each other and changed chocolates for cookies, cookies for sausage and bananas, and bananas on processed cheeses. Fifteen minutes were allotted on eating up all the food. I had no peredachka therefore I had tea "with nothing".
11.30
Smokers gone to smoke
12.00
I was called into the therapist’s office. There sat one more doctor managing men's department. The interrogation lasted for long. The questions were typical: whether I help my mom about the house, whether I work, whether I have friends and a boyfriend, whether I think of suicide. I tried to tell lies in moderation: I cook every day (pasta), there’re a lot of clients at work (former clients), I communicate with friends every week (online), I have a boyfriend (in another city), I rarely think of a suicide (once a month).
Having left the office, I at first went to nadzorka, but curiosity got the best, and I crept to the door again. It was slightly opened.
– She’s been roaming the different cities. It is the mania period, – the man's voice was heard.
– No, it is schizophrenia, – the female voice answered.
– The suicide thoughts – the obvious depression period!
– No, it is schizophrenia!
The voices became louder. I retreated from the door and crept back to the ward.
14.00
The lunch time approached at last. They gave us a soup with canned fish, one piece of bread and stewed cabbage on the second course.
– Phew, this muck again, – my neighbor at the table commented on cabbage. – They don't wash it!
– And why do I have one small fish in the soup, and Masha has five fishes? – the elderly drunk Valya shouted.
– Masha works, and you don't, – the nurse's aide melancholically answered.
– At our residential home they give food equally to everyone! Fuck your hospital!
– But here you won’t talk back while you’re here, – the nurse’s aide said.
– I’ll arrive to the residential home, and I’ll write a complaint on all of your hospital! The food is shitty, nurse’s aides don't carry a peredachkas!
– Well, arrive there at first.
They served compote with dried fruits. Everyone liked it.
14.20
The queue for tablets. I was given out two pills.
14.30
– The smokers! To smoke! – resounded from the corridor. A nurse’s aid brought the patients together and countered them by heads.
– And where do you think you’re going, Zina? You had a seizure recently, you can’t smoke now.
– Well, please, well, let me. I will wash a toilet later.
– No, without the doctor’s permission it is impossible.
15.00
After lunch, as usual, there was a quiet time, more precisely, two hours. I was laying and listening to the whispering ward. The newbies wish to sleep, but the recovered drunks are cheerfully whispering. At last, they become silent. It was snowing outside the window, and it was probably fifteen degrees in the ward. I wrapped in a blanket and I start thinking of some shit. About words that hurt you. And about the insults from strangers, that I generally don’t give a damn to, but still it’s unpleasant. And it is twice unpleasant, when it comes from relatives and close ones. How I wish that people didn't say about me any scurrilous things and were respectful.
Suddenly I noticed that the bed was madly rigid, and iron grid digging into my hip. Having gotten up and checked, I found some strange green film between the grid and the mattress. Probably, it was arranged so that it was possible to piss in a bed, without rising from it. Then my thoughts got lost in the head, and I fell asleep.
17.00
It was lively in the corridor. The patients, sleepy from tablets, were walking in all directions. The nurse's aides were preparing for supper – drove patients into a small corridor near the door.
One nurse was already standing ready with a key. The doors weren't locked in wards and lavatories, but the department’s exit and personnel WCs were protected by the lock. The key was fit to all doors. Once an enterprising patient distracted attention of hospital attendants and ran away, however, he was caught in a nearby forest.
The patients gathered at the door. I looked out for the people I knew. We greeted each other and exchanged glances already, but there was nothing to talk about. We will wait until we are in the same ward. Here everyone is by oneself.
At last, the call rang out and the nurse opened the door. The herd of women in dressing gowns started to plod for the feeding. The grannies on the wheelchairs and a paralyzed girl were trailing separately, several patients helping them. The nurse’s aides, as usual, were trying to make us perform their work.
For supper there was vegetable stew with cabbage, a piece of bread and milk.
– The cabbage again! – was heard from all directions, – And where is the baked pudding?
Zina the drunk who was sick with epilepsy was very dissatisfied. They hadn't allowed her to smoke.
– Ah, bitches, what do you think you’re doing here? You fucked it all up, the doctors go to Egypt, and they don’t give us the baked pudding here!
The nurse’s aides politely advised her to shut her mouth. And the plate with vegetable stew flew into them. On the way partially getting onto my head. Zina was fixed and taken away to inject azaleptin.
17.20
– Somatics! – was heard from the corridor.
17.30
The patients had a smoke.
19.00
I asked a nurse’s aid a permission to wash my head in the bathroom. She told me to ask the nurse. I went to a post. The nurse told me it is possible, and advised to address to the nurse’s aid. At last, in ten minutes I was let into a bathroom.
20.00
Evening cleaning. In a corridor the radio was on, and some patients were dancing.
21.00
Having been lying all evening, I, at last, have lain till the tablets time. The patients started gathering in twenty minutes before nine. Everyone wanted to swallow their drugs first and to settle to watch "risperidone dreams" as one schizophrenic girl said in her poems.
Olya, a fat heavy-set girl, as always, stood ahead and gave out tablets to the old women on the wheelchairs. She was twenty eight, but she looked twenty. Olya should have stayed a month more in the hospital from a year for a player’s theft from a boarding school.
The elderly woman in the queue turned to me and began some senseless conversation "about life": who of us worked and where, how many children we have and who why have we come into the hospital. At last, it was my turn to take meds.
The nurse friendly smiled at me:
– Anechka arrived! We haven’t seen you for ages. How are you?
– Well. I slept well.
I took a pill from her hand, swallowed it and washed down with water from a beaker. They didn’t make me open my mouth and show that the pill is swallowed.
Suddenly Valya the drunk fell down and started to jerk her feet and hands in a fit of epilepsy. All sixty people of the department gathered round her, the nurse’s aids ran up to her. Fights and epilepsy attacks brought a certain variety and animation into this boring life.
I dragged myself to the bed and got into it. Women around were crackling with cookies and drinking mineral water. I had no peredachka, so I had to starve all night long.
21.20
The smokers had a smoke.
00.00
I woke up from a strange rustling in the ward. Having opened my eyes, I saw an even more strange scene: a new drunk, holding slippers in her hand, awas twirling around the ward in a fast pace.
– What’s happened? – I asked.
– I don't know. I need to walk.
So two hours passed this way. During this time I managed to think over my thoughts on all the main topics that entertained me: love, death, suicide. Then the drunk went to sleep, and I fell asleep too.
December 13, 2014, Saturday
6.00
The consciousness was coming back slowly. As though I was swimming out from a huge black lake where I couldn’t get the bottom by my feet, and the seaweed are twisted around my feet and pulling me down.
Before my nose there was a fico. Real. Not illusive, and most real, from a human hand. The fear captured me in the first seconds until I understood that it only Tanechka, the steady inhabitant of the hospital. She took a dislike for me for something and didn't miss an opportunity to spoil my life. I shouted at her and she escaped to her ward, grinning lousily.
Outside the window it was still dark, but the fluorescent lamp over the bed being switched on all night long lit a figure of the nurse’s aide in a white dressing gown and with a mop.
– Get up! Girls smokers, to the cleaning! – she shouted.
My ward neighbors began to stir, some started stretching themselves drowsily. At last, a thin old woman rose up and another old woman, a thicker one. The thin one was sent to a mental hospital for running drunk through the village. The thicker one was taken for coming drunk to wish her mother a happy birthday. I made a bed and hid cookies and nuts under the mattress, in case of a check. There already was a pack of juice and a bag with bagels – a stock for a hard-set night.
8.00
There was a rice porridge, a roll, butter on the tip of a spoon and some tea for breakfast.
8.20
Taking meds.
9.30
Cleaning.
10.00
The injections
11.00
Tea
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
I got acquainted with a girl of breathtaking beauty. More precisely, she got acquainted with me. Curled fair hair, a gentle pretty face and kind eyes. She happened to be from St. Petersburg.
– I understood at once that you are a fairly intelligent person. For some purpose we met here. It’s destiny. God guides me.
– And why are you here?
– I don't even know. I got here by chance. I had been visiting my mother, and it got absolutely bad. I have a husband and two children. And something is wrong in our relationship.
– And what is the matter?
– I am all fingers and thumbs. I had been in the neurology department before. We have been quarrelling with my husband. And recently the father-in-law has beaten me, I’ve had a concussion. Mother says, I am not able to raise children. And I have some strange feeling in the head.
– And what has Irina Dmitriyevna told you?
– She told me she will check it out. She suspects schizotypal personality disorder.
– By the way, my name is Anya.
– And I am Katya. Nice to meet you.
14.00
At last – the lunch time. The continuous lying in bed getting used to new drugs pretty bothered me. Borsch, bread and macaroni were served. The insufficiently salted borsch and the stuck together macaroni. On one piece of macaroni I found someone's hair, so I gave my portion to the neighbor. We washed down all this with kefir.
14.20.
The queue for tablets.
14.30
Smoking.
17.00
For supper there was stewed potato with fish, bread and tea.
17.20
Somatic meds.
19.00
They already let me out to take a walk from nadzorka, and I sat on a bench when some shouting and the sound of something heavy being knocked were heard around the corner. Having run up to the nurse's post, I saw that the nurse lay on the floor, and the Zina drunk was beating her feet on the head. Olya ran up, hit Zina on a muzzle and began to drag her off. Everything turned out fine with Olya’s plans. Olya was sixty or more kilograms fatter than Zina. Zina quickly ran away.
– Some crud! If I didn't knock her out, she would kill the nurse! Who will protect you when I leave the hospital?
– Wait, the doctor will come on Monday, she will set her right! – the nurse’s aide answered. – For now we will fix her and put her on azaleptin.
Tired from the noise and shouting, I went to a distant lavatory to think about life. But there was a shabby looking the granny already sitting there and taking a crap.
– Go away, a bitch! – She yelled on me.
Having plugged my nose with a hand, I went to look for a more friendly haven for my ass.
In the next lavatory it was shitted both outside and within the toilet bowl, and there was a small lake on the floor. In a farther away lavatory I already sat down and stared to think about the meaning of life, but it appeared that there was no toilet paper.
I went to the nurse's post for paper. The victim was crying and holding the head with her hands, the nurse was writing the explanatory note. Nobody gave me any toilet paper.
It was necessary to go to the most distant lavatory. There already was some shivering granny washing her lower parts, but there was no choice. I sat down on a toilet bowl and got lost in thought about the eternal.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
During taking meds I got into a conversation with Vera. I had been in the hospital with her already for the third time.
– And I heard, Nastya will soon be with us. They saw her on the street; she was speaking loudly and laughing. The voices …
Nastya, a drawing teacher, was notorious for picked up a young convict on the street somehow and moving to his flat to live with him. Several days passed and her worried mother called the police. They rushed into the apartment of the convict who gave Nastya out to them. He thought that she was a drug addict. It turned out that he beat her sometimes.
21.20
Smoking.
December 14, 2014, Sunday
8.00
Nobody woke up at six am. During the weekend, as always, the patients had a rest from the therapists, and the therapist had a rest from the patients. For breakfast they served an oat meal, a roll, butter, cheese and cocoa.
After a poor breakfast everyone was hungry, but is there was nothing to eat. However, under many mattresses there was some food hidden. But sometimes during the inspection the nurse’s aides looked under the mattress too, especially to their unloved patients. Therefore the majority carried food with them, in the dressing gowns.
8.20
Meds.
9.00
Cleaning of nadzorka.
10.00
The patients were brought together for injections. I met Marina, a friend of mine who I vaguely remembered from the last time I was in the hospital. I had no memory for faces and facts, but this time I guessed it right – we already met before. She once worked as the lawyer, and now she was on disability and had to get into the hospital for confirmation every time.
– It is much worse, than here, in another hospital. They do five pricks a day there. The patients are smoking in the lavatory and are beating each other there. They had been keeping me there for eight months.
– Can it really be true?
– It is true. The heavier the diagnosis, the more they keep you here. The suiciders are kept for a year, the schizophrenics – in general are kept as long as the doctors want them to stay in the hospital. And they had simply been trying all meds on me, nothing helped. Then they called my sister and told her to take me away.
11.00.
The tea time.
11.30
Smoking
13.00
I was lying in bed and ruminating on the universe, god and eternity. In a mental hospital for some reason there is always a wish to ruminate only on such topics. This time no gleams of belief in god aroused in my head, but there appeared thoughts of reincarnations. It took several days of thinking and taking meds to bring such thoughts out of my head.
14.00
For lunch there was rassolnik, bread, buckwheat with liver and tea. They added some sugar into tea. There were some slices of cucumber in rassolnik.
14.20
Meds taken.
14.30
The smokers had a smoke.
15.00
I washed my head.
16.00
On the rest hour they brought in a new patient. She was being led along the corridor with a bag on her head accompanied by the police officer. The long-time residents began to argue which of the drunks they knew could get drunk to such a degree. They took the new patient away in the insulator. It turned out that she had syphilis, scabies and open tuberculosis.
17.00
We ate a supper. Stewed cabbage, bread and milk.
17.20
Took pills.
17.30
They had a smoke.
19.00
Me and my new friend, Dasha, went to stroll along the corridor. The corridor was long, thirty meters at best, and in the center turned at a right angle, proceeding on the same distance. There the most conscious patients were walking and talking. Some watched TV in the common room.
One gran was picking inside a flower pot, another tried to get out of a wheelchair which she was tired to. Dasha worked up to the subject she was interested in:
– And we happened to live in one city!
Then it appeared that our mutual friends live in the same house.
– Anechka, please, go to my neighbor and ask her to call here. I need a toothbrush and toilet paper. When you leave the hospital, of course. You surely will be discharged earlier than me.
We took a walk along the corridor for half an hour more.
20.00
Cleaning time.
21.00
Taking pills. In my dressing gown pockets I carried away a roll from breakfast, a piece of bread from lunch and a piece of bread from supper. Now all of this was under my pillow. The evening promised to be happy.
21.20
Smoking.
