Becoming Doctor Lana (eBook)

Chapter 4

Medical School

Leningrad, USSR
February 1946

On the day of the exam, the weather was typical Leningrad gray. The streets were enveloped in clouds and fog, in tune with gloomy people walking those streets.

Lana left very early, way before the exam. Nobody ever knew when the bus would come, and her last name, Voyer, was close to the beginning of the alphabet,14 so she could be called in among the first students.

Lana took a packed bus. She was lucky. She didn’t have to do dangerous stuff like hang off the step leading to the door while grabbing onto the people’s coats in front of her. Lana avoided doing it since Borya’s tragic accident—the memory always haunted her when she was on overcrowded public transport.

Borya was eleven when their little sister Olya was born, and he was often sent on a mission to a “milk kitchen,” a place to pick up milk for the baby. That morning, Borya was late for school, and he rushed to make it to the milk kitchen before school started. He jumped on a tram, barely hanging off its lower step—the tram was not moving yet—and Borya felt that one of his galoshes fell off his foot.

They were his father’s galoshes and way too big for him. Borya thought he had the time to get the galosh. He looked down and saw the galosh under the tram. Borya reached with his foot, trying to pick up the galosh, and the tram started, cutting off his foot. Borya fell, and the tram stopped.

Lana vividly imagined how her little brother was lying on the ground, bleeding, with people around him. The surgeon in Lana was sure that somebody put a tourniquet on Borya’s leg and saved his life. Amazingly, though, at the hospital, Borya had enough composure to give his dad’s work address. His father was working a second job that day. Obviously, the little boy did not want to give his home address. He wanted to protect his mother.

During the surgery, the doctor cut his leg almost to the groin, leaving only a stump.

Lana forever remembered how Borya caught frogs during summers in Slobodyan, where the kids spent some time with their grandparents. Borya mercilessly cut the frogs’ legs off. He wanted somebody else to experience the anger and despair of being crippled.

Lana squeezed inside the bus. The driver threatened away some of the more adventurous passengers by swearing that he wouldn’t move until the door closed. The driver’s curses were joined by a chorus of furious passengers safely inside the bus.

Lana stood, compressed between two men. She was prepared to fight off the usual unwelcome pressing and grabbing, but luckily, this time she got away with just a couple lost buttons when she pushed her way toward the exit.

She got off at Piskarevsky Prospect,15 where her school was located. Piskarevsky cemetery was very close, and Lana thought about her father and brother Yakov, who must’ve been buried there—nobody knew for sure—along with thousands of people who had died during the siege of Leningrad.16

She was relieved to redirect her attention to the school compound. The sheer size of it was extraordinary: twelve old but well-made, beautiful brick buildings housing clinics classified according to their profiles—surgical, internal diseases, neurological and others—as well as an auxiliary accommodation—a diagnostic lab and an x-ray facility.

The same compound housed the structure with huge, amazingly well-equipped, especially considering wartime, academic halls where lectures were delivered by particularly erudite doctors, academicians, PhDs. The adjoining building was occupied by a clinic for patients with illnesses of different origins. Again, doctors assigned to the patients were vastly experienced, and all the required surgeries were performed by highly skilled surgeons. On the ground floor of the clinic, there was an anatomical hall where students studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.

Lana remembered her first year of school. Many students hated anatomy, but she easily breezed through it. She spent days and nights in the anatomical hall. Anatomy had always been easy for her, thanks to her remarkable memory. Nobody could comprehend her passion for dissecting cadavers, but that led to Lana’s love for her favorite subject, surgery, which came in handy during the war.

Lana reached her medical school, called the Second Leningrad Medical Institute. It housed two faculties: Sanitary Hygiene and Lana’s department, Medical Arts.

Lana entered the school hall, fighting nausea and pangs of hunger. I hope I am not going to faint. Hunger and pregnancy are certainly not good together. Make a note, Dr. Voyer.

She immediately spotted her group by their distinctly shabby old military uniforms and a general older, not student, look.

The group waited in the hall before the exam and killed time engaged in a dispute. This one was about relationships and what it meant to be “a worthy man.” Lana stood close enough to listen but found it amusing that nobody noticed her presence. They were too involved in their debate. Plus, the days of exams, though nerve-racking, were nevertheless favorite occasions for ample socializing, so the students tried to take full advantage of such occasions.

Naum Greenbaum, The Philosopher, with his mop of disheveled hair starting to turn gray, passionately argued some point while inhaling a papirosa17 that he had just rolled. “The main responsibility in this world is for ourselves,” he said, “not for our needy brothers. It is no use to jump in the trenches with them. They need to learn to be self-sufficient. If you want to be of help to others take care of yourself first.

Naum spoke loudly and confidently. “You can only give from a full cup, and then teach the others how to be self-reliant. Teach them something fundamental, for example, certain skills. The immediate help is just that—for the moment. If you give a person a profession, you have helped him for life. In other words, instead of giving a man a fish, teach him how to fish, and he will never be hungry, quoting a well-known Chinese saying.”

While talking, Naum walked fast through the crowd of attentive listeners, who gave him space by jumping aside out of respect and fear that he will drop cigarette ashes on them.

Then someone dared to murmur. “I never heard that saying.” The protest was immediately squashed because the group knew that very few people, if any, were up to Naum’s erudition.

Naum continued, now uninterrupted. “I would go further than that. The main lesson in this life is to be self-referring. If you constantly measure your satisfaction with life by other people’s fortunes or misfortunes—even your close ones—you will never be happy. I know”—Naum acknowledged the surprised and even indignant looks that he noticed— “it sounds extremely selfish, but it is a big part of being a ‘rational egoist.’ Isn’t it what Chernishevsky’s What Is to Be Done18 is about?” That was Naum’s last weapon—his blow below the belt. He knew that nobody would argue against the iconoclastic clout of Chernyshevsky.

Lana was happy to stand there unnoticed. She certainly would not want to be too close to the scene, but she had a lot of fun being an outside observer.

“Wait a second,” Yasha Melnik, very short and insecure because of that but well-read and respected, stepped in. “How about Dostoevsky’s stance against rational egoism?”

Naum was not going to give up. He never did. “Are you telling me that you have read Notes from Underground19 and, more importantly, that you subscribe to the opinion of a very controversial, to put it mildly, writer versus a renowned authority like Chernyshevsky?” Naum was purposely iniquitous to Yasha, even though Naum himself was known as a big admirer of Dostoevsky and not a subscriber to Chernishevsky’s social doctrine.

Everyone was looking at Yasha, and he responded, quickly breaking dead silence. “Of course, sure. Chernyshevsky couldn’t be wrong.”

Unexpectedly, Yasha got support from Alisa, a petite girl not known for her ability to defend her point of view. She was so nervous going against such an imposing figure as Naum but said, “I can’t agree with you about not helping or caring for the needy, especially your older parents.” She looked uncomfortable in Naum’s overbearing energy but continued with a guilty expression on her face. “Each morning after I wake up, I go through my mental list of the people dear to me and then check if everybody is okay.”

Naum stayed the course. “One should not be dependent on others for his or her happiness and wellbeing. Even relationships with children have their rhythms.”

Lana stood a safe distance from the group, smiled and continued her game of not announcing her arrival. The scene gave her the distraction that she needed so badly. Lana stood in the shade of the window curtain. It was the best of both worlds since she could still think her “pregnant thoughts,” as she called them. As a doctor, she had been analyzing her pregnancy symptoms. And she could report to herself the feeling of going inside her body rather than a desire to participate, to go outside. But if...