The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

The cultural life was ensured by the TV set. One hour before, and one hour after the news program "Time", during which it was a break for the procedures. Some 10 watchers gathered around it dragging stools and chairs from their wardrooms. The paramedic by the observation wardroom also moved nearer…

At night, the wardrooms were lighted with the electric bulbs until the daylight. Probably, so that no one did something to himself or his neighbor. Sleeping with the light on is inconvenient because even if in your dream you were free to walk some city streets or in the wild, the inescapable presence of the bulbs was felt even there. Yet, the corridor was not lighted so too brightly for the on-duty paramedics to normally doss down in their chairs.

In the small hours, Wardroom 9 was usually visited by a young guy eager to show how dexterously he juggled a pair of boiled eggs from a delivery. Sometimes he demonstrated a small, yet proficiently executed picture, where a stark naked male was moodily chasing a girl with only her high boots on and the triangle of Russian crown-fillet on her head. Her long taut braid flapped on the run and, in fright, she looked back at the meter-long dick of the determined pursuer. Apparently, a copy of some original from the first half of the XIX century.

Then a frail man with elusive eyes came to take the young guy away. According to his repeatedly shared story, he got to the psychiatric hospital after accidentally breaking the window panes in the khutta of their Village Council with a walking stick, not omitting a single glass… He kissed the youngster in his pate thru the stubble hair, called him "mnemormysh" and led him back to his wardroom. It was his habit, to kiss any young person in the pate and call him "mnemormysh".

(…never before or later heard I that word from any one at all, in no dictionary whatsoever you’ll find an entry for the unheard word, but still the gentle tenderness of its sounds makes it so lovable, soft, like, say,"pinniped pup", can you feel it, eh?—I’m serious, not kinda pulling for a fella from our side, you know, repeat any of these 2 for 10 times before shaving and you’re guaranteed from cuts even if using Neva blades…)

~ ~ ~

The time for getting up was announced by paramedics jingling their key bunches against beds’ side rails so that by the arrival of the head doctor and the nurses the fifth unit life would orderly flow in its channel. First of all, all flocked to the toilet.

2 / 80 = F(0)!

Two toilet bowls for 80 shut-ins are too FUCKING few(!),

so queuing to them started in the corridor. The line continued inside, closely parallel to the walls in two rooms, firstly, in the hallway, and then in the toilet itself.

In that anteroom, I once fainted for the first time in my life, absolutely for no reason whatsoever. Black darkness congested in my eyes, and rubbing my back against the wall, I slipped down to the floor and sat in nowhere. However, I did not lose my being completely and after a while, though still thru the darkness, there began to come echoes of distant voices explaining to each other that I just passed out. Then the blackout turned murky gray growing gradually lighter, then I opened my eyes and returned into the line.

For those who couldn't keep in check their excretory system any longer, a tin basin with handles was placed on the floor tiles in the center of the actual toilet room. When it got filled up full, some of the nuts would ladle the excrement with his hands into a separate pail and empty it into one of the two bowls, the remaining urine was poured out in the stub of a drainpipe in the corner.

There was some tacit time quota for squatting on the bowl, when it ran out, the nearest queue started to grumble, and a minute later some of the deaf-mute nuts, from those lining in the hallway, would yank you off the toilet bowl without explanations why…

After breakfast, the toilet was locked until the end of the midday meal, when they opened it briefly for washing the floor. The last chance to use the toilet was the half-hour following the dinner, because of the final floor washing of the day.

My rather lax attitude to the urinary matters before entering the madhouse left my bladder lacking the proper discipline to fit into that quite simplistic schedule. When feeling the urge, I lapsed into a panicking confusion – how to withstand it until the next half-hour of the open toilet? Appealing to paramedics in whose possession was the coveted key did not make sense because of their unchanging answer, "Piss off! You can't use the toilet, the floor there is washed." So to avoid a warming up, explanatory, hit over the head by the whole key bunch, you had to conform and piss off.

One day, driven to desperation, I tried to take a leak into the sink on the end wall in the corridor, and got jabbed on the ribs by the shut-in who often smoked there on the sly, admiring the sink, like, it was a park fountain on repair.

During another crisis, overcoming shame, I turned to an elderly nurse with keys on her belt, trying to delicately explain my need and plight.

For a considerable stretch, she couldn't understand my muttering about what I felt within my bladder, but then she opened the door to the shower and, indicating the drainage trap, ordered, "Puddle here!" No wonder they were named "sisters of mercy" in the Czarist army…

~ ~ ~

One time, the shut-ins were driven, in groups, to the bathhouse in another building. There, it was necessary to stand under the lukewarm shower in a slippery cast-iron bathtub, disgusting long streaks of slimy-brown rust stuck forever to