Accordions and Lymph Nodes

Soundtrack – The White Stripes, on shuffle

So, I’m leaving a friend’s house with another friend, heading back to the University area. It’s 12:45, and we are hoping to sneak onto the last metro train car and make the transfer near Red Square and get all the way back across town before the train car stops and the lights turn off and we are stuck somewhere in the middle of the city. My favorite thing in Moscow – the metro – closes at 1:00.

Ok so we are hurrying. I am carrying my purse, which by the end of the day has accumulated enough stuff really to qualify as a suitcase. The thing always ends up weighing around 40 pounds, I kid you not. My friend is carrying a bag as well, maybe half the weight of my bag, but to more than make up for the difference in weight he is also carrying a 50 pound accordion. (He plays the accordion. He often carts it around with him for the entire day, playing when he is so inspired, busking when he is bored.) Seeing as how his total is about, let’s say 70 pounds, and mine is only about 40, I offer to carry his backpack so I don’t have to watch him struggle down the street anymore. He sets down his accordion in order to resituate, (this is a struggle in and of itself) hands me the backpack which I sling over my shoulder, and then hoists the accordion back up on his shoulder. 50 pounds in one quick and jerky movement – it’s 12:53 and we just have a few minutes to walk. The straps of the instrument make it just to the very edge of his right shoulder at the exact same moment when his eyes widen just slightly and a quick but audible sound escapes his throat, with the impact of a champaign cork popping and almost hitting someone in the eye.

Suddenly an extremely unpleasant pain shoots through his body, originating near, just above, and to the left of, his hip. Accordion still sitting near his shoulder but with most of the weight in his hand, his free hand moves to this spot simultaneously with the shooting pain. At this place with the pain, he feels a slight bump about the size of the space between your finger and thumb when you tell someone ‘ok’ with an accompanying hand gesture. I’m thinking huh, maybe carrying heavy things is not a good idea. I look in his eyes, insist on adding his last 50 pounds to my load and ask if he’d like to stop by the emergency room on the way home. He concedes to relinquishing the accordion weight, but says no to the hospital. About 5 steps later he changes his mind after considering my words and all the other concerns trampling softly through his head.

It’s 12:57 and we dash through the metro (well, as much of a dash you can make while one is limping and holding his side and the other is carrying two bags and an accordion.) We are headed straight to the American Clinic (no emergency warrants stumbling into a Russian hospital.) Jumping on one of the last trains, we make one of the last transfers, and limp out of the now closed metro stop at about 1:13 or so. Oh yeah, by the way, it is raining.

In theory we know where we are going. But I’m looking at the map and looking at the street signs and then looking back at the map, and clearly between walking into the metro stop and reaching our destination, my navigation skills and sense of direction have not improved at all.
The biggest charm of the American Clinic is that supposedly these people speak English, so I call for directions. The woman answers in Russian, but alertly for 1:00 in the morning. Curious. I ask her if she speaks English and after her repeating the directions and address in a mix of Russian and English with a heavy Russian accent about 7 times I still have no idea where we are supposed to go.

She asks the situation, I tell her, she asks me if we want to come in. I say um… yes. She asks the problem again and then puts the doctor on the phone with my friend. This is interesting. I’ve never before received such personal attention and interest from an emergency room attendant. My friend limps into a producti to get out of the rain and away from the noise of the traffic. I wait, I wait, I wait. My friend comes back out and says the doctor said he should come in. I’m back on the phone with the receptionist. She is… making me an appointment… for the emergency room. She tells me it is a 15-minute walk from the metro. I hang up, look at my friend who is now hunched over and leaned against a wall, now holding the hurting spot with both hands and looking like he is trying to push the hurt back somewhere into his body.