December 15, 2014, Monday
06.00
– Wakey! – I heard through my dreaming. The nurse’s aide rushed into the ward, whisking off the gaping patients from beds. – We wash our lower parts!
I recalled that I had a birthday today.
The lavatory was crammed with naked old women who were directed by the nurse’s aides. There were queues in front of other lavatories too. I returned to my bed and laid down on a bed’s edge, letting one of my feet dangle.
– Aha, you’ve lied down again! Get up! – was heard from "a watching booth" with glass windows that was located near nadzorka.
I got up. Someone's dumb face watched me through the glass dividing the ward and the corridor. I passed into the toilet, gathered a little water from under the tap, drank it. I returned, found a couple of cookies between a mattress and a pillow and began to gnaw them.
8.00
They gave us a buckwheat cereal, a roll, a slice of butter, a slice of cheese and tea. The slice of cheese was twice less than it had been the last time. And porridge – one and a half times less than on my first visit to the hospital four years ago. Only the butter remained unchangeable.
The patients were eating noisy; I managed to secure y place at a table at last. I sat on one half of my ass on the edge of the bench. To the right of me at the table Victoria, the long-time hospital resident, was tastefully eructating and champing. Victoria was a Gipsy. She was found in the subway car, and she spent all her life in this hospital since that time. She was given a name and a surname (Ivanova). In nine years she was taught to speak and to serve herself, but she couldn't learn to write and read yet. Currently Vika was thirty five old. She knew all the nurses and nurse’s aides by their names and middle names, was in charge of the cleaning the whole day long and smoked as many times as she wanted. She had a lover too – the kind elderly drunk Kostya from the nearby men’s department. Every week Vika dictated to the nurse’s aides her notes for him, and she received chocolates in reply. Sometimes on visiting hours they met and kissed.
Vika noticed me and was delighted:
– Anechka arrived!
At this moment a piece of porridge rushed out somewhere from the left and landed on Vika’s hair.
– Ah you, stinker! – Vika shouted at the granny of about sixty five years old. The old woman smiled cunningly, reeling up the porridge on a spoon for the next throw. The nurse’s aides took her away into a corner to feed her separately.
8.20
We took meds.
9.30
The cleaning time approached. Earlier, when I smoked, the time of cleaning approached every hour. The patients always found something to tidy up to get the admission into the smoking-room and a cigarette, or a cup of hot tea. But morning and evening cleaning, at 9.30 and at 20.00 were especially popular.
The therapist came and sat down inside her office.
10.00
Some people were called out and gathered at the treatment room. They got my blood for the blood test from me, even two times, as usual. There happened to be a good nurse. Sometimes they even couldn't find a vein from four attempts. Perhaps, they boozed too.
11.00
The tea time.
11.30
The smokers went to have a smoke.
12.00
Ten people were gathered and led to the cardiogram, on the first floor. The men's office was situated there. When we were passing by their dining room, the locals began to smile, one waved to us, and another showed an ass, however, not naked.
In the queue I was given a sheet of paper to hold, with my ECG direction. There was written: “schizophrenia”.
14.00
For lunch there was a potato soup, some bread, liver and cocoa.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
Smoking.
16.30
In the corridor I met Marina. She suggested to me to play checkers, – it was necessary to spend the time till supper somehow. It was silent in the corridor, the patients only started to wake up. In one of two common rooms several people were sleeping on one sofa. Some were sitting at a little table and reading old magazines of “Cosmopolitan” and the local newspapers. I thought that I forgot how to play checkers, but in half an hour I already managed to beat Marina several times. Sometimes we had a misunderstanding:
– Your move, Marina.
– But it’s your move now!
– No, I already made a move.
– But I remember that it’s your time to make a move.
– I’ve been waiting for a minute for you to go on.
– Really? And I don't remember. A-a-a, actually, it’s possible.
17.00
They served us cabbage salad, cutlets, bread and tea for supper.
17.20
Somatic drugs.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
Me and Dasha put on our jackets over the dressing gowns and moved on walk along the corridor. She was already transferred to the ward for four people.
– Soon you will be transferred too. There’re lots of patients arriving, they don't keep people in nadzorka for long, not enough space here.
Dasha told me about her ex-husband who beat her, and about her son who was taken away probably into the children’s shelter as she got into the hospital all of a sudden.
– I quarreled with my neighbors. They humiliated me. I threatened to them with an axe.
20.00
Evening cleaning.
21.00
Time for meds.
21.20
Smoking.
21.30
I took two slices of bread from under my pillow. Today I was nearly caught with it when I left the dining room. All evening I would be gnawing it. Then I would fall asleep.
December 16, 2014, Tuesday
6.00
I woke up from a bucket jingling. The nurse’s aide was throwing something out in the next lavatory. It appeared, someone died in the geriatric ward, and they were tiding up.
Having looked out of the ward’s window into the corridor, I saw the prepared stretcher. The small bunch of the woken-up patients watched the nurse’s aides carrying the body out. Victoria, some kind grannies and the nurse’s aide shipped the old woman on a stretcher, passed through a corridor and closed the iron door behind them
– She won't get into the elevator, – one patient commented.
– What if she slips down onto their heads when they carry her to the stairs, – another one noticed.
8.00
For breakfast they gave us a roll, barley porridge, tea, a slice of butter and they suddenly brought a piece of boiled sausage, one piece to everyone. Coffee, just as we expected, was the cheapest, and not sweet. One alcoholic who arrived recently had a good burping and spoiled appetite to her neighbors at the table.
8.20
We took meds.
9.30.
The cleanup. Our turn for the general cleanup would be in a week. It pleased us. And my turn to clean the ward was that day. I went to the cleaning room. There the patients already gathered. Everyone took mops from the tacks on the wall, took buckets and waited in line to pour out water. The nurse injected detergent solution from a syringe into each bucket. The small room it was crammed with patients. Having received a few strikes on different parts of a body with a mop, I, at last, reached the water tap. I poured out water and dragged a bucket into the ward.
Nadzorka was huge; there were place for fifteen people, so we agreed with two other women to clean it in turn. But, when I cleaned my part of the ward, one woman had an epilepsy attack, and another was called for injections. So I finished washing the ward alone. To me they didn’t give any injections, even vitamins: the therapist understood long ago that I felt bad from them.
10.00
Meanwhile in the corridor someone shouted:
– To the art therapy!
Several patients gathered at the department entrance. I ran to Irina Dmitriyevna’s office to ask permission to go to the art therapy. At the same time I told her that I had been mistaken about paranoia and that no one is after me. Everything cleared up in my head. She allowed me to call home two times a week and promised to transfer me to a usual ward. She called the nurse who included me in the list of patients with mobile phones and into the art therapy list. While I had been talking to the doctor, the group had already left on therapy, so there was nothing to do again.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
The smokers smoked.
12.00
I had a walk into main, the third, ward (actually it was the first after an insulator and a small double ward for squabbling persons. In the third ward all hospital’s elite, the cleverest prinudchiks (the convicts forced to undergo treatment in mental hospitals), schizophrenics and bipolars usually gathered. And this time the good company was selected there: Marina, Vera, Olya, and some more people. We had already stayed in the hospital two times with Olya. Masha, the girl of thirteen years old, appeared from the same city as me. On the bed where earlier Rita the prinudchitsa, a murderer, had been staying for two years, Sveta, the young girl of years of seventeen was sitting. Having greeted, I went to rummage on regiments of bedside tables. Rita had a big library collected in the ward, later her books were stuffed into different bedside tables of the ward. But now the books disappeared.
– And they’re all in the corridor, there’re two bedside tables at the sofa there, – Marina told me.
I passed to the corridor and rummaged in the boxes. I found a heap of romance novels, but they didn't interest me. Dug out some good detectives, they had even Chase. It pleased me. I found "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoyevsky. I thought to re-read it, but decided that was too depressive for a mental hospital. Other books were, generally little-known Soviet authors, but some interesting came across too. Could be enough to read for two years.
14.00
Lunch time. We ate Russian cabbage soup (phew), potato with a stewed meat (wonderful), bread and tea.
14.20
Meds time.
14.30
The smokers had a smoke.
15.00
The rest hour.
17.00
Supper. They served stewed cabbage, bread and kefir. Kefir was old so I gave it to my neighbor.
17.20
Taking tablets.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
Phone negotiations’ time. Some people gathered at the duty nurse post. The nurse left to have supper and to smoke with the nurse’s aides. We settled on a sofa and had a chat.
18.30
At last, the nurse came and gave our phones to us. I turned on the phone and some SMS came to me at once. One was from the familiar schizophrenic: "Please, take care! I’m worried for you". Probably, she guessed why I am not online. Other SMS was from the fellow black metal fan; he wished me a happy birthday. I answered SMS, called my mother and we had a talk. She promised to arrive to see me the next day.
19.00
– Anya! I heard in the smoking-room, the nurse said you would be transferred to our ward! – Olya told me. I was delighted. In nadzorka it was too noisy from violent patients and alcoholics.
19.10
I washed my head.
20.00
Cleaning time.
And I was transferred to the ward. I had almost no things, so it was easy to move. I came in and looked round. Marina was at the window, Vera laid in the center, on a zech’s bed there was Sveta, Masha – at another window in the middle of the room, Olya – round the corner, on a bed invisible to the nurse’s aides. My place was the most inconvenient. It was well looked through from a corridor’s window. "It will be difficult to eat at night", – I thought.
We started talking. It turned out, Sveta wrote fan fictions to animes. She was seventeen, and she already dreamed to get away from Russia, preferably to Japan.
– It is awful what happens to the country… there would never be a normal life here, – she spoke to us.
And Masha sat for computer’s theft at the boarding school. She was thirteen, and she already managed to sleep with lots of guys, to try drugs and to have an abortion.
21.00
Time of meds. Protsedurka (the treatment room) was almost opposite to our ward, therefore having heard the call "Tablets!" we jumped from the beds at once and ran into the corridor, to take our places in the queue. After taking meds we were sitting in the ward for a long time more talking about life.
– It is better not to get here at all, they will stuff you with haloperidol, then you could hardly recover after that, – Marina told me.
– Yes, for instance, they have everything in Canada, both psychotherapy and social services for patients, and the pension more than our normals’ salaries, and we have only the heaps of meds every day, – I answered.
21.20
They smoked.
December 17, 2014, Wednesday
6.00
Somewhere from the distance the shouting was heard: "We get up! We wash our lower parts!" But it didn't concern our ward. Since zeks inhabited it (and it was only a month ago) the nurse’s aides began to avoid the ward. The association of the ward with a cast-iron discipline was fixed, the nurse’s aides thought that the patients continue to jump up in six am and to do everything by the rules. Prinudchitsas loved clear-cut rules and supported all hospital orders, without making exceptions to anybody. Now no one was there to wake us up, and we slept off to our hearts content.
8.00
Breakfast. They served rice porridge, a slice of butter, a slice of cheese and tea.
8.20
Medication time.
9.30
Time of cleaning in the ward. Olya asked me to get a bucket and a mop. In the storeroom there were four sinks. Ten mops, one for each ward, hung on the wall. Cool fresh air from a window leaf was mingling with a bleaching powder smell. Some people stood in a queue at the door. They took the mops and filled the buckets with water from a separate sink, and the nurse poured out the detergent into a bucket to everyone. All patients washed their own ward, and some, dreaming of two or three cigarettes – the corridor.
9.35
We were led to the art therapy on the first floor. A small stuffy room and twenty people in it. The art therapy nurse recognized me. And I didn’t recognize her. There were several familiar guys from "inhabitants". There was a heap of amusing hand-made things on shelves, a bookcase, two old computers.
– What do you want to be engaged now? We’re cutting out figures for New Year garlands by today.
– I want to draw.
In drawing I usually had no imagination, so I took up standard topics: the street with the houses going into the distance, the girl at the latticed window, a flower vase. For one hour there were enough things to do for me.
Then I made my way to the bookcase. Vasya, my old acquaintance, played "Mishutka" by Letov on guitar.
– Oh, you play Lyotov.
– Not Lyotov, but Letov.
In the bookcase I found lots of detectives and some little classics. I decided to reread "Spark of life" by Remarque which read last time.
– What are you going to read? Remarque? And I have his collected works on the e-book reader! I can give you it for downloading, – Vasya suggested.
– We, at women's department, aren’t allowed to have even players, – I answered.
– They say, at men's department they allow everything because men are strong and can beat the shit out of them if something goes wrong, – noticed Marina.
In a few minutes the nurse’s aide came, and we were taken away for tea.
11.00
Tea time.
11.30
– The smokeys, go to smoke! – was heard from the corridor. The bulky nurse was driving the adequate smokers into a herd and sorting out the inadequate ones.
12.00
Mom arrived. She brought lots of food: bagels, cookies in packs and cookies weighed out in bags, sausage, peanuts, chocolates, my favourite Estrella chips. And, the most important, – she brought "Fitolaks" – a laxative. I didn't take a crap for a week already. With horror I recalled how last time I was picking out shit with my hands. Many patients had the same problem. Besides, the meds weren't allowed to be carried into the hospital. So it was necessary to hide them.
I put a pack of "Fitolaks" in the dressing gown pocket, a chocolate pack went the same way, a pack of peanuts went to another pocket. I ate sausage and chips at once, during the conversation with my mother. The rest was registered by the nurse and taken away to the warehouse with peredachkas (food given to patients from their relatives and friends).
It was hard to part. Mother was my one and only friend during the last years.
– I believe, you will recover, birdie! I will come to see you next week! – She told me.
14.00
Lunch. We ate broth with rice, bread, macaroni and tea. Macaroni were stuck together and unsalted.
15.00
On the rest hour we were led to the gynecologist. The elderly doctor liked to pick roughly in the bowels. And there were nearly twenty people. So we returned only in an hour.
17.00
Supper time. They served vegetables ragout and bread. Fortunately, without cabbage. I caught several long hairs. Then we washed it down with cocoa.
17.20
Somatic tablets.
17.30
They had a smoke.
