The Ideal Wife

(The story is long but IMHO worth reading)

I decided to study the lives of doctors, so to speak, from the inside, as they study us through their fibro and gastro scops. I agreed with good acquaintances, I came up with the reason - I said I need to be able, if anything, to provide first aid, well there to cut up appendicitis, to give birth or to transplant the kidney, because around the desert or the sea and help to wait from nowhere. I didn’t care about three boxes.

- Okay - agreed my acquaintances - if you want - roll. Do not complain afterwards.

I was placed in the best brigade.
I waited for the first departure as a revelation, I thought everything might and I would agree on something and even save someone. Here is the team:

The sixth brigade is out.

The sixth brigade is me.
The Fieldsman arrived. The doctor climbed.

What there?
Someone is dying. Theft of 17.
A. Then I’ll go for a coffee.
The patient is dying!
“Well, yes,” the doctor agreed, “as long as we get there, he will still die. Or survive on its own. All from God...

And of course, he went to drink his coffee.
What am I for...?
It is I to the fact that all doctors are not very romantic. They are realistic. And the cynics. Professional is...
We finally gathered and went.
Not in a hurry.

- At the kiosk slowdown - asked the doctor - I will buy a cigarette. is finished.
have slowed.
Why are we so slow? he asked.
I’m not in a hurry to get it. – I’m not in a hurry to get it. Whoever dies there, Alkas dies there. The main thing is not to die, it will survive everyone. And you and I... We are all these addresses like five fingers. We know, there were...

And surely, we met Alkas - such a buzz for the deceased.

Where are you...? Why are you so long? They ride... And the man, the proletariat, to die, right?
Better to die! The proletarian’s wife cried, “Doctor, let him sleep.” Absolutely!
He doesn’t want me to fall asleep, he must save me. Reply to Alcatraz.
Infantile like a satiated piton, the doctor put something in there, gave something to eat and something to drink.
All right, we went.

And we went.
Then there were other addresses and there were dying and dying and all this daily, without screams – “He leaves us,” not like in the series. Everything is boring, until the end.
“He’s leaving us,” I heard from the doctors only once when they talked about the deputy chief physician. And they added, “Finally!” and “It’s time.”
I am all about what? Oh yes... about the wife... Let’s get to the wife...

Soon I got used to it. And I am used to. And I was already forced to drag cartridges and hold and turn patients and even give some ampoules there. And I was no longer rattled by the sight of blood, and I didn’t squeeze my nose by the smells. of different. Because the disease is a thing, first of all, low appetite - blood, rot, heavy spirit, caprizes, threats and tears of relatives.
The grief.
Why doctors with experience – like turtles in armor – are impenetrable. Nothing is!

Was he dead?
Apparently yes.
Okay, set the time. And ampoules gather... Condolences... We’ve dried up here with you...

And then - sitting in the car - next to the deceased broken as if he was scrolled through a meat-cutter, and they crack white. And they say:

Meat not roasted, raw meat.
– Aha...

Everything is on the drum.
Even though they sometimes break them...
This is about the perfect wife.
There was a challenge to the area built by the private sector, where the hell of the foot... But the driver was driving confidently - ambulance drivers know every hole in any hole.
We go. This time quickly - it can be seen that the brigade knew nothing about this address. The driver even turned on the mirror.

To the right, to the left, under the brick. They arrived.
Small, in three windows house, cash, wooden fence. A man stands next to the fence. Years of Seventy. He drove to us like a parent, barely lying under the car.

Soon, he is dying!

pulled into the house.
The house is cleaned and half dismantled.

There and there!

I pulled over the fence.
Behind the door is a bed. A woman in bed. I see a wife.

What about her?
He is dying! It was bad in the morning, and now.

The woman was lying upright, with her eyes closed with her hands on her chest, and it was not even clear whether she was breathing or not.
The doctor nodded the fieldcher. He opened the bag.
And by the way the doctor sneezed, the doctor understood everything. And I understood. On the side – yes, you can’t understand, but I’ve already travelled with them and learned to read between the lines. There was nothing to do here, no ambulance or any help at all.

So what...? How... Will she live? asked the man.

Although she did not live anymore.
The doctor measured the pressure, listened to something in the phonendoscope. In order to purify conscience.

Do you hear me? he asked. And louder than E!

He shook and shook the sick.
No any reactions. The patient did not see, hear, or feel anything. She was no longer here. She was already there.
But before she was released, the doctor had to perform a series of manipulations designed to hold the deceased in this world for another twenty minutes.
Feldscher put something in the vein. I put something under the skin.

Reply to! Do you hear me?