I check my wallet for change and walk towards the street. The usual. A cab stops, I say 100, he laughs. I say 150, (it is around the block for Christ’s sake) he drives off. Next cab. It’s starting to rain harder. I give the same offer, he says 150, I make sure he knows where he is actually going, (this is a common problem with gypsy cabs and always a necessary question) he confirms and we pile in with my slouched over friend, two bags, and an accordion.

Curiously enough, the driver drives in the exact opposite direction of our destination. Even though my sense of direction leaves everything to be desired, even I know this. I check again and he swears he knows where we are going. We proceed to get completely lost. Right, left, right, right (are we going back to the metro now?), quick stop to ask the miltisia for direction, stopping to read every street sign. It’s raining harder now, and we are farther now from our destination than we were 5 minutes ago.

The lower abdominal pain of my friend is growing and his look is somewhere between wondering if we will ever see our loved ones again and being ready to get out and limp around the neighborhood. Magically, or more likely by accident, we drive by the correct address and I yell at him zdyac zdyac! And hand off the money so he will let us out.

I have my own doubts about whether or not this could be the correct address, but it’s better than driving aimlessly in that car. We are standing in front of a building bearing the correct number, but completely closed off with 10 ft high iron fences that are pointed like spears at the top. The building is dark in parts, and lit just enough so the security guards can find their way around in others. However, there is a monstrously large abstract neon rainbow flashing sign covering the top quarter of the 8-story building, swooping like a curtain hung only in decoration in a formal living room. Well, this could be American Clinic, Russian-style. There is clearly no way in and the guard station is completely dark and closed. I call the receptionist again and after making sure I am the same person who called earlier (does this really matter?) she tells me she will ring the guard and tell him to let us in. Yeah, he is asleep. A light comes on and he buzzes us in, not even leaving his sleeping chair and looking royally pissed that we woke him in the first place. I’m wondering how much they pay this man to sleep in a chair and whether this is full time work and how I can get this job.

We are passed the iron fences and it seems the rest should be simple. But this place is like the Sheremetyevo airport – no coherent instruction or signage or anything anywhere to be seen. Just empty looking, dimly lit buildings with multiple confusing entrances.

So we start on the right and check for open doors into the first building, the farthest from the glowing insanity, because I’m still hoping to god the hospital I am about to entrust with my friend’s care does not double as a private nightclub. I’m wondering why this place says they are 24 hours, whether this is the way they consistently conduct business or whether this is an anomaly and how can this possibly be our best option… The door is unlocked, but the lobby is completely deserted. At least we are out of the rain and there are very nice looking couches on which my friend can writhe in pain if this place turns out to be a sham. We look through minimally lit hallways and stare at shut green doors.

This is all so amazingly complicated that it can only be Russian. In the States, if one found themselves in such a situation that hospital would be sued in like 10 seconds flat for not giving equal and open access while someone slowly and quietly withers towards their demise while trying to make it past security. But this is Russia and everything is completely d.i.y.

After about 10 minutes we find it. Opening the door, it looks kind of like a doctors’ office, but with less room to move about due to the boxes and stacks of things combined with the narrowness of the room – it’s like they set up shop temporarily in another hallway. The receptionist looks at us like she doesn’t know why we are there, big surprise. I remind her of our phone conversation, but she doesn’t really respond. I then prompt her for the usual procedural niceties… forms, payment, etc. and she gives us a few papers and tells us the cost of the visit, making sure that we know this is an upfront cost. We start pooling our money, but after putting it on the counter she says no not yet, and tells us to sit and wait for the doctor on chairs that are nowhere to be seen. She gestures towards the other side of the desk just behind a stack of boxes where two chairs are placed side-by-side. We sit in the ‘lobby’ for a few minutes scribbling vague information on pieces of paper, which they clearly will not read, and soon a middle-aged man in white with a stethoscope comes and asks us, wishingly, in Russian, if we speak the language.

My friend, let me tell you a bit more about him. He courageously came to this crumbling, hostile, major metropolitan area in order to learn Russian, yet not understanding a single stroke of the Cyrillic alphabet when his plane touched down one month ago. So at this point in his studies… he can order a beer.