20.00
The evening cleaning began. The smokers snatched away mops and buckets and scattered away to their areas. Yulya, the forty-year-old Jew, started washing the corridor near our ward, so everyone from our ward got inside. Passing by Yulya when she was washing the floor wasn’t unsafe. The stream of invectives accompanied everyone. Yulya had been staying in the hospital for four years.
I went to look for to Marina to play checkers, but she was busy. Marina was allotted with dust wiping in the general room and the corridor "by inheritance" from the discharged patient. The easiest work. I suggested helping her.
In the corridor I noticed a certain being. Nobody knew what her name was, and she wasn't able to speak. But everyone knew that she was biting nurse’s aides and even nurses. And once she nearly scratched another patient’s eyes. Having departed to a safe distance of three meters, I dipped a rag into a bucket and turned to work. Someone turned on the radio, and it became a little more cheerful there.
20.30
Yulya came near me and we went to have tea. Yulya once lived with an alcoholic father who beat her, and the cousin who tried to rape her. Now she lived in the nutbin and liked to have tea very much. It was better for her in the hospital than at home. She browsed the wards and collected the tea bags remaining from others patients.
We came into the bathroom, filled the plastic glasses with hot water and made some tea.
– If you get out sometime, call me. I will be home if the father is taken away on treatment.
– And will he agree to go to the hospital?
– The main thing is to catch him with militia, when he’s drunk. Look, don't go alone on the streets in the evening when you are discharged. Men feel when the person is from a mental hospital, and can attack you.
21.00
The nurse distributed meds.
21.20
Smoking.
December 18, 2014, Thursday
6.00
– Wakey! We take off the linen, except duvet covers! – was heard from the corridor.
– A bath day again! – Sasha, the elderly schizophrenic said. Her bed unfortunately, happened to be near mine, and every evening she stretched a hand when I ate cookies. It was impossible to refuse. It was unclear what to answer to the dumb “Give me!”
Once Sasha had a husband, a child and a job. The husband beat her. Reaching fifty years old she gradually grew dumb and started vagabonding through hospitals.
Olya was drowsily stretching herself. Some patients already started removing the linen. Marina’s linen was already removed. She managed to have gone to the laundry to help the nurse’s aides with washing.
I brought a heap of linen into the corridor. There already were three heaps: for blanket covers, for sheets and for towels with pillowcases.
8.00
For breakfast there was a millet cereal, a roll, butter, cheese, sausage and coffee.
– We’re parading! – Zina the drunk commented.
8.20
I was standing in the queue for drugs for half an hour as I ate long and had came from the dining room late.
9.30
Cleaning time. In our ward – the clear-out. The Vera was wiping bedside tables and window sills, and I was washing the floor wetly, Marina – was washing the floor dry. Olya was putting aside bedside tables and beds from the wall: she was the thickest and the strongest among us. The nurse came in:
– The shakedown! – Olya whispered.
– Let me look what you have in your bedside tables! – the nurse told us.
Raking out the food lying in temptation way and some garbage from bedside tables, she noticed yogurt on a window sill:
– Aha! It will be spoiled, you will poison yourselves! – and put it in the garbage bag.
There was a big package inside my bedside table, allegedly with clothes, which I stored cookies in. And I hid packs with juice behind the bedside table and under the bed. Everything was safe, but I was worried all the same.
The nurse walked along the beds, rummaged under the mattresses:
– You put there clothes again! Take everything to the laundry!
At last, she reached a bedside table of the newcomer, Alla:
– So much garbage here! Well, what’s it, I will complain to the doctor!
Alla stored crumbs of bread and rolls, and also collected orange-peels in the bedside table.
– And what a clean ward it was at prinudchiks’ time! Rita was able to put everything to rights!
On a window between the corridor and the ward there was an icon which Rita left to us to remember her.
9.50
The bathtime started. At first they had washed old women, and then – each ward, starting with ours. The second ward was an insulator, and the last, the ninth – for chairbound women.
There was a matron with the cart near the bathroom. She gave out to us dressing gowns, pants, linen and kept saying: "You have been laying on covers today again, I saw everything!"
I came into a glass office of nadzorka and asked some rubber slippers. In a corner I noticed a heap of slippers. But I was refused:
– You already have slippers on your feet, it’s not allowed!
My house slippers were from felt, but I had to get into the shower in them. I was afraid of a fungus.
There were two showers and one bath in the room. Me and Alla came in and started washing ourselves. Olya got into the bath. In five minutes several schizophrenic women from other ward squeezed their way through a crowd.
– Let me have a wash! – one of them shouted and pushed me aside from the shower. I had to share the place for two. In five minutes more I stopped washing. The feeling of a freshly-ironed dressing gown was very pleasant. It always happens when you don't take shower for ten days.
11.00
Tea time.
– Anechka, give me some cookies, please, my little sunshine! – Yulya ran up to me. I gave her a couple of cookies. She made the round of some more people. Yulya was very thin, tall and was hungry all the time. It was not possible for her to recover on hospital food.
I wrapped some cookies and peanut into a bag, put the bad into a dressing gown pocket, a chocolate half – in another pocket.
11.30
Smoking time.
14.00
Lunch time. They served pea soup with a cutlet, bread and tea. A cutlet was the tastiest dish in the hospital after a baked pudding. However, the baked pudding was already cancelled.
14.30
Smoking.
14.40
In the lavatory it was crowded and noisy. Someone was washing one’s lower parts, another was engaged in other things. In the corridor – a queue: the nurse checked if there were any louses and cut patients’ nails.
15.00
On the rest hour we talked about the subtleties of alcoholism. Lida, a newbie in the ward, who was an elderly drunk, was sharing her experience with Olya. Having sorted out the names of more than fifty drinks, they came to stories:
– And at our village the drunk killed a girl and raped her. They had hardly found him, he had been hiding in the woods for nearly three days, – Olya reported.
– And I’ve had an incident lately. The husband went on a business trip for two days, locked me in the house, well, so that I didn't drink. And could I care less? I always have a stash hidden somewhere! I go to the cellar, get two bottles of vodka. I’ve used up one bottle, got drunk. Seems enough already. Left another bottle for morning to freshen the nip. I wake up in the morning, sober, my head hurts. I go to the kitchen, look, and there‘s a bottle with "fly-agaric tincture" stuck on it. I did it myself, but I forgot! I nearly got poisoned! – Lida told us.
17.00
Supper. The patients working in the dining room told everyone that there would be a beet salad. And a slice of white loaf. So it turned out to be true. And there was an apple juice yet.
– In normal hospitals they give milk or kefir in the evenings, and here there’s five o’clock supper and we starve till morning! I will report them! – Valya the drunk was grumbling. – And they don’t give out peredachka in the evening. Outrageous!
Opposite to me Zoya sat. Once she was a factory director, but then she became an inveterate drunkard, lost her memory, and her relatives put her into a nutbin. She didn't recognize her relatives, but could keep up the conversation like the normal person:
– And we painted plaster figures yesterday during art therapy! The head physician came, he was delighted. We have the most beautiful office of all the hospital there.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
Cleaning time. Yulya huddled us into the ward, and we again talked about life in the wild.
21.00
Time of pills’ taking.
21.20
Smoking.
December 19, 2014, Friday
8.00
We got up late, nobody awoke us, and we even nearly overslept. Many patients got used to washed their lower parts by the breakfast time, but there were also those who had been dirty and unwashed all week till the bath day, with blood and a shit because nobody checked them.
When everyone had already gone to have breakfast, the nurse’s aide ran in and began to bother Olya who still hadn’t got up.
– Don't awake me! Fuck off! – Olya snapped at the nurse and wrapped herself in a blanket more tightly.
For breakfast there was semolina porridge, a roll, butter, a blue-green egg and tea.
8.20
We took pills.
9.00
It was snowing in flakes outside the window. I was lying on the bed, freezing and recalling how nice it had been in hospital in summer.
We had been let for a walk in a wooden corral. There were hardly enough room for thirty five patients there, and we walked in circles. The nurse’s aides distributed cigarettes, two for the whole walk. Maugli-girl was jumping and showing her ivories in the corner, all patients were afraid to approach her: she had already tried to put out eyes of the nurse’s aides. Many patients sat on the benches and sunbathed. Some even undressed and stayed in their pants.
Once me, Vika and one more woman were sent to weed the flowerbeds. It was evening and all feet were bitten by mosquitoes but it was such happiness – to stay outside hospital walls for a while.
9.30
Cleaning time.
I learned from my friends that, except the general walks, there’s also “a free exit” now. The patients were released to take a walk from 15.00 till 17.00 in groups. On the general walks patients were let rarely, only in good weather and when the nurse’s aides had a good mood. I went to Irina Dmitriyevna, and she let me have “a free exit”. The nurse included me into the schedule of walks.
– It’s high time! There is no need for you to sit locked up! – the therapist said.
9.35
We didn't go to art therapy because the nurse got sick with flu, and the second manager of art therapy couldn't take so many groups at once. Along with us, the men's groups of three departments went there. I continued to read Remarque.
11.00
Tea time. I again treated Yulya and neighbors in a table with some food. Peredachka was quite large yet.
11.30.
Smoking.
14.00
For lunch there was a soup with canned fish, some bread and stewed cabbage. Then – compote with dried fruits.
– They’ve frazzle us out with their cabbage! So many people poisoned from it last year! – Valya the drunk grumbled.
There were some hairs in the compote, and I didn't drink it.
14.20
Meds time.
Suddenly there seemed some liveliness in the corridor. The nurses began running around. The stretcher was carried somewhere.
– Zina drunk beat the small! The biiitch! – Yulya squealed.
– The crud! – Olya agreed.
The small was a paralyzed girl of thirteen years old.
– There’s almost no blood pressure. Concussion, perhaps.
Soon the ambulance arrived and the girl was taken away.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
Me and three more people went out for a walk. Natasha, a diets nurses of fifty five years old, told us about the shortcomings of a local cuisine which we already knew about. Her father was hit to death by the car, and she lost her memory from shock. She had been in the hospital for month and was gradually recovering.
– I will make them a good life. I know that guy. He came to me and offered five thousand rubles! I will file a lawsuit for moral damage. The dad had been driving quietly on a bicycle; he could have lived twenty years more…
I told her about my unhappy love.
– You should forget him. To give up on him and never to recall again. That’s why you have all problems, – she advised. – If you have enough willpower, everything will be fine. I saw life, I know what I talk about.
17.00
Supper. They served us ragout with cabbage, bread and milk.
– Baked pudding isn't given on Fridays now, – Vika informed us.
– Crisis, they’re saving money, – Zina answered.
17.20
Tablets
17.30
Smoking
18.00
I had a phone calls day and I called my mother. Talked about material problems. Both were upset and quarreled with one another. My mom didn't consider me mentally ill.
– You’re playing the fool and faking it, you just drank much. You don’t have any illness – it’s laziness. And if you’re sick, take disability and stay at home, go to the hospital every year.
– But disability’s money is not enough even for meds!
– Then work. No need for whining!
I wanted to recharge the phone, but some nurse wrapped up the charger, thrusting into a package, so that it ceased to work.
19.00
Cleaning time. I crept by Yulya into the lavatory. I was followed by curses:
– You, the stinker, gadding on a clean floor! A-a-ah, it is Anechka! Well, don't walk here.
21.00
Took pills. Went to bed. But no. Olya took her mobile phone from the nurse (she was allowed a lot of things, as "a normal") and started listening to pop hits. Masha was singing along. Then they started to discuss chanson novelties. Marina showed interest too. I learned a lot of new things, but the sleeping mood left me. Only by twelve o'clock Olya was tired of listening and went to bed. Usually I fell asleep in about two hours. But in half an hour already Olya started snoring loudly. "Not to forget to tell mother about earplugs" – I thought.
21.20
The smokers had a smoke.
December 20, 2014, Saturday
8.00
We got up late. On day off it was so pleasant to have a rest from doctors. The nurse’s aides didn't rage since morning: there was nobody there to brag with freshly-washed patients’ cunts.
I got up five minutes before breakfast, cleaned teeth, washed away my lower parts, wiped all places with one small towel and ran to catch up with the crowd of patients, streaming from doors towards the dining room.
They fed us with rice porridge, a slice of roll, a slice of butter and tea. “Actively working patients” were given out two or three slices of a roll and were the first to be given the additive (when it happened to be). Many were eager to work at the catering department and at the dining room – there the patients were fed up, given hot tea and allowed to take peredachka in the evenings. But only from six to eight patients got into the category of "working ones".
8.20
Meds time. The brand new nurse with an inquisitive look didn't know our names, so everyone had to tell one’s surname. The nurse’s aides had been sawing some tablets to small parts for a long time, then they were pushing meds into a disobedient granny’s mouth even longer:
– Come on, swallow!
– Come on, swallow! I don't want to! Leave me alone! – the granny was shouting and was trying to escape into her ward. She had amnesia, and she repeated words after everyone.
9.30
Cleaning time. I had nothing to do we washed the ward in turns. I put the chairs on beds and went to a corridor with the book.
11.00
Tea time. Having seen two big packages which were brought to me by the nurse, many patients began to glance greedily at my direction.
– Anechka, treat me with something, – Yulya asked.
I had to give her some cookies. But, having seen it, others started asking for food too. I had to divide the cookies into five patients who sat most close to me. "I will have to get food out from the bag more carefully next time", – I thought.
14.00
Lunch. They gave us borsch, bread and macaroni with liver. Macaroni was tasty, and liver - not, but everything was mixed, so I had to push food into myself.
14.20
Tablets.
14.30
They smoked.
15.00
We went for a walk. There were no scarves in a dressing room where we took clothes. I had to tie winter leggings around my neck. The mittens and the socks knitted at the art therapy were in boxes. I chose the most beautiful mittens, blue with a red pattern, and a thin knitted white hat. Put on a huge autumn coat with a lining. I had not a winter look, but there were no other clothes. Natasha put on the only fur coat. Boots were rag. On velcros. I found the thirty seventh size though I had the thirty fifth one.
