“So, Kolya here told me that you have been to Kazan before…?” she insinuated.
“Oh, Kolya has been telling you stories has he?” I glared at Nikolai with accusative eyes. He just shrugged back at me and sipped his coffee casually.
“He says that you seem to have a habit of getting very injured. Should we be watching out for you with extra care to make sure you don’t fall again?” Lara was poking a bit of fun and her eyes told me she was enjoying it.
“So, what exactly did Kolya-cuddly-bear here tell you about what happened last year?” I said in a mocking voice directed at my good friend who still showed no embarrassment or discomfort as he sat relaxed in his dining chair, “because I never fell down.”
“What he told me was that you were taken away in an ambulance one morning in Kazan and that you weren’t quite the same after that,” she said in a curious but serious manner.
I had resumed eating my soup and bread and was chewing a bite when she mentioned the medics in Kazan. I stopped chewing and looked at Nikolai again with an annoyed look. I swallowed my bite and put my spoon down on the saucer under the bowl and folded my hands, resting my forearms and elbows flat on the edge of the table and leaned into the table a bit.
“Yes, it’s true. I was taken to the hospital in Kazan due to complications from a head injury,” I stated officially. Lara gasped and sat up a bit straighter in her chair.
“That must have been horrible!” she peeped.
“Which part? The head injury, the hospital or the fact that it all happened in Kazan?” I asked with some impertinence in my questioning.
“What happened?” Lara asked again.
I told her the harrowing story as the dining room slowly emptied of passengers
“On the second night of a ten-day voyage to Volgograd, much like this one, I hit my head on the staircase on the low overhang that leads up to the auditorium where they hold concerts and lectures.”
Lara nodded, “Yes I know it.”
I continued. “I didn’t lose consciousness, and luckily I did NOT fall down the stairs after I hit my head. In fact, I was carrying a large speaker in my arms for that night’s entertainment and was still able to finish climbing to the top and set it down. About fifteen minutes later I was a bit sleepy and dizzy and went to lay down in my cabin and I guess I slept the whole night.”
“That is so dangerous!” Lara declared knowing from her training the signs of a concussion.
“The next morning, I felt like I had a sack of rice or flour on my head. It felt like it would push my neck down. I couldn’t wake up and I couldn’t remember clearly what had happened. It was rather scary not to be able to remember. So, I asked somebody to ask the ship’s nurse to come to my cabin and she was immediately very worried. She scolded me for not having called her the night before. She said I had a huge welt on the top of my head, larger than she was comfortable to treat and she told me I should be in the hospital for observation for a few days.” I continued.
“How horrible!” Lara remarked again, but very eager for me to continue.
“As it turned out every time I would fall asleep, and I guess with a bad concussion it’s hard to even stay awake, that I couldn’t remember anything that happened thirty or forty-five minutes before I fell asleep. As the boat was always sailing down river, each morning I would have to work to help myself remember things.” I paused for a dramatic effect. “Many mornings I would find hand written notes to myself reminding me of where I had been when I went to sleep and where the boat should be when I woke up. The notes would help remember where I was and what was happening, but I could never remember writing the notes the next morning.”
“This was a very serious injury!” Lara covered her mouth with her hands in fright.
“Yes, we had figured that point out, but the thought of spending two weeks alone in a Russian hospital without my short-term memory frightened me more than anything else. I insisted that there was nothing more that the doctors of a hospital could do for me than what the ship’s doctor was already doing. The doctor was very nervous and checked on me every few hours to make sure that I was still lucid. She told me that any digression would men that she would have me removed by Captain’s orders and hospitalised.” I looked to Nikolai for corroboration.
“One hundred percent right! Why were you so stubborn? You were in real danger!” Lara seemed more worried a year later than the treating doctor at the time.
“So, by the time we reached Nizhniy Novgorod I had begun feeling much better and the doctor had said that the bruising on the top of my head looked better and the swelling had decreased.” I rubbed the top of my head for effect, “She allowed me to leave the boat for fresh air and thought that being on shore would help me get my sense of equilibrium back. I spent that afternoon strolling the riverfront at Nizhniy Novgorod. The afternoon onshore had improved my mood and my stamina and as the doctor had thought it might. We decided that I could return to work after another day or two when we reached Kazan. So when we arrived in Kazan I went ashore in the early morning to shake hands with the local guides and drivers that were already waiting for us at the docks. While I was discussing schedules and procedures with the drivers I began to get real dizzy and felt my left knee buckle. My right leg began to tremble too. One of the bus drivers reached out and caught me and helped me to sit down on the pier before I collapsed,” I felt out of breath telling so her so much.
“If you had hit your head again the results could have been fatal! It sounds like you were still very unstable.” Lara’s eyes were as large as saucers as she listened and diagnosed my condition. I went on trying to generate a sympathy effect from her, “The ship’s doctor insisted that I go to the hospital to be looked at by specialists. I was petrified to go alone! We agreed that one of our ship’s tour guides would accompany me to the hospital, to be there is case things got worse with me, but she didn’t want to go with me because of it being Kazan and all. She was afraid that the Mongols were still there ravishing all the blond Russian women in town or something. She was just as nervous as I was.”
“I would be nervous too!” Lara declared.
“Well, I can say that I have never met a more hospitable group than the Tatars. I think that Russians are just prejudiced against them. I found them to be very professional. The medic that came with the ambulance, Vasily, was definitely a Tatar. He was very confident in his job and helped me calm down. He asked questions like he already knew the answers. He was good. He knew what he was doing and he did it well. My blood pressure was erratic and my heart was racing. I did not have a temperature but I was noticeably sweating, even though my face was faint and pail. My legs were numb and I could not walk on my own power. Vasiliy spared me the humiliation of being carried off of the boat on a stretcher with all the the tourists watching from the shore. They more or less carried me standing upright down the gangplank with a medic under each arm. I just tried to look like I was waking,” I said giving Lara sad eyes.
“They took me to the Kazan regional hospital and they reassured us, Valya and I, that I would be in good hands, as it was the newest and most modern of hospitals in the province, but when we arrived I had to climb out of the ambulance and hop down from the bumper and then walk down a flight of stairs to reach the trauma ward. Luckily I had help!” I was really playing it up now, although every word was true. She was eating out of my hands.
“The hospital itself was so new that it had yet to be finished. There were piles of rubble, garbage and concrete from the buildings they demolished to build the new hospital. A jack hammer crew was busy pulverising the old foundations of the old buildings. The clouds of dust this caused coated the outside of the building, and was everywhere inside too, on tables, sinks, light fixtures in the beds and the floors. It was filthy!” I went on and on.