But the patient didn’t even squeeze. Even after the cubes.
All...
The doctor relaxed. He no longer obstructed. He did everything he could, according to the instructions of Minzrav. Now he could wash his hands.

Give me a towel.
The man did not understand.
The doctor repeated.
The man began to look at him confusedly. – The towel? Yes is? I don’t know where... right now.

I turned to my wife. The dead.

Masha, Masha, where are our towels? and? Where is the towel? The doctor asks.

The doctor looked at the man.

and Masha. Say to Masha!

The doctor murmured for the fieldsher to prepare a syringe with a sedative. And I probably thought that I would have to call a psychic brigade and maybe even tie a man’s sleeve.

Ma asha!

And here, something like this happened – unimaginable, because the woman moved, breathed and opened her eyes.

Where are the towels? he asked.
- There! replied the dead woman - In the closet - and pointed her finger.

The doctor lost his jaw.
Fellows had an ampoule.
She closed her eyes and froze.

The Spritz! The Doctor – Three cubics! Two cubes! And yet...

Do you hear me?
The woman heard nothing.

- Hey, open your eyes! asked the doctor, shaking the dead patient by the shoulder. And quite rude.

She was lying in an untouched bed. With hands on the chest.
I put three cubes. and two more.

Do you hear me? Do you hear?

No to fuck! My grandmother gave no signs of life. None of any.
Grandma is dead.
Felder stumbled with a syringe in his hand. The doctor nodded his head. Feldscher dropped the syringe.
My husband came out because of the fence. Without a towel.

I didn’t find it, he blamed his hands.
“No need for a towel,” the doctor replied, getting up and going away.
I didn’t find a towel. It is not in the closet.

The woman shrugged, and breathed. and opened her eyes.
The doctor sat.
The Fieldsman too.
The woman overwhelmed everyone with a meaningless, outsider look.

- Masha, there is no towel there, - complained the husband, - I was looking.

The patient’s eyes were sensitive.

Look at the upper shelf, under the shelf.
A, under the floor. Okay to see.

My husband left the barrier.

The doctor whispered.
to you?
No... to her!

I have seen all this! I was there! I am under oath.

The doctor exhales. – At the end!

He added something about the cubes and shouted:

Oh you, how you are there... Yeah, you! Go here! and faster!

My husband came.
Without a towel.

- You, ask her, said the doctor, feeling uncomfortable under his coat, because he felt like a complete idiot, - Ask her, how does she feel?
My husband cried.

– Masha... Masha... The doctor asks how you feel?

The doctor looked at the dead woman. The look of an intrigued pathologist who just opened the deceased and found something there that should not be. Something too much.

and Masha. by Masha! Masha is!

Hm...
And again, from somewhere out of the abyss, from the darkness of that light, from the very bottom, the woman went to her husband's call and, clinging and clinging to his voice, went out, submerged, returned. and asked:

What are you?
The doctor asks, how are you feeling?

The doctor smiled badly.

I... thank you... yes... better.
Did you find the towel?
and no.
Sorry Doctor, I am so helpless. I am now, I am...
to lie! The doctor rattled.

Because, suddenly, I believed that this dead woman would be able to get up and go beyond the fence, and get on the table and break the laundry to find and bring him a towel and still on the hands to pour!

I have to, my husband suggested.
and back!
The towel...
What kind of towel? I don’t need a towel, I don’t need a towel. Talk to her.
About what?
I do not know! about anything. Speak to! Since you are... - the doctor could not even pick up the right words, - Talk!

And I thought of myself about the puffy beast and the fact that medicine here is definitely powerless. In a different, unusual context.
And the deceased woman, only now realizing the medical brigade located near her, began to swing over the blanket with her fingers and worriedly asked:

You drink tea, you drink it.
Where is the sugar, where is the sugar?
There, in the buffet, on the middle shelf.

And the doctor said:

And so on! and so on, your mother!

Because when we don’t know what to say, from the excess of feelings, we always say so.
And he said to the Feldscher, hopelessly shaking his hand:

Call the resuscitation brigade. and fast! He warned them to take him to the hospital.
to whom?
The husband!
Look at the Fellowship.
As a defibrillator.

Then, in the car, the doctor remained silent for a long time, putting his fists in his beard, and then breathed:

I have never been jealous of patients. In general never. I envy that. In the black! He doesn’t even know where sugar is.

What a woman I caught! What... The perfect!
He silenced again. and Finally. He probably remembered his wife. All four of them were divorced.
And here I agree with him, of course. Luckily the man. What yes, then yes! But maybe there was something...
I did not ride with that brigade anymore.
I did not ride at all.
Enough...

by Andrey