It was slushy, and we walked, trying to bypass pools. The boots got wet from within quickly.
In half an hour, having frozen, we reached a bench and sat down to rest. Natasha and her girlfriend Galya lit the cigarettes.
– The fellow nurses gave me a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, – Natasha told us.
– Give me a cig too, – I asked.
– You don't smoke, it seems.
– Once a year it is possible. It’s dreary here.
Natasha got a cigarette and a sugar candy from her pocket, offered them to me.
– Yes, there is nothing to do here. I asked the shrink to be let out by New Year, but she is balking. Don't know how it will turn out. We have already bought the wine, and invited the guests.
17.00
Supper. We ate potato with fish, bread and tea. There were so many bones in the fish, that is it was impossible to eat it. I gave it to the neighbor. A lemon slice was floating in the tea, on the occasion of weekend.
17.20
Meds.
A newcomer arrived. It turned out that it was Nastya, my old acquaintance. She had voices. She was put in nadzorka.
17.30
I asked a fellow nurse to let me go to smoke.
In a smoking-room it was noisy and stuffy. Some started quarrels, others smoked silently. Some women with a zeky look quietly watched things happening, standing aloof. Two well-fed schizophrenics, Vera and Nastya, were excitedly discussing something in the corner.
– Well, you don't know, who my friend is! He is from rogues! We have the most expensive car in the city. I had been put here accidentally at all, and then I will be in another hospital, much better than it! – Vera shouted.
– Well, I won’t tell here yet, who comes to me! I have such friends that you can’t dream about! – Nastya answered.
– Who comes to you, only militia!
– Well, and militia comes too, so what? Mom is old, she calls the police when I have voices, she is afraid I will kill her or myself. Well, just the last week – I’ve been washing in a bathroom, and suddenly they come.
– They?
– They, the very them. They say to me, psych up and come out. And I say, and here I am, as it is, what should I do, to go out naked? I’ve come out naked to them. Made me put clothes on. Do they have a right to come to people when they’re taking shower?!
– Yea, it’s complete outrage!
– This chief physician is from Nazis, I know for sure. Such doses of meds are only given at concentration camps.
19.00
Cleaning. After two-hours of wandering along the corridor and listening to heart-piercing stories my head was hooting. I crept past Yulya who was protecting the corridor with a mop. Irina Dmitriyevna passed by, she was on her duty.
– Pass by, lassies, don’t linger! – Yulya told us.
– What is it, they already don’t let the doctors pass by. It’s clean here, – Irina Dmitriyevna smiled.
19.30
I succeeded to break through into the bathroom and to wash my head. There was already a queue: all adequate patients liked to get into the shower and to take a steam.
21.00
Time for meds.
21.20
The nurse led all the smokers to smoke again. It was dark outside, and it was good to look at the pink light of street lamps, inhaling cigarettes’ smoke. And to calculate, how many cigs will be left till relatives’ arrival. And sometimes to save, asking neighbors for cigs. A fellow knucklebone from "long-time residents" was smoking Belomor, but I didn't want to try it.
Vika was talking about the guy who hung himself with a bed sheet in the next, men's department, on New Year's Eve.
21.50
Olya incidentally learned that my phone charger had been broken.
– So Galina Fyodorovna has a Siemens phone too, we have to try! Let’s go to the post, I with will go with you and ask the nurse, they all know me here.
We came to Galina Fyodorovna and asked for her permission. Her phone had been broken, and the daughter hadn’t brought a new one yet. Galina Fyodorovna was left without her apartment by some swindlers. She was going to be let out from the hospital sometimes to visit her relatives, she was very glad about that.
We passed on to the post and checked the chargers. It turned out that they were identical, and we exchanged them. I was very glad and treated Olya with cookies.
22.00
Masha and Olya went for their peredachkas with the nurse. They were practically the only ones who were given out their food. Masha was still a child and aroused some sympathy, and Olya worked as much as ten people. They brought instant noodles, the cheapest, in small bags.
– My mom brought noodles for everyone, we gonna eat it now! – Masha said and distributed the noodles to me, Vera, Marina and Olya.
After long negotiations we handed over our mugs to the nurse’s aide, and she went to fill them with boiling water. We brewed noodles in cups. Olya had a plastic tray from ice cream, so she poured out water there. The smell of spices spread around the ward. We were blissing out.
Suddenly the nurse’s aide peeked into the ward:
– The doctor is coming! The round! – She shouted.
We hid the noodles under beds and under the table. Irina Dmitriyevna peeked in:
– What a delicious smell is here at your place! – She smiled at us. – Well, have a rest, good night!
22.10
After the round we continued our postsupper. Masha took out some sausage and bread, she made sandwiches. Her mother visited her not long ago. Olya poured out some juice to everyone. I treated my ward neighbors with peanut and candies.
There was no wish to sleep, and Olya brought her phone from the post, turned on some prison music. I felt good.
00.00
I was disturbed by the voices from behind the wall. Each rustle turned into the whispering of strangers. I even left the ward to check whether the nurses on the post were whispering. But everything was silent. It only seemed to me.
December 21, 2014, Sunday
6.00
Olya woke me up early.
– We will go now to clean lavatories, then to you will be allowed to smoke! – she promised me.
Me, Olya and Vika cleared out five "sanitary rooms" and three personnel lavatories, Olya accompanied by the nurse went to take out the garbage outside.
7.00
The nurse’s aide led our small company of "working patients" into the smoking-room. Having opened a window leaf and having turned on the fan, she got the packs of cigs from the box and started calling surnames and distributing cigarettes.
– Even three to you? Try not to become stoned!
We were smoking silently, exchanging a few words now and then. It seemed that we had known each other for ten years. From time to time somebody got up from a bench or from the floor and went to the bucket, to shake the ashes.
– Earlier when there had been two separate departments, it was paradise here. And now they even don’t allow us to smoke quietly, twenty people are crammed into one smoking-room, there’s so much smoke as if it’s a fire.
– Yep, just look over there, there’re beds in the corridor. People do arrive every day, and there is no place for them.
8.00
For breakfast there was oatmeal, a roll, a cube of butter of three centimeters, and a slice of cheese ten centimeters long and three centimeters wide. Many were hungry since evening already and now chased each other for additive. In a pan there remained enough porridge for only five or six additional portions, and it wasn't enough for all.
The nurse’s aide distributed the extra pieces of rolls to the "working" patients. I ate a third of porridge and moved away the plate with disgust. Starving before tea drinking awaited me.
8.20
– To meds! – the nurse cried, – Swoop, and there might be not enough drugs for all.
Indeed, there were not enough tablets at the end of the week, and sometimes we had to do without them. The dopey patients took meds, washed them down with water, licked their lips and went to their wards to wait for ten pm.
9.30
Olya was cleaning the ward. She almost always cleaned the ward. Vigorously she undertook all work at once: helped in the dining room, fed grannies, washed away bed-patients, washed the floors, cleaned "sanitary rooms", watered the flowers, watched troublesome grannies on wheel chairs in the corridor, separated the scrappers, weeded the flowerbeds, took out the garbage in the mornings, worked in the laundry, helped to fix the violent. Any other patient couldn’t manage to do all this at once. And Olya could. She hoped to be let out earlier, but it didn't help: she stayed the whole year.
Olya ran to help the nurse’s aides to wash an insulator. There was still laying and dying the syphilitic-scabby-tubercular patient. Meanwhile the nurse’s aide came to us:
– Masha, to the separate ward. Collect your linen and go to the enema room, we will put you there.
– What happened?
– Fluorography showed some speck, they suspect tuberculosis.
Masha began to cry.
… in half an hour Masha returned back to our ward. The order was cancelled for some reason. She began to re-make the linen again, we helped her.
– Strange, – Marina said.
11.00
The tea time.
The nurse’s aide brought me a package with food. I noiselessly pulled out the cookies and dried fruits from the package put a small group on the table and put in front of it two bottles of yogurt. I refused to feed Yulya and didn't give her any food. I had to feed only the two patients who sat next to me and saw the food. Then I, as usual, spread out the slices of chocolate and cookies into the pockets, handed over the bags with food, threw out the garbage into a basket, took yogurt in a hand and inserted it into a dressing gown’s sleeve. So I managed to pass by the vigilant nurse’s aide.
At the exit from the dining room there was a shakedown. Not every time, but sometimes this happened.
– Show your pockets! – The nurse shouted.
I made an impenetrable quiet face and passed by. I was known as an adequate patient, so they weren’t going to check me.
11.30
Having come into the smoking-room, I felt that everyone is talking about me. I was sure that they know my thoughts and speak about me. But I didn't tell them about it. After all the hospital – only cover for providing safety to me. Well-selected actors, that is all. But I knew the truth. All relatives and neighbors are talking about me. The whole world is talking about me, and everyone wants to kill me. This hospital is my only shelter.
– Tell nothing to nobody, or they will keep you here longer. – one already discharged girl warned me, – Don't laugh, don't cry. They will notice and they will write it down. Then it will be worse.
14.00
The crowd of patients was driven for lunch. I didn't want to break away from the interesting detective story that I had recently found in a corridor bedside table. In this story the girl, the daughter of the billionaire living in a mental hospital ran away from there after he died, killed some people, brought the lover, then she was shot in the head, she was ill for some time and then became normal. A very tempting plot.
For supper they served rassolnik, buckwheat cereal with liver, bread and tea. I gave my bread to Zina the drunk; it was worth to be in good relations with her. When she was in low spirits, she beat everyone who came to hand in the heat of the moment.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
After the lunch all patients were nervous. The oncoming three hours without tobacco are a trial too. In the smoking-room a dispute on cigarette butts nearly developed into a fight. Vika as the one having the greatest intelligence resolved the dispute, having forbidden Sasha to beg for cigs butts from others and to pick them up in a garbage can. All were irritated by the continuous running with stubs.
After visiting the smoking-room we approached a nadzorka’s window. There was a men's department on the opposite side. Unfamiliar faces of young guys were looking out the windows. We began to wave hands to them. They showed something by signs too. Some girls were going to pass them on little notes through the nurse’s aides.
17.00
On the rest hour I couldn’t sleep, so I had been reading until it got dark. Then the brown shadows were sliding on the wall, there came the dusk and soon the pink lights of streetlamps on hospital walls were getting visible. This pleasant twilight was interrupted by switching on the light in the corridor.
Having been tired of reading, I was glad to snatch on the stewed cabbage, bread and milk.
17.20
Somatic meds.
19.00
Masha told her story. She stole a computer from her roommate in a boarding school, and was put into the hospital on compulsory treatment.
21.00
Time of tablets.
I realized that I was having delirium again. It was necessary to sort out all crazy thoughts in the correct order and to analyze each so that they stopped being delirium. It won’t be done in a single day…
21.20
Smoking.
December 22, 2014, Monday
6.00
– Wakey! To wash your lower parts! – was heard from the corridor.
I opened my eyes. The glaring greenish light of a night lamp filled the sleeping ward. Between the beds some woman was prowling.
– And where do you think you’re going? – I asked her.
– I need some cream if you have it. I need to smear my lip, the nurse doesn't have anything.
Olya woke up and shouted: – Ah well, fuck off from here, scat! We don't let strangers into the ward! Check, girls, she might have snitched something!
We started checking the bedside tables. Everything appeared to be at place.
– You do need to hide everything, so that nothing was in sight. They’re stealing like magpies. Especially those, the fucked up, which are inadequate.
8.00
For breakfast there was buckwheat, a roll, butter, cheese and tea.
– Who wants an extra slice of cheese?! – the nurse’s aide asked. – One spare piece remained.
Twenty hands were stretched to her. The nurse’s aide handed the cheese to her fellow drunk.
There was a little hair floating in the tea again. I gave it to the neighbor. I had a juice pack stored up all the same.
8.20
Meds.
9.30
Instead of cleaning or art therapy I was suddenly directed to the psychologist. It turned out to be the girl who I had even been studying at the same University with.
– Why have you got here?
– It is long history. I’m here for the fourth time already. Since the age of sixteen I was strange and had strange notions. Then paranoia started. At first, when I wasn't officially sick yet, I mixed up one chess player with another on the site where I had been playing, and went to Moscow. There I spent night at the railway station and arrived home later. Then, in two years time, I started to think that my schoolmate, whom I was in love with, was pursuing me on the Internet. I sent my old diary to him. He didn’t answer. So I started searching for him on the chess site where I had been playing, and asking everyone about him. Once one chess player from Baku set up himself as my schoolmate wrote me SMS and enticed me there. I went and had to spend a night there, as I had not enough money, he gave me money for a way back. And then, in half a year more, I had psychosis, thought that I was pursued by all people on Earth, who were reading my mind and surrounding my house with their agents, making me signs on the Internet and on the street. And I’m God and all prophets in one. Then I had psychosis three more times, but without special "ideas". As soon as I cease to take meds, I begin having thoughts about people chasing me; I can do nothing about it.
– Yes, a strange story. Well, alright, the main thing is that you realize your illness. And why do you stop taking meds?
– Because it seems to me that I already recovered, well, that is, reached some remission, and I can do without them. But I have already tried three times and everything was going wrong. I won't experiment anymore.
We fell into talk. She was doing practical training and was glad for an opportunity to fill me up with tests. An hour passed interestingly and not tediously.
11.00
On the tea drinking time Tanechka approached me.
– Give me a candy, the greedy person! – She yelled. I had to buy her off with cookies.
Sasha approached and looked at me with such a sad hungry look that I was sorry for her and treated her with cookies too.
Mom gave me enough cookies to stock, knowing how much they steal from peredachkas. There remained a lot. "It will be enough till the end of the week!" – I thought.
11.30
The patients smoked. And I decided not to go smoking any more. It was tasteless, unpleasant and obsessive. The time when you smoke, you want to die most of all.
14.00
Lunch time. They served potato soup, liver, bread and cocoa. The liver was overroasted, soup – oversalted, and cocoa – undersugared.
14.20
Pills.
14.30
Smoking time.
