Disarmed in Ukraine

One fine August evening in the Donbas, a Russian took a potshot, got lucky, and put a hole in my knee. It was the second summer of Russia’s invasion and the front line in Eastern Ukraine had settled into a bloody stalemate. Our position hadn’t moved for the better part of a year and most of the action involved shooting back and forth at the Russian position located in a tree line two hundred meters away. I had joined the Ukrainian army because my PhD dissertation wasn’t going anywhere, and I thought I needed a change of pace. 
After some emergency care, I got put in a van and driven for what felt like weeks through the fields of eastern and central Ukraine. Then the plains gave way to rolling hills and finally the van stopped in front of a hospital in the middle of a forest in the Carpathians. The nearest town was a marshrut ride away–and the marshrut only passed by when shifts at their hospital were ending. Anyway, most of the patients were lucky to make it as far as the front gate in a wheelchair. The hospital specialized in orthopedic and trauma care. I was more fortunate: After a few days, I was able to hobble along on crutches.
When I arrived the first evening, a few days after my injury, a nurse led me to my room in the Trauma Ward, fifth floor. The elevator, I remember thinking at the time, was the silliest of Soviet contraptions. First you rang a bell. Then the elevator came, crewed full-time by a rotund elderly nurse with an unfriendly mien, who doubled as a sort of expert elevator helmsman. The elevator, you see, didn’t have a button for each floor. It had only three buttons: up, down, and stop. Almost without looking at what she was doing, the nurse pressed the “up” button, and the elevator started moving up. Then, at just the right moment, when the elevator lined up with the doors on your floor, she quickly pressed “stop.” How quaint.

*

The hospital had apparently been some kind of sanatorium back when it was built in the eighties, maybe even a nice one. The surrounding forest might have been a nice place to hike for those with intact members. A dose of communist megalomania had clearly gone into its brutalist edifice, assembled from prefab slabs of concrete like giant building blocks. Nowadays, most of its rooms were superfluous, empty, and locked, the keys held by some anonymous caretaker. In the rooms that were being used, only dim lights were permitted. Residual fear of Russian air raids haunted these parts, though the Russians hadn’t bombed Western Ukraine in well over a year.

*

Something about the place wasn’t right. Now, I don’t believe in the supernatural, but who needs the supernatural to creep you out when you have a big empty building with long, dark hallways in the middle of a silent forest? You know, where the only people you meet are occasional amputees wheeling by in their wheelchairs, and you hardly ever see a nurse or doctor after dark?

*

My room is crowded. Originally meant for three, now it houses five soldiers. We have nine legs, nine arms, and nine eyes between us. To get to the sink, you have to squeeze between the wall and the eyeless man’s bed. You can’t get to the window, because the legless guy’s bed is right under it. I grunt a greeting as I hobble in. My knee hurts, and I desperately want to avoid small talk. I want to be an anonymous gray man in a room of anonymous gray men. 
Everybody who spends time at the front ends up at a hospital sooner or later, usually more than once. This is my third injury, my third stay at a Ukrainian hospital. Last time I spent three weeks pretending I didn’t speak Ukrainian at all, just so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. “International volunteer, no Ukrainian.” That’s hard, though, pretending you can’t communicate at all. People treat you like you’re mentally deficient. Also, it’s not quite true. My Ukrainian may be weak, but it is functional. I’ve been fighting in Ukraine for a year. And I took Russian in college before that (Ukrainians hate to hear it, but Russian and Ukrainian are almost the same). In any case, for this stay at the hospital, I chose the middle road. Instead of pretending to be mute, I just resolved to spend as little time in the room as possible.
“You must have a shot of vodka now that you’re part of the room,” the legless man says. He has the scrawny frame of an alcoholic who replaces most of his food with booze.
“Thank you, I don’t drink,” I lie. Booze will make them even more chatty. They’ll think we’re buddies and then the stories will start. 
And I’m just not interested in anybody’s family photos, anecdotes of youthful drunken escapades, or war stories. Especially not war stories. I’ve had enough of those for more than one lifetime in countless hours on the front spent waiting for something to happen. People who have not been to war seem to think that war stories are exciting and that they could listen to them all day long. When you actually listen to them all day long, they become a repetitive, tedious, tragic soap opera. In the end, even war stories all begin to sound the same; something happens, usually somebody dies, and somebody tells the next story. There’s no point.

