Essay 114. The night before

In those old days, when at the end of December calendars for the new year were bought, people were carefully studying calendars in order to see on what days there would be holidays. There were lots of holidays then. Everybody without any exceptions was happy, when holidays were on working days, and especially when they were on Mondays or Fridays. Obviously that way weekends were longer. That year when Vitya Kiss was in his third year, the 8 March (International Women’s Day) turned to be on Saturday. That was a pity, but one cannot argue with a calendar. One should treat it with respect, addressing it with “You”, if you please. And on the night of 7 March the lot to be on duty at the #9 clinic fell to Vitya. He was one of the boys there; he had worked night shifts there since his second year at the institute. That time another student to be on duty happened to be Sergey, a nice guy, but absolutely indifferent to surgery. Luckily Sergey’s handwriting was good, so Victor and he agreed that Sergey would not be bothered as for the patients, but would be in charge of filling in all medical reports.

That time doctors on duty were Grigoriy Vasilievitch Shilnikov and Ivan Ilyich Gavrilko. They were cool men and great doctors. As usual, there were very few patients in the evening, to be more precise a couple of guys with injuries. When the night started, it was as if a valve was opened somewhere. To cut it short, the doctors practically did not leave the operating room. In the morning on Saturday, on 8 March, everybody was sitting in a doctors’ lounge exhausted and relaxed. And Serega was working hard, he was in turns dictated surgeries’ reports, and there were many of them during the night, so Sergey was working by the sweat of his brow. It is now that there are computers with standard forms of reports for any case possible. Though back then one had to do all the writing with his own hands. The atmosphere was calm and quiet; Sergey was writing, and the rest were sitting relaxed, sharing their plans for the current day of the holiday and waiting for the final chord – arrival of a nurse on duty, and for some reason she was late. All medical reports were already written, verified and signed. Sergey was rubbing his hands, they were numb as if in spasm.

Finally Zinaida entered the doctors’ lounge room and poured everybody coffee and traditional “a couple of drops”.  Before that Shilnikov took out of his briefcase a plastic bag with chocolate candies, greeted Zina and asked her to treat to the candies all women, who were on duty at night. Only after that everybody began drinking their coffee and “a couple of drops”.

Zinaida was not leaving, but asked a question to everybody who was on duty: “What was unusual at the night shift?” Everybody started thinking hard, but did not know how to do that properly. So they took wild guesses saying something irrelevant; Zina was laughing. “Eh, you, men, you missed the fact that that was the night before the 8 March! How could you do that? Where were your eyes? During the night you had surgeries of 12 women and none of a man. Yes, they were women; the youngest was 16, and the oldest 23 years old. You, men…”

Zina left laughing, and the ashamed men remained contemplating how they could make such a blunder. 

14 May, 2012