15.00
We went for a walk again. Took four rounds round the building. Vika met her man; they had been kissing and smoking together for long. The group of patients from men's department greeted us while they passed by:
– Hi, little girls! When are you going to be discharged?
– As the therapist tells, – Natasha answered.
– And I live here, – Vika told them.
– Us too!
17.00
There came the supper. They gave us tasty cabbage salad, bread, cutlet and tea.
17.20
Somatic meds.
17.30
They had a smoke.
19.00
Sveta told me how she had been bullied at school, because she loved anime. She was going to be transferred to distance learning so that not to communicate with schoolmates. We appeared to have mutual favourite animes; we couldn’t start a conversation, of course: I wasn't able to maintain a conversation. But I liked to listen to her.
Meanwhile Alla picked up the crumbs after the supper and put them into a bedside table.
– I’m nervous, – she told me, pulling the door handle for the tenth time. – The husband beat me, and then I had anorexia.
Alla had legal education too, as well as Marina.
– How is my son there, he lives with my father, I’m worried for him, how will they get on together.
– And I had to leave my son alone in the flat. I don't know where he is now. They don't allow call me to call anywhere. And I have no neighbor’s phone. Probably, they took him away into a children’s shelter. I’m so worried, – Dasha answered.
Here all the ward began to worry.
– How is it, the mother is taken away from her son, and he is alone in the apartment! I will talk to the nurse. It is necessary to find it out! – Olya said.
Dasha left to the lavatory.
– This Dasha is strange, – noticed Marina. – If she had been normal, she would have talked to the doctor long ago.
20.00
Cleaning time.
21.00
Time of meds.
21.20
Smoking.
December 23, 2014, Tuesday
6.00
– We get up, dolls! We wash our pussies! – the nurse’s aide was chirping vigorously.
This time they dared to prevent us from sleep. We had to endure ten minutes and to simulate a flurry of activity of making our beds. Then all of us again settled to doze till breakfast.
8.00
They served barley porridge, butter, a roll, coffee and sausage. I was given two slices of butter. I was lucky.
8.20
Meds.
9.30
Olya and others stayed to wash the ward, and I with Marina went to the art therapy. There already was a New Year’s preparation going on with might and main. Self-made Father Frost and the Snow Maiden stood on the table. We did garlands from paper lambs. Some patients cut out lambs with a stencil; others strung them on a thread with a needle. In an hour the cabinet’s walls were decorated with multi-colored garlands.
11.00
Tea time. This time instead of tea they gave us yogurt.
11.30
Smoking.
14.00
I had been reading detective stories of my favourite authors till lunch. We were fed with Russian cabbage soup, potato with a stewed meat, bread and tea.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
The smokers smoked.
15.00
During the rest hour an old lady died. We strolled to the mortuary on the first floor. It was pleasant to take the air.
17.00
Supper. They gave us stewed cabbage, bread and kefir.
17.20
Somatic meds.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
I called my mom. I asked her to buy chips, sanitary pads, earplugs and laxatives. Mother cried. She promised to arrive on Saturday. I was upset.
19.00
The nurse allowed us to turn the radio on, and we started dancing. Tanechka joined us too. She was elderly and ugly, but sometimes kind. Having critically inspected dancing, she addressed to me:
– And why didn't you give me bagels at supper? A meeeanie!
Then she changed the topic:
– And you are pretty. Not beautiful, but pretty. Why are you looking at me? Why are all of you looking at me?
Tanechka’s eyes started to roll up, and the nurse gave her cyclodolum from side effects.
19.30
I washed my head.
20.00
Suddenly the shouts were heard. We left the ward to have a look and to see what happened. Tanechka, having cut herself a hand, was walking and smearing the blood on the walls. She was taken away into the ward, tied with belts and made an injection. Smokers the volunteers started erasing the blood. They were engaged in it even for half an hour.
21.00
Time of meds.
I didn't try to take a first place in the queue now, as it was impossible: the patients started taking their turns in half an hour to nine. I was waiting till all the patients pass so that not to be standing in the queue for fifteen minutes. When there were about five people left, I got into the queue. Took medicines and returned to the ward. The nurse started calling out surnames of those who had been late.
– Alla, to meds!
Alla got up, made her bed, rearranged the cover once again. Retreated, once again rearranged the cover. Opened a bedside table, collected crumbs, got up. Once again rearranged the cover, approached the door, touched the handle, opened the door, touched the door handle once again, opened the door once again and left.
21.20
Smoking.
December 24, 2014, Wednesday
6.00
– We get up! We wash our lower parts! – the nurse’s aide shouted. We continued to sleep. Marina got up, put her clothes on, made her bed and left to help washing clothes in the laundry.
The nurse’s aide came into the ward:
– Olya, go to clean the lavatories!
– I won't go, I want to sleep, go to hell!
– Ah well, here is how you behave, well, don't ask for tea then!
Olya wrapped up in a blanket with her head covered and started to snore.
8.00
Breakfast. They served rice porridge, a roll, butter and tea. Olya sat and drank the tea, looking happy: the therapist told her that there will be a proceeding after the holidays.
– I will get home, I will ask mom to buy me new furniture into the room. We will live there with my boyfriend, we will get married. I won't drink anymore not to get involved in shit again. We will have a dog and a cat. We had them so many, when I had been living in the residential home!
8.20
Meds.
9.30
Cleaning. I went to the art therapy. Today they were making paper baskets. They were reeling up the old newspapers on knitting needles and stuck together the tips. The ready sticks were bound together into baskets. One was already made, there were balls for knitting there.
Marina was sitting and knitting a little sock.
– And you remember, Anya, how you had knitted a beret and a scarf? So beautiful they were. Irina Dmitriyevna loved it.
At the computer the nurse was sitting and watching some movie. Guys were sitting and playing games at other computer intended for patients. Masha with her new boyfriend the prinudchik were sitting in the corner, gluing paper sticks and feeling each other.
11.00
Tea drinking time. We were taken away from art therapy and led to the dining room at once. My place had been already taken; I had to drive away some old lady from it. Having filled my pockets with cookies and chocolate, I quickly got to tea. On tea only fifteen minutes were allotted, during this time it was necessary to manage to receive peredachka from a long iron table on castors, to eat it and to stuff the stash into pockets. We were given out apples. They were allowed to be carried to the department. I wasn't lucky with yogurt: the vigilant nurse noticed it and I had to rummage in peredachka again and to change it for juice. Juice couldn’t be spoiled.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
I passed on into the common room, opened the collection of Strindberg’s works which I brought from the art therapy, and tried to read a bit. It was hard to read through the fog of neuroleptics.
14.00
Lunch. We ate broth with rice, bread and macaroni. Drank tea.
14.20
We ate meds. I incidentally learned that Luda, my favourite elderling from the ninth ward had died half a year ago.
Luda went everywhere, leaning on a chair back because she had sore feet. I named her Frida. Her spiteful relatives were guilty that she was in the hospital. As well as everyone’s. Once she worked at the plant where pianos were made. She liked me because I wrote out to her from the Bible "God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered".
– God sent me such trials. I know, there were artificial icons at our house, a fake. I wanted to check. When abbe came to visit us, I found an icon in his bag, sprinkled water on it and put there crumbs. And it turned out to be from paper! They’re all against me; they all are only thinking how to keep me here till death. I threatened to kill them all, well I won't leave the hospital anymore …
"And those who hate him shall flee before him! As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before fire". All of them are fated the God's judgment at the other world. Nobody will be bypassed by him.
– And you know who I was in my past life? – I whispered something into her ear.
– I believe you. And your birthmarks don’t lie.
Looking at her kind tired face, it was impossible to think that she will never see her grandchildren, won't enter her own home. But it was so. Now she was gone.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
At the rest hour I thought of work and how difficult it was to find it. I recalled my attempts to work as a manager, a barman. Usually everything came to an end with minutes vanishing from my memory or I fell into hibernation for two days, or I felt like burping from fatigue. And there were no works, except shop assistant and cleaners. I recalled my teacher’s words: – In your city it’s only possible to work either as a teacher, or as a cleaner!
Communicate with people was too tiresome for me. I thought about finding a simple work where I wouldn't be tired. I recalled a small shop where I started working and could have received four thousand rubles a month, there it was good.
17.00
They served ragout from vegetables, bread and cocoa.
– Without cabbage at last! – the patients noisily rejoiced.
Vika spread out five pieces of bread before her – an award for a good cleaning.
– It’s high time for you to be registered into the staff, you would get a pension rise! –Valya the drunk told her.
– Well, who will register her, she even has no passport, probably, – some elderly woman objected.
– She does have a passport, she receives the pension! – Olya said.
17.20
Somatic tablets.
17.30
The smokers had a smoke.
19.00
Me and Dasha were walking about the corridor. She told:
– And the doctor called me into her office. She learned about my son, he is alright. I'm so glad! Now, when I will arrive, I will have to file a lawsuit so that he was returned to me.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Pills.
21.20
Smoking time.
December 25, 2014, Thursday
6.00
– Get up! Wash your lower parts! – was heard from a corridor. The sound was muffled – our ward was far from the main post. We continued to sleep.
8.00
Breakfast. We ate a roll, millet cereal, cheese, butter, sausage and tea.
– Today they feed us well, – Natasha, the dietary nurse by profession noticed.
– Will you go for a walk today? – I asked her.
– You bet! Yesterday we took six rounds! If it’s not slushy, we will go.
8.20
Meds.
9.30
Cleaning. We were having a clear-out. But me and Marina went to the art therapy. This time – little paper flowers. We did cuts across the strips of multi-colored paper. Separately we did flowers’ cores – small tubules. Reeled up the tubules with fringe on stripes, stuck it and fluffed "the flowers".
– We will make big hearts by St. Valentine's Day, those who won't be discharged yet! – the nurse promised. – For now – we will decorate Father Frost with the Snow Maiden.
Masha was whispering something to her boyfriend. When the nurse turned away, they kissed. He held her by the bottom all the time.
My turn to sit down at the computer approached. I found a chess program and was playing chess for half an hour yet.
Then the nurse’s aide came to take us away. Leaving the cabinet, I noticed that Masha gave a chocolate to the nurse.
11.00
Tea.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
We asked to go to walk a bit earlier. Took five rounds. It was frosty. The snow crackled under our feet. Natasha told about her family, how the spiteful relatives took away the apartment from them, how her brother had been staying in prison for two years, and then was found not guilty. They hadn’t paid any compensation to him.
– Considered that the state had been wasting money for his contents, housing and food two years. Decided that it was enough for him.
14.00
Lunch. They fed us with pea soup, a cutlet, bread and tea.
14.20
Drugs intake.
14.30
– Smokers, to smoke!
The crowd of smokers rushed to an iron door. I was glad that I had given up smoking: it was both harmful, and the doctor could learn about it and keep me longer.
16.00
Was watching a pink shadow on the wall. Didn't think of anything.
17.00
Supper. They gave us beet salad (what muck!), bread and apple juice.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
Me and Marina went to the common room to play checkers. Then watched TV. I recalled that that day was catholic Christmas.
20.00
Sat at the post and waited for the shift of nurses to change. Chatted with nurses and nurse’s aides. The nurses from another shift came. The smokers started washing the floors.
21.00
Drugs intake.
21.20
Smoking. And to sleep.
December 26, 2014, Friday
6.00
We woke up from a jingle of buckets in a lavatory. Fell asleep again.
8.00
Had breakfast. Ate semolina porridge, blue-green eggs, a roll, butter and tea.
8.30
Ate tablets. Zina had an epilepsy attack again.
9.30
I was led to the psychologist once more. Did different tests. I had known many of them because I had been carrying out them myself on fellow students and pupils. It seems, I made everything correctly. I was a little tired.
11.00
Had tea. My peredachka was almost finished. I started being afraid of "evening hunger", but someone always had a piece of bread in our ward.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
– Peredachkas are brought! – was heard from the corridor. The patients with disability bustled to a department’s door. Peredachkas, ordered by them, were brought once in a fortnight, and sometimes less often. Now the long queue awaited them to put the signature in documents, and to register all the food.
14.00
Lunch. Ate soup with fish canned food, bread, stewed cabbage and compote with dried fruits.
15.00
The walkers left to walk, but I felt a little sick and didn't go. I asked the nurse for cold drops.
17.00
We ate ragout with cabbage, bread and milk.
17.20
– Somatika! – The nurse’s aide shouted.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
I called my mom. We had been talking for ten minutes. Still I managed to call my fellow schizophrenic girl, talked to her for five minutes. Then the nurse called the calling patients to hand over their phones.
18.30
I washed my head.
19.00
Walked with Katya about the corridor. She had big plans. She wanted to open online store. She also worked as the accountant at home and the consultant in some company that was pushing wellness food to people.
– And you come to St. Petersburg, you can do so much. We will find you client, you will be teaching chess and English. Or perhaps we will open an online store together!
Started talking about men.
– And I quarreled with my husband once and decided to have a good time: I got onto a dating site and got acquainted with a guy. His name was Ahmet. He offered me foot massage for free! And I just needed a massage therapist, we agreed to meet in a Spa salon of my friend. I arrived there, and my friend dissuaded me, he said, Ahmet needed sex, not massage.
20.00
Evening cleaning. Yulya huddled us into the ward.
21.00
Time of meds.
21.20
They smoked.
December 27, 2014, Saturday
8.00
Again we were having a rest from therapists. Nobody awoke us. Two people from our ward overslept and some more from other wards for breakfast. They served us rice porridge, a roll, butter and tea.
8.20
Took pills.
9.30
Cleaning time.
11.00
Tea drinking. I distributed the last cookies to the hungry elderly schizophrenics.
12.00
My mother arrived. She brought a lot of different kinds of food, earplugs and laxatives. We had been embracing one another for long, mother cried. We had been speaking for half an hour.
13.00
I went to a conversation with the therapist (she had been on duty that day). Irina Dmitriyevna was surprised:
– Why don’t you take meds, you come here – and recover in three days!
– I wanted to try how it gonna be without them.