*

Fortunately, there is a nice little gazebo facing the entrance of the hospital, right at the edge of the forest, where I can sit reasonably comfortably, get decent phone reception, breathe fresh air, and have a bit of quiet. A nurse tells me there’s a gas station down the road. It sells all the usual gas station fare, in case I get too bored.
I figure I should probably exercise my leg a little and there’s not much to do at the hospital anyway, especially if you’re trying to avoid small talk, so by mid-afternoon I decide to hobble down and get a snack. 
The gas station is a pretty generic deal, part of a chain that could have been anywhere in Ukraine. I get a non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge and walk over to the counter.
“One hot dog, please.”
The lady behind the counter starts spreading ketchup and mustard on the bun. She looks about fifty, matronly.
“You a soldier?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“From the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get hurt?”
“Near Lyman.”
“My son was fighting in Zaporizhia. Haven’t heard from him in a month. I ask all the soldiers that come in here. You haven’t heard anything about that?”
Not sure what she means by “that.” I guess she means the battle, but she could mean anything. I try to formulate a vague answer that fits with anything.
“That’s terrible, no, really sorry, haven’t heard anything. I’m just a private, you know. I only know about a very little segment of what’s going on.”
I take my hotdog, make some kind of joint apology-goodbye-type noise and get out as fast as I can. I feel bad for the lady, but situations like this always make me feel stupid. I never quite know how to express the right amount of sympathy in my weak Ukrainian.

*

Later, I’m sitting in the gazebo looking up at the concrete edifice. Which one is my window? Fifth floor, a little to the left of the entrance. I count the floors from the ground up and think I found it. How many floors total? I count them. Nine. Nine floors counting the Ukrainian way. Every country seems to have their own way of numbering floors. Here, the ground floor is one. Really nothing better to do here. I count the total number of windows for good measure.

*

The sun is going down, time to go back to the room. No need to bother the grumpy nurse-helmsman in the anachronistic Soviet elevator. At the other end of the building, there’s a second, perfectly modern elevator. Just choose a floor, press a button by yourself like a big boy, and you’re on your way.
The elevator does what elevators do. I do what people in elevators do: stare mindlessly and think elevator thoughts. My eyes wander to the elevator controls. The numbered buttons are arranged in two columns. An odd choice of design as there’s an odd number of floors. One column should be taller than the other. But it isn’t. That’s because the numbers on the buttons only go from one to eight. But I could have sworn I counted nine floors. Elevator thoughts.

*

I can’t sleep. Before I got injured the first time, I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if I got shot, blown up, lost a limb. One thing I never thought of was how even a small injury could keep you awake at night. Pain during the day is one thing, but pain when you’re trying to sleep is a whole other animal. It’s a low-level, all-over sensation, like when you’ve been in an airplane seat for twelve hours and everything is uncomfortable–sitting, standing, lying down. Except it’s twenty times worse.
Maybe a breath of air would be good. Anything’s better than tossing and turning all night. I grab my crutches, hobble over to the modern elevator and take it to the ground floor. I get to the front door and try to push it open, but it’s locked.
“I’ve already locked the doors.”
I straighten up so suddenly, a pain shoots through my knee. It’s the nurse-helmsman from the old elevator, standing behind me in the weak light of the hallway.
“Do you need anything?”
I can’t really see her face, just her rotund silhouette.
“No, just can’t sleep. I wanted to take a little stroll.”
“Well, I always lock the doors at