He heads back towards the receptionist area with the doctor with a look of disquietness overpowered by defeat. Opposite the receptionist desk, about 7 ft from the counter, behind yet another green door, there is an examination room. The doctor is speaking in Russian as they head back. I’m staring down at the accordion and thinking if there is anything I can rifle through my bag to find to keep from just looking blankly at nothing and worrying about my friend. There is nothing, but I do it anyway. They close the green door behind them.

About 7 minutes later my friend returns and I hear the doctor saying as they exit that he is going to call the doctor and talk to him about this condition. What!?! Isn’t this guy supposed to be the doctor? Ok so what, the real doctor leaves the fake doctor, perhaps the janitor who was absent from the darkened hallways, a stethoscope and some white clothing and says to call him if anything actually happens? Maybe they just set up a website listing themselves as an ‘American Clinic,’ as a front for god knows what and this explains why they were so shocked and unprepared when we actually wanted to come in? Good god.

We hear him speaking briefly on the phone to some other person who seems unhappily disturbed. The man in the white coat comes back and tells us that the doctor said everything is ok and that maybe we should come back in the morning for some blood work. Wow. What a fantastically helpful diagnosis. He heads back towards the desk and moves between an office and the receptionist and gives her some instructions. I sit in confusion bordering on horror, but my friend insists it is ok and just wants to leave. We pay these people in white and walk back out into the blank hallways.

So I am, as you must be by now, asking what happened in that room. Apparently there was a bit of coughing, some glove snapping, a bit of pushing on the protrusion, and then some half-Russian, half-English advice in which the ‘doctor’ told my friend that it must be a swollen lymph node and not to worry too much because he himself had walked around with a similar condition for 5 years before it just went away on its own. Ahhh the brilliance of this place is astounding.

It’s 2:30 am and it is pouring rain. We are looking back at the 70-ft to the gate, at the dark security stand, and to the huge puddles in the street beyond that. We slump down on those nice couches and take note of the fact that we could, most likely, sleep there in this empty lobby for the night and no one would be the wiser. Eventually I head back to the least helpful ‘doctors’ office on the planet and ask the receptionist to call a cab. Where healing people is not their forte, arranging transportation they can do. She says to wait at the entrance 30 minutes for the cab driver to show up and then pay 400 rubles to get back to the university.

The cab driver shows up and we groan at the idea of running back through the pouring rain on the one day I forgot my umbrella, in order to get out to the car. Sighing deeply, we run over and knock on the security stand door for him to let us back out. Man this guy is a heavy sleeper. In fact, for all we know he died in there, ironically in front of a ‘hospital clinic,’ because he never answered the door. The gates do not open from the inside and as there was seemingly no way in, there does not seem either to be a way out. As do many adventures in Moscow, the experience spirals further into the supremely bizarre. We end up escaping the only way we can see possible – we climb the 10 ft iron fence near the security guard stand, which finally made itself useful by providing a foothold by which we could get enough leverage to hoist ourselves over. (This can’t be good for a lower abdominal protrusion. Sorry, swollen lymph node.)

My friend goes over first, then my bag, then his bag, then the accordion, then me. Pouring rain. Not a peep from the guard or any ‘hospital’ staff. (Of course.) It’s like we are supposed to feel bad for disturbing the whole operation and it is for this disruption that we have actually paid. It is an interesting strategy for keeping healthcare costs at a minimum, and in combination with fierce prayer that you will not get sick, perhaps it actually works. I did emerge from all of this with some advice. Don’t ever, ever, ever get sick in Russia. If you do, take a shot of vodka and get back in bed. If that doesn’t work, take another shot. Either that or prepare for the carefully constructed obstacle course that lies before you if you choose to seek medical attention. This is the strategy of many of the older generation and it is clearly visible to me, in this moment, why that is.