– It’s the third time you "try". It is necessary to drink them all the time and not to stop. Look at me, I’m seventy, I take pills every day, and I don't complain of my health!
14.00
Lunch. We ate soup with canned fish, stewed cabbage, bread and compote from dried fruits.
14.20
Pills.
14.30
The smokers went to smoke.
15.00
I didn't go for a walk. There was no wish, there was laziness to run five circles around the building and I was still sick with cold.
At the rest hour we were discussing New Year:
– Mom will come to see me, she will bring gifts. I ordered a pickled chicken, Russian salad and candies! – Olya told us.
– And I will be brought sausage. We will have a party! – Masha answered.
In our ward the patients who had food, were going to arrange a festive table.
– I would order some salad from restaurant and cheese yet, but my sister won't arrive till New Year, – Marina said. – They say, there will be a disco and tea drinking soon at the art therapy, – she rejoiced us all. – Masha will be dancing with her groom!
– Well, what the fuck do you mean? This is a zek, she should break up with him, till it’s not too late! She will leave the hospital – and the "happy life" will start again! Oh, Mashka! Well, why are you being so silly? – Olya spoke.
Masha was sitting and smiling blissfully. It was in love again.
17.00
Supper. They served us potato with fish, bread and tea.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
Me with some young schizophrenic woman went to stroll along the corridor. She was beautiful and mysterious. It turned out, that she lived with her grandmother, her mother abandoned her when the girl got ill.
– I do nothing about the house. So I was put into the hospital. When I will leave the hospital, I will go to seek a yardman’s job.
– I’m looking for a job too. I want something rather far off from people. To me it is hard to communicate with people, both with men, and with women.
– I had lots of boyfriends. I didn't even remember how many. I’m looking for something, and I don't know myself, what I am looking for.
Then she retired into one's shell again and didn't speak to me anymore till my discharge.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Drugs intake time. I had been watching TV in the common room, so I took my turn in the queue for half an hour to nine. I was the first on meds. But all the same I was left behind by Olya and Vika: they were distributing tablets to grannies on the wheel-chairs, and they were the first to be given out drugs.
21.20
Smoking.
22.00
They turned on a night lamp. To sleep.
December 28, 2014, Sunday
6.00
– Wakey! We remove the linen and the blanket covers! – was heard from the corridor. It was a bath day.
8.00
We got up. For breakfast there was oat meal, a roll, butter, cheese and cocoa. The porridge was rather disgusting. I, as usual, ate a half of it and gave the plate to an ever-hungry neighbor at the table.
8.20
Meds intake.
9.30
The bath began. We had a good wash, if it is possible to have a good wash in five minutes in the crowd of unfamiliar naked old women.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
They checked our heads for louses.
13.00
All the morning I was reading. That day I began the book "The Stars Look Down" found in a corridor bedside table.
14.00
Lunch. They gave us bread, rassolnik, buckwheat cereal with liver and tea.
14.20
Tablets.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
Me and Natasha went for walk. Took three rounds. It was frosty, approximately minutes ten. Met a crowd of little men with the hospital attendant. They were being walked too. Vika wasn't with us, and her friend gave us a note for her.
16.30
After the walk I approached the nurse, and she cut my nails. She didn't allow me to them myself for some reason. It was painful; some nails were cut too close to the skin.
17.00
We ate stewed cabbage, bread and milk.
– Last year five people got poisoned with this cabbage! – Zina told us. – Probably, they forget to wash it.
17.20
Drugs.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
I walked with Katya along the corridor. She told me about the life:
– My husband doesn't give me money. It happens, the money I earn isn’t enough for me. I go to the church to talk to the abbe. Even he gives more money to his wife, than my husband. But god will help! And I believe in affirmations. And you should believe, psychology will help us!
In half a year she jumped out of the window.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking meds.
21.20
Smoking.
22.00
Olya and Masha took their phones and arranged a concert from criminal songs in the ward. I closed my ears with earplugs, and it was almost not audible to me.
December 29, 2014, Monday
6.00
– We get up! We wash your lower parts! – the nurse’s aide cried out, coming into the ward. – Olya, let’s go to take out the garbage!
Olya stretched herself with pleasure, slowly got out of her bed and put on a dressing gown. She liked to saunter to the rubbish dump in the mornings.
Alla woke up and started rummaging in the bread crumbs in her bedside table.
– I’m so hungry!
– So pilfer the bread from the dining room.
– I can't, the nurse’s aides know that I collect the crumbs. They check pockets every time, cruds! They won't allow me to eat, I only sit down – it is already time to finish.I can’t keep up to eat anything.
– Everyone has it the same way.
– Today my friend will come; she works as a therapist in another department. She will bring food. Me and you will arrange a New Year’s Eve!
– That’s right; – in my stomach it became cheerful and joyful at once. – And I will take candies and processed cheese from peredachka!
8.00
We went to eat. Ate buckwheat cereal, a roll, cheese butter and tea. Many put a butter slice in the porridge, and some smeared it onto a roll with their fingers. In the buckwheat I found a hair, I gave the porridge to the neighbor.
8.20
Taking tablets.
9.30
Cleaning. Today – my turn. I went for a bucket and a mop, poured in the water with the cleanser, washed the floors. Masha watered the flowers which were left from Rita the prinudchitsa.
10.30
I read up the next book and was got to Oscar Wilde. In a bookcase of the art therapy cabinet there were a lot of classics. With pleasure I re-read " The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and I became hungry.
11.00
Tea. They brought me three bags with food. One bag with the remained juice, another one with yogurts and the third one with cookies. I hid them under the bench and carefully tried to get a portion of food for pockets, a portion of food for tea and some cookies for the neighbors. My neighbors in a table were rejoiced. I was treated with marshmallow.
– Today the weather is classy; we will go for a walk! – Natasha said.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
Unexpectedly Sveta was discharged. It turned out, she hadn’t wanted to tell us so that not to upset us. The nurse came, handed out her documents and clothes, and Sveta went home with her parents. We were glad for her, but it was sad.
– At least they discharged one person till New Year, bitches! – Yulya was whispering in the corridor.
We hadn’t known that Sveta would soon try to poison herself with meds, but would stay alive.
13.30
Most of the time I spent in reading. Having got tired, I started doing small exercises standing, and jogging on the spot. The example was contagious, and soon three of us were already running around the ward.
– And the last year the woman had been on treatment here, the gymnastics instructor, she led groups every day! – Marina recalled.
– Yes, I remember. It was awesome, – I said. – Twenty people were gathered every time. Who knows, where she is now.
– Recovered, probably.
– As our Irina Dmitriyevna says, most often the patients come back. But there are also those who disappear …
14.00
Ate potato soup, liver, bread and cocoa. Potato soup was best of all in the hospital. Clear and tasty.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
We went for a walk, three of us together. I managed to be in time to put on a heavy black fur coat, reeled up stockings around my neck instead of a scarf, and fastened a thin little knitted cap. It was slippery, and we went for only two rounds. Then got to the bench. Natasha reached out cigarettes and a lighter – the fellow nurse gave it to her, shared it with her elderly girlfriend. We returned frozen, tired and sleepy.
17.00
There was a cabbage salad, bread, a cutlet and tea.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
The smokers had a smoke.
18.00
They started showing New Year's movies, animated cartoons and figure skating instead of usual talk-shows on TV. It became a little more cheerful to come into the common room. All chairs were occupied by patients. Me and Marina went to play checkers.
19.00
I walked with Dasha along the corridor.
– How is my son there, – she was upset, – And still so much time will pass, till he will be given away to me. It is so stressful for him. His father doesn't help us at all, sometime ago he arrived on a visit, beat me and my son and left. I am afraid, he will come again.
20.00
Cleaning. Yulya drove us into the ward.
21.00
Meds intake.
21.20
The smokers had a smoke.
December 30, 2014, Tuesday
8.00
They gave us barley porridge, a roll, sausage, butter and coffee. Patients joyfully chirked up.
– We will be decorating the corridor tomorrow! – the nurse said.
8.20
Drugs intake.
9.30
We went to the art therapy. Arranged tea drinking with a disco. Got the corporate cups, men brought peredachkas (it was allowed to them), we made tea, spread out cookies and candies. It was good. However, everyone was silent. Then we danced. They dug out something from the local musical archive, something in between prison music and romance.
– They’d better put on Grazhdanskaya Oborona – Vasya lamented.
Three couples were formed, the rest were dancing singly. I got acquainted with Kostya. He had been looking at me long ago. Gave him my phone number. It was the first time in my life when I danced with someone. The disco ran on for half an hour: it was necessary to hurry to tea. We cleared the scraps from the table and said goodbye to each other. On holidays the art therapy didn't work, long eleven days awaited us.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
Smokers went to have a smoke.
13.00
I read up Wilde to the end and got to the new book. Nadya the poetess gave me the poetry collections of Yesenin and Akhmatova.
– You should return it to me in any case. I want to learn by heart some more poems.
– And what do you need it for?
– I have nothing to do, so I’m having a good time. And mother told me, you won't earn money by poems … Sometime my verses were published in the local newspaper.
– Mine were published too … I even won competitions.
– Read something from yours?
– I don’t remember anything.
14.00
Lunch. Ate Russian cabbage soup, bread, potato with stewed meat and tea.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
Tobacco.
15.00
For a walk I didn't go. I was very sleepy.
17.00
Supper. They served us ragout from vegetables without cabbage, bread and cocoa.
17.20
Tablets.
17.30
They had a smoke.
18.00
I called my mom. We wished each other a Happy New Year.
19.00
Played checkers with Marina in the ward. Olya treated us with cherry juice.
19.30
I washed my head, last time that year.
20.00
Cleaning. I continued to read.
21.00
Drugs intake.
21.20
They smoked.
December 31, 2014, Wednesday
6.00
We woke up. The air smelled with New Year. The nurse warmed up bagels in the microwave and distributed to those who managed to wake up and was in the corridor.
8.00
For breakfast they gave us rice porridge, tea, a roll, butter, cheese, three waffles and an apple. The holiday feeling intensified.
8.20
We took medicines.
8.40
Started decorating the corridor and two common rooms. Brought two big artificial Christmas trees and the box with toys. There were more than enough patients willing to help, for it "a cup of tea and a smoke" was promised. We collected the fir-trees and started decorating them. Some patients were sticking New Year's pictures on the walls and hanging out the snowflakes at the windows. Everyone felt good and cheerful:
– And over the mirror you hung up the Father Frost crookedly, move him!
– What to do with this ball, it is without strings?
– We hung up the garlands sideways, and we will spread on the tinsel from above.
– No, the tinsel at the edges, and the garlands from above!
– Repair the fir-tree top, it is staggering!
In an hour happy smokers went to the smoking-room accompanied by the nurse’s aide.
11.00
Tea. With the tea they served a sausage slice to each, a half of banana and a rich roll in a bag.
11.30
Even more happy smokers left "to have a little smoke"
14.00
Had supper with rice broth, macaroni, bread and tea.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
On the rest hour we were allowed to watch TV. For two hours we had been watching Soviet comedies. Everyone had been waiting for evening impatiently.
17.00
Supper. Ate ragout from vegetables, bread and cocoa.
19.00
Irina Dmitriyevna came. She was on duty.
– Well, I congratulate all of you with a New Year, I wish you the fastest discharge!
She had talked to several importunate patients, then approached me. With a sinking heart I was waiting for her words:
– It is time for you to be discharged! We will look at your state, maybe, after the holidays.
Some were discharged in a month, some in a year, and the drunks – in a week.
20.00
Cleaning. We began to prepare for the New Year: shifted the table onto the middle of the ward, snitched one more table from the corridor.
– We will start at ten, – Olya said. – And at first we will go for peredachkas.
20.30
They arranged us an additional tea drinking. Gave out tea, cookies, four little tangerines and one apple to each.
21.00
Took pills. Me and Alla asked for peredachka. The nurse gave us the food, but before that we had to be waiting for half an hour in the corridor.
21.20
Smoking.
22.00
All the wardmates brought their peredachkas, spread them out onto the table. The plastic plates were found, and the spoons were asked from the nurse’s aide.
The nurse peeked in: – Already reveling? Bon appetit! Happy New Year, girls!
Five people from our ward and two from the other wards took seat at the table; the others ate their peredachkas on their beds. As Alla left for the lavatory, Olya treated me with a slice of marinated chicken.
– Only don't tell Alla about it. There isn't enough for all of us yet, and she is a sort of strange.
Me and Alla sat on our beds and ate candies, cheese and croissants, washing it all down with mineral water.
23.00
Having gorged on, we went out into the corridor. The nurse turned on the program with the eightieth disco, and the willing patients started dancing.
– Dance till you have time! At twelve o’clock everything will be turned off! – the nurse’s aide said.
For the whole hour we were having a good time. Then the nurse’s aides started to run dragging the chairs into an old little treatment room.
– Soon Irina Dmitriyevna will come from her round and they will start celebrating! – Olya reported.
At twelve o'clock the TV wasn't switched-off, but made more silent, and the patients were driven into their wards. From the little treatment room the clinking of bottles was heard.
00.30
From two sides of the building the fireworks were visible. Me and Masha were running here and there, enjoying the holiday. At last, everything calmed down. Olya and Masha tidied up the table, put the chicken’s remains on the window, threw out the scraps of salad and went to beds.
January 1, 2015, Thursday
7.30
There New Year’s morning came, but I wasn’t in a New Year's mood at all. My thoughts were only about the discharge. But everything was vague, and I had to only wait.
I recollected how the last time I had been kept in the hospital for two and a half months. After that something in me was broken. I understood that I will be kept in the hospital for three, four, and ten months – as much, as they want, regardless of the state because I am not a drunk and not a convict, and "terms do not apply to me".
8.00
Had breakfast with semolina porridge, cheese, a roll, butter, sausage and coffee. One small slice of butter, a slice of cheese and a slice of sausage.
8.20
Taking tablets.
Katya approached me:
– I should talk to you!
We departed into the corner.
– You know, I understood, what the matter is. God will save all of us, it is only necessary to believe.
– I don't believe.
– Too bad. Very silly not to believe! Here, we will be discharged, we will open the store with you. We will work day and night; I will save up for an expensive car to myself. I will show you the photos, where I’m in a dress that costs four hundred thousands. To be honest, it’s not mine.
– And what if it goes wrong?
– Everything will be alright with us! It is only necessary to say to yourself that everything will be fine. We will go to Canada together sometime. And I am going to Spain this spring, will you go with me?
– I have no money so far.
– Well, next time. It is good that I met you. It is destiny. You will move to St. Petersburg, you will teach chess and English, I’ll find you the clients. By the way, and you have a boyfriend?
– No, I don’t.
– Here we will find you a boyfriend; I know lots of unmarried men! He will give flowers and take you to restaurants, not that your jerk from the village. You will see, some years will pass, – and you will have a husband and two children, like me.
– I don't want children.
– Well, you don't know it yet, and then when you give birth to a kid, you will understand. I love mine so much, however, I see them rarely. Always at school, in clubs, at the granny. And I work all day long when my head doesn't hurt – the father-in-law had beaten me. But I forgive him. It is a pity they started a criminal case against him…
9.30
Cleaning. That day it was a clear-out in our ward. Olya, as always, was dragging the bedside tables and climbing to wipe the quartz lamps. Me and Marina were sad for the art therapy.
11.00
Tea.
11.30
Smoking.
12.00
In the corridor Nastya approached me. We fell into talk:
– And do you remember, you promised me to bring a record-player?
– I do.
– You’d better not. Mom watches me, she doesn't let me out alone anywhere. I go outside – the neighbors smile, but I know what they are thinking of. I meet familiar nurse’s aides in the shop – they’re grinning. They are waiting till I get here, stinkers!
– And I won’t be able to come now, I have no money.
– And it isn't necessary. And I won't come because I am afraid, they will look for me and will send the militia to you. I don't visit anyone nowadays, always at home.
– And me too. I don’t want to. Perhaps you are afraid for nothing, would you talk to your mom and come for half a day.
– No. You don't know people, Anya. If you already got into this system, you won't get out. And the neighbors will crush you at home. They complain, now the music is too loud to them, now I shout from voices.
– Well, it isn't necessary to shout at home.
– You don't know them, they, wicked creatures, are always plotting something! And you will be pecked, here why are you so downtrodden, you’re sitting silently, and then they will give you disability and throw you into the residential home for life when your mother dies. Well, I will ask for the residential home myself, when my mom dies.
– I not downtrodden, I am an introvert, I like to be alone all the time. And I don’t like when you’re talking like that to me, – I became angry. – I still have no disability, and no one will touch me. They have nothing to carp. I will work.
– All right, excuse me, Anechka, I do wish well to you. Didn't want to offend you. Well done that you try to work, and I can't work, voices are disturbing me! Want you to settle down in life better than me!
14.00
Lunch. They gave us pea soup, bread, a cutlet and tea. Tea was some kind of muddy and I gave it to Zina. She was delighted.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
They had a smoke.
15.00
We went for walk. There was a hard frost, and we mastered only two rounds. Now all patients were without scarves and me with leggings around my neck: someone dragged off the last scarf from the locker room.
17.00
Supper. Ate beet salad, bread and juice.
17.20
Somatic meds.
17.30
Smoking.
19.00
Walked with Dasha along the corridor.
– It’s nice to walk around in the evening. I stroll here almost all the time, – she said.
– And isn't it boring?
– No, it isn’t. I’m watching people; I’m meditating on my own thoughts. All is better, than sitting in the ward with smelly old women. You have a good ward, all young and adequate.
20.00
Cleaning. I settled on my bed to read a bit.
21.00
Drugs intake.
21.20
They smoked.
January 2, 2015, Friday
8.00
For breakfast they served us semolina porridge, eggs, a roll, butter and tea. Gave away five additional portions of porridge.
8.20
Took pills. The nurse told me that the therapist will be working next Monday.
– And she promised to discharge you if your state doesn't change. But on Monday nobody is discharged, so on Tuesday, just in case.
I started to have some hope. The nurse’s words could be trusted, and the srink was often joking with us.
9.30
Cleaning.
11.00
We drank tea.
12.00
I met Marina in the corridor and went to play checkers.
– Do you know any people with schizophrenia? – she asked me.
– I do, but only online.
– Yea, so many clever people, and the brains went dippy! – Marina said.
– Some of them consider themselves the cleverest as if they know all secrets of life, and others consider themselves stupid.
– But it is not so.
– No, they are the same, as everyone. Only some believe in aliens, others that they are god's representatives on Earth, some have problems with memory and absent-mindedness, others – depression and suicidal thoughts, and some have it all together.
– And do you know any sites on the Internet where it is possible to find information and to communicate?
– I know. I will give you the links when we leave the hospital. But I don't sit there. Boring and dreary. A waste of time. Generally they discuss illness and god there.
– And don't you communicate with schizophrenics at all?
– I tried, but, basically, the grief puts so much pressure on us that communication is impossible. Only the exchange of symptoms. We have no time for communication. And there are those who are rushing with their "theories", it is possible to communicate with them, but it is boring. Many believe in God with much frenzy.
– I believe too. I hope that god will help and there will be a miracle!
– And I don't. Once I believed in some universal God, but after meds it passed.
– Too bad. Go to a prayer on Tuesday, maybe, it will get easier.
– And do you arrange prayers here now? A year ago they didn’t.
– Here is the small room for services in the cellar. Each church holiday is celebrated.
– I see.
14.00
Had supper. Ate fish canned food soup, bread, stewed cabbage and compote from dried fruits.
14.20
Took pills.
14.30
Smoked. Went to bed.
17.00
Supper. Still sleepy after the rest hour, we watched how the nurse’s aide was pushing granny the repeater to her ass.
– And well, go into the dining room!
– Go into the dining room! I won't go!
– Who I’m talking to, why are you running back! We won't give you food then.
– Won't give you food then! Let me, let me go!
– Vika, catch this knucklebone, and I will be engaged in others.
– Will be engaged in others! Let me, I won't go!
Ate ragout with cabbage, bread and milk.
17.20
Time to be taking meds. The stubborn granny too didn't want to go to take meds too. Vika and Olya hauled her to the treatment room; the nurse shoved a spoon into her mouth. After that the granny skipped away into her ward.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
Time of phone calls. I called my mom. Spoke about relatives who excitedly discussed us behind our back and didn't visit us, and about job searches. Both were upset.
19.00
I washed my head. There remained very little shampoo.
20.00
Cleaning time.
21.00
Meds intake.
21.20
Smoking.
January 3, 2015, Saturday
8.00
Breakfast. They gave us rice porridge, a roll, butter and tea.
8.20
Meds.
9.30
Cleaning. Waving a mop in my ward, I fell into talk with the elderly alcoholic Lida:
– Give me your phone, Anechka, I will pass through your city, I will call you. I will bring to you the homemade bacon!
– Thanks, but I usually don't eat it.
– You should recover, see how thin you are! Here we will slaughter a bull calf, and I will call you at once.
11.00
Tea. The peredachka quickly evanished. Mom told me that she wouldn't arrive during the holidays so I began hiding food from my neighbors even more carefully.
14.00
Had supper with borsch, bread and macaroni. I, as usual, gave my piece of bread to one of my neighbors at the table. I didn't like bread. But I knew that I would have to collect it when the peredachka ends. The nurse’s aide noticed that I had no bread, and gave me one more piece. I gave it to Zina the drunk. And I didn't eat up borsch.
– Give it to me! – asked Vika.
I gave her the plate, and a spoon I put into macaroni.
They served us kefir. Grannies on wheelchairs were at once bedaubed. They were washed by nurse’s aides and Vika.
14.20
Tablets. To me they lowered a dose. "It is a good omen" – I thought.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
During the rest hour Irina Dmitriyevna came into the ward. She was on her duty. All were delighted to see her, congratulated with the past holiday and started interrogating:
– And when will my neighbor call me?
– When will I be discharged?
– When am I going to have a court hearing?
– When will my sister arrive to see me?
Irina Dmitriyevna became angry: – Well, here, why are you pressing me? We will solve everything after the holidays, and for now – have a rest.
She approached me and smiled:
– Well, how are you? Are you knitting scarves again?
– No, I’m not, I’m bothered with knitting, and the art therapy doesn’t work on holidays. I feel fine.
– What are you doing in the department?
– I’m reading almost all day long.
– Good. But it is necessary to leave the ward sometimes. Nurses say, they absolutely don’t see you anywhere, they thought you were already discharged.
"When I will be discharged?" was at the tip of my tongue, but it was impossible to ask such question. It nullified the chances of discharge.
– Well, we will look if after holidays you are same, I will write out.
Irina Dmitriyevna smiled, inspected the ward with her sharp eyes and left.
– Pheew, we got away! – Marina commented.
Nastya came into ward:
– Girls! She! You seen?! And she didn't look at me at all! Knows me, aha! They’re all plotting and stealing here, I do know!
It was cheerful to listen to Nastya. We, fortunately, didn't live with her in the same ward. She could chat about plots and "voices" all night long.
– And the small girl, you know? She is alive. The nurse was called from the hospital. Well, to Zina won’t get any punishment for it. Will send her to her residential home, nobody wants to connect with her. She isn't responsible for herself.
– And is Zina in nadzorka yet? –Marina asked.
– Yes. But they will transfer soon! – Nastya continued in the same excited tone.
– Only not into our ward! I, of course, behave quietly, but what if she beats me all of a sudden? – Marina reasoned.
– Won't beat you. They beat the weak and those who differ in something! – Nastya answered.
– And how do you need to behave here in general so as not to get beaten? – I asked.
– Quietly. Not to loll out. Well, here is how you behave, or me. To us they don’t pay any attention at all. The main thing – not to be stand out from the crowd, – Marina answered. – Here is Alla – she collects the crumbs, she has a neurosis – she is different – nurses are snubbing her, patients are teasing her. It is necessary to be like everyone.
Nastya interrupted her: – Oh, girls, here so much is going on! The chief physician was moved away, it is not without purpose! He quarreled with our shrink, that is why!
– But he was old, he was over seventy! – Olya objected.
– Noooo, everything isn't so simple here! They had a conflict, they couldn’t divide the department! As a whole, they always haven't got enough money yet, always scheming something. Nazis! –Nastya cooed heatedly.
We listened. That evening we had no other entertainment.
17.00
Had supper. They gave us potato with fish, bread and tea.
17.20
Took pills.
17.30
Had a smoke.
19.00
Had a walk along the corridor with Katya.
– Anya, how you think, should I go to the confession when I leave thehospital? I feel somehow absolutely heavy at heart. I will go to the abbe – I will consult him if I should get divorced or not.
– And what happened, is everything so bad?
– He doesn't understand me. Here, recently I’ve gathered to a Spa Salon – he didn't want, I had to go alone. We quarrel constantly, because of nonsense. He says, I spend a lot of money. And after all, I’m spending not his money. He doesn't give me money, I buy everything myself!
20.00
Cleaning. Yulya occupied a piece of corridor in front of our ward. We got inside.
– Does anyone have something to chew? I want to fress! – Olya said.
Marina reached out some slices of cheese, Lida the drunk – some cabbage pies. I distributed mint sugar candies to all. Divided into all "insiders". That is, except Alla and the elderly Sasha the schizophrenic. We gorged on, thanked each other and fell to have a nap.
21.00
Tablets. Everyone was sleepy after the food, and we went to bed early.
21.20
Smoking.
January 4, 2015, Sunday
8.00
For breakfast there was oatmeal, a roll, butter, cheese and cocoa.
– There’s always some shit as if they are crapping into the plates! – Zina the drunk was grumbling.
8.20
Drugs intake.
9.30
Cleaning time.
11.00
Tea.
I unpacked dried fruits and peanuts, pulled out an empty sack, put into it a few dried fruits, the peanut I left on the table, having covered it with a piece of paper. Then I put a sack into the pocket, filled another pocket with cookies. Having moved up a cup of tea close to me, I started gnawing peanuts.
Yulya approached, higher and leaner, than she had been the last years:
– Anechka, sweetheart, give me something to chew!
I gave her a handful of peanuts.
– And to me! – The hungry patients started to whispered from the next seats. Some actually wanted to eat, and some had an appetite instead of brains.
– I have no more. – I answered.
Those patients had peredachkas bought from their pensions. But they ate up everything in two or three days. Weren't able to save and stretch peredachkas to the following pension. So they stayed hungry.
Alla came to me: – Anechka! Here are the cookies! My fellow doctor has brought me peredachka today. We will eat it together! – She said.
11.30
They smoked.
14.00
Lunch. Ate rassolnik, buckwheat cereal with liver, bread and tea.
14.20
The queue for meds.
14.30
Smoking
15.00
At the rest hour me and Alla were eating the cookies. Others hadn’t returned yet: they left to take a walk along the corridor.
– An awful hospital. anywhere I stayed, there weren’t such disgusting conditions anywhere! – Alla told me.
– Well no, it can be worse, here, Marina told us…
– Yea, there it is, it happens, but here that everyone is against me, and am I really guilty that I have a neurosis and I eat slowly! The nurse’s aides are awful, rude, they are rummaging everywhere. Peredachka isn't given out in the evenings, there wasn’t such thing anywhere I stayed! Took food ourselves and ate.
– I hadn’t stayed in other hospitals, I don't know. But here Olya told about a prison mental hospital, it’s even worse there.
– Well, better places exist anyway. I’m so worried how is my son there with my father, they are always quarrelling. He is already thirteen years old! They think, I came here to have a rest, as usual, and I’m surviving in such conditions here! – Alla spoke.
– However you even got fatter on rolls here … It will be alright, you will be let out soon. Neurasthenics aren't kept here for long, – I calmed her. – Only don't speak with the shrink about the discharge. She’s going to keep you here even longer after such talks.
– Well. But I am afraid, I won't hold back, I want to outspeak everything to her. I like you, you don't laugh at me behind my back, as other patients.
17.00
Supper time. Ate stewed cabbage, bread and milk.
– And why does this sloven have an extra glass of milk? – Galina, Natasha's friend shouted. – It she special?
– She should recover, to gain weight, – I told her.
– Really, why are you all clinging to me, bitches! I have neurosis and anorexia.
17.20
Taking tablets.
17.30
The smokers left to smoke.
19.00
Me and Marina were walking along the corridor:
– Do you have a boyfriend? – she asked me.
– No, I don’t.
– And I have. But we rarely meet. I am staying in the hospital every year, I prolong my disability. And here they even can keep you for four months…
– How is it?
– It’s alright, I got used to it. But I receive some pension. I can't work all the same. I have fits when everything is mixing up in my head and I’m crying.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking tablets.
21.20
Smoking.
January 5, 2015, Monday
8.00
Ate buckwheat, cheese, butter, a roll and tea.
8.20
Taking meds.
9.30
Cleaning.
11.00
Tea. I took four very little cookies and thrust them into a dressing gown pocket. The rest of them I distributed for the next seven days. I refused to all the hungry, asking cookies from me.
11.30
Smoking.
14.00
Lunch. Ate potato soup, liver, bread and cocoa.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
They had a smoke.
15.00
On the rest hour I reflected on what do I need in life. I came to a conclusion that I need to be left alone. People were wearing me down with their requirements:
"Why you don't do this and that? Why do you have no friends? Why aren't you married? Why don't you wear a skirt? Why don't you work as a prostitute? Why don’t you "arrange your life"? Why don't you aspire to the same things, as we do?" – the voices of relatives and friends sounded in my head.
Marina sat on her bed. As usual, all the rest hour she had been reading romance novels and other books which she came across in the bedside tables. Sometimes the nurses brought something new to read.
17.00
Gave cabbage salad, a cutlet, bread and tea.
17.20
Tablets.
17.30
They smoked.
19.00
I strolled along the corridor with Marina. Played checkers.
19.30
Nastya presented me her old shampoo. I went to wash my head. There already a half of our ward gathered. Stood five minutes under the shower.
20.00
Cleaning time.
21.00
Taking meds.
21.20
They smoked.
January 6, 2015, Tuesday
8.00
They gave us barley porridge, butter, sausage, a roll and tea.
8.20
– On meds! – voices of the nurse’s aides were heard, and the patients started gathering quickly at the "distributing point" – the nurse's office. The queue of sixty people was moving ahead slowly, and there was time to look round. Some "regular" patients carried the tablets to the old women suffering from marasmus.
– Take a glass, wash it down and open your mouth, – the nurse told the granny the repeater.
– Wash it down and open your mouth! Leave me alone, bitches! – the granny started to scream.
– Now we will jostle the pills and we will tie her in the corridor, so that she didn’t run away anywhere before the tea, – the nurse’s aid offered.
9.30
Cleaning.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
They had a smoke.
I tried to read, but I couldn’t do it. My thoughts were steadily turning round the subject “the discharge".
14.00
Lunch. Ate Russian cabbage soup, potato with stewed meat and bread. Drank some tea.
14.20
Tablets.
14.30
They smoked.
15.00
Me and Alla were sitting on the window sill and watching the snowflakes dancing outside the window. Somewhere there people went on their usual, normal life. And we sat in the "hen house". There is nothing worse than the feeling of uncertainty. Perhaps, you will be let out in a week, and perhaps in a year …
16.00
– To the prayer! – The shouting of the nurse’s aide was heard from the corridor. – We go for headscarves!
The entire ward, except me, amicably moved to the exit.
17.00
Ate stewed cabbage, bread and kefir. Soon they brought the believers from the prayer, there were about twenty of them, but only because there wasn’t enough place for the bigger quantity in the little room for church services.
17.20
Tablets.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
I called my mom and a fellow schizophrenic girl. Managed to talk to both. Congratulated both with a holiday to cheer them up.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking pills.
21.20
The smokers smoked.
January 7, 2015, Wednesday
6.00
– We get up! We remove the linen, except the blanket covers! – the nurse’s aide shouted.
8.00
– To breakfast! – The voices of nurse’s aides and patients rang out. The timer’s peep at the chief nurse’s post was heard. The entrance doors opened, and the crowd of patients rushed to the dining room. Old women in the wheel-chairs were slowly chewing their socks on their way to food.
Two rows of tables were located opposite to one another, and the patients were slowly taking their seats, squabbling for the best places. Meanwhile the nurse’s aides were distributing the breakfast. To everyone – a plate with rice porridge, just a little at the bottom. One piece of cheese, one slice of butter. A spoon. A half cup of tea.
8.20
Took pills.
9.30
Cleaning.
Lyba, the elderly schizophrenic, approached me in the corridor and asked how to make it so that "these shining features" were gone from her head.
– How is it?
– When I close my eyes, there are dots and multi-colored strips. I am afraid of them.
– But they don't really exist.
– I see them, and I’m scared.
Lyba was married and had two children. Her husband left her when he learned that she was ill.
10.00
Had a wash in the bath. It was pleasant to dress in all pure again. Usually I washed only the underpants and the socks.
11.00
Tea.
11.30
The smokers left to smoke.
I was sitting in the ward and thinking. Others were drowsily stirring in their beds. Everything was already discussed, all issues are resolved. We had nothing to talk about and there was nothing to do. There was even nothing to think about. We were dozing for days on end.
14.00
Had supper with a rice broth, macaroni, bread and tea.
14.20
Took medicines. The nurse checked all the heads for the presence of louses.
14.30
Smoking.
15.00
The nurse walked across the wards and cut our nails. I was allowed to cut my nails myself, but there weren’t enough scissors and I could hardly manage to do it.
17.00
They served us ragout from vegetables without cabbage, bread and cocoa.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
They had a smoke.
I left into the corridor. Everything was as always. The patients were walking along a long corridor. One of them took me by an arm, and we began to trudge.
– I have a child, but he is not here, but in the orphanage in Siberia. Don't allow me to see it. Alina is my name.
– And what are you here for?
– I took ten sleeping pills, they hardly brought me to life.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking night meds.
21.20
Smoking.
January 8, 2015, Thursday
8.00
Ate millet porridge, cheese, butter, a roll, sausage. Had coffee.
8.20
Taking pills.
9.30
Cleaning. At our ward – the clear-out. The nurse’s aide came and was watching us almost all the time. It was dreary.
10.00
We were walking along the corridor.
– I hope, God exists, – Katya said.
– God doesn't exist. – An unfamiliar woman answered.
– How do you know?
– Well, you will be taking meds, and you will be convinced of it. I was running mad after religion when I had a psychosis. And then I had stayed here for some time and it passed.
A patient passed by with a strange look on her face. She took a glance at us and smiled mysteriously.
– Don't come close to her, – I warned, – When she goes crazy, she can attack, then they fix her. She strangled her mother.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
Smoking.
I tried to read again, but instead of it some unclear confusion of thoughts was formed in the head. I didn't know what I was thinking of, but I wanted to think that it was something important that was constantly slipping through my fingers.
14.00
Lunch. Ate pea soup, a cutlet and bread. Had tea.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
They smoked.
17.00
They served us beet salad, bread and juice.
– Pheew, apple juice again. Stealing at the kitchen! –Valya the drunk noticed.
17.20
Pills.
17.30
They smoked.
18.30
I washed my head.
20.00
Cleaning time.
21.00
Tablets.
21.20
Smoking.
January 9, 2015, Friday
8.00
Ate semolina porridge, as viscous as thoughts in my head, blue-green eggs, butter and a roll. Drank tea.
8.20
Took pills.
9.30
Cleaning.
10.00
Turned on the TV, and we started watching news. All places on chairs and sofas were taken. When I passed by one "local" granny, she hit at my knee with much force by her foot. I had to complain to the nurse’s aide who told that nothing can be done with such ones, it is only necessary to avoid them.
– Here are some violent ones, they will kill you, and they will get no punishment for it. Stay away from them, especially from those old grannies, – Vika warned me.
I had already seen enough of those "violent ones" and I had no fear, all in all. Only the vague fatalism.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
They had a smoke.
I sat down with some detective novel in the corner of the common room. The radio wasn’t on, and the patients quietly strolling along the corridor.
14.00
Lunch. We ate canned food soup, stewed cabbage and bread. Drank compote from dried fruits.
14.20
Tablets.
14.30
They smoked.
17.00
We were fed with cabbage ragout, bread and milk.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
Smoking.
18.00
Day of phone calls. I called my mom and wrote SMS to two of my friends. Mother promised to arrive next week, if I’m not going to be discharged.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
– To meds! – the unfamiliar voice was heard. The nurse’s aides and the nurse already handed over their duty to the others. And again – a long queue. The granny of eighty years old sitting in a wheelchair in the corridor suddenly slipped on the floor and started undressing. The nurse’s aides rushed to her.
21.20
They had a smoke.
January 10, 2015, Saturday
8.00
They served us rice porridge, butter, a roll and tea.
8.20
Took pills.
9.30
Cleaning.
10.00
There wasn’t any wish to do anything, there wasn’t any wish to think about anything. Sometimes I recalled my flat. But it was rarely. I tried not to think about my room and about open spaces too. There wasn’t even any wish to walk outside any more. The walks only became a reminder that we were locked up in this hospital for long.
11.00
Tea drinking.
11.30
They smoked.
Olya and Vika were doing massage to the nurses in the corridor. For additional tobacco.
14.00
Lunch. Ate borsch, macaroni, bread. Drank kefir.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
They smoked.
17.00
They gave us potato with fish, bread and tea.
17.20
Tablets.
17.30
Smoking.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking pills.
21.20
Smoking.
22.00
By the evening the patients gradually dispersed into their wards, to eat their stocks waiting for breakfast. Some earned their living in theft, rummaging in others’ bedside tables. Those who were on friendly terms with nurse’s aides – went to smoke once again or to drink tea.
In our ward patients were eating Lida’s bread with garlic, looking back at the glass door every minute. Smelled delicious. I was given a slice too.
The meds started to work. I contracted and turned into a point, a small point on my body. It could be a mote on a finger or a trace from the blue pen on paper. But it was me, and I was disappearing.
January 11, 2015, Sunday
8.00
Had a bite with oatmeal, cheese and butter. Drank cocoa.
8.20
Took pills.
9.30
Cleaning.
11.00
Tea drinking. Peredachka was absolutely over. I thought about taking the bread after lunch and supper.
The next dreary day was going on, just the same as all the previous days.
It was snowing outside the window.
11.30
The smoking patients left to smoke.
14.00
Had supper with rassolnik, buckwheat cereal with liver, bread and tea.
14.20
Took medicines.
14.30
Smoking.
17.00
They served us stewed cabbage, bread and milk.
17.20
Meds.
17.30
They had a smoke.
19.00
I washed my head.
20.00
Cleaning.
21.00
Taking night meds.
21.20
Smoking.
22.00
A fellow nurse came to see us, she asked Olya to do massage to her. They were romping for half an hour, and then left to smoke.
January 12, 2015, Monday
6.00
– Wakey! We are washing our lower parts! – was heard from a corridor.
The beginning of the working week, at last. All started to have vague hopes for the discharge.
8.00
Ate buckwheat cereal, cheese and butter. Drank tea.
8.20
Took pills.
Irina Dmitriyevna summoned me into her office.
– Well, Anya, I’m going to discharge you. Call your mother, be prepared to leave tomorrow. Try not to get in here anymore. Take meds. You have chronic delusional disorder. Perhaps you won't find a job, but at least you won't get here.
I recalled how on the first time, seeing me off, she told something like "you will come here again" and "in a few years you will be staring at the wall with empty eyes".
9.30
Cleaning. Me, Marina and Zoya went to the art therapy. There were all three groups from men’s department; they were delighted to see us. Marina sat down to knit, Zoya was painting plaster figures. Men reached out a chess board, and we started playing. I beat three and made a draw with one.
Leaving on tea, I said goodbye to the nurse:
– Don’t get in here anymore, Anechka! – She said.
11.00
Tea.
11.30
They had a smoke.
14.00
Lunch. Ate potato soup, liver and bread. Drank cocoa.
14.20
Meds.
14.30
They smoked.
The nurse’s aide confidentially told me, that they brought my things from a warehouse on the first floor into the storeroom.
17.00
They served us cabbage salad, a cutlet, bread and tea.
17.20
Pills.
17.30
They had a smoke.
20.00
Cleaning time.
My favourite nurse came into my ward. I didn't remember her name, as well as other nurses and nurse’s aides. Sometimes I managed to remember them for a week or two, but then everything was forgotten. It was she who met me the first time, when I threw out the delirium at her, a la "people are after me, my ashes are being stirred and they operate my thoughts from the distance". She then gave me tea and fed in the night dining room. Now we talked again:
– Don't get in here anymore. Why do you stop taking meds? Everyone who stops meds, gets in here.
She spoke some more, but repeated the main idea so many times that I remembered it.
21.00
Taking pills.
21.20
They smoked.
January 13, 2015, Tuesday
6.00
– We get up! We wash ourselves! –the nurse’s aide came to see us and smiled to me:
– You, Anechka, are being discharged today! And the documents are already prepared!
8.00
Ate barley porridge, sausage and butter. Drank coffee.
8.20
Took meds.
I went to the nurse and told lies that the bus departs at 9.00 already. I wanted to get away from the hospital a bit earlier. At once they began fussing. On the post they issued me documents and phone, then went to the storeroom – to get my clothes. I put my clothes on and undersigned for receiving my things. I said goodbye to Olya, Nastya, Dasha and Katya. I had no mood to say goodbye to the therapist and other patients.
The nurse’s aide saw me to the first floor, into the bookkeeping department. There I was given out the money left by my mother, for the ticket to get home.
We reached the exit.
– Go to the post, there you will show the note, – she said. – Good luck!
I reached the post with the gate and a dog, came into the box of a duty security guard and showed the note. I was let out. I left, sat down on the bench, inhaled the air of freedom and dialed a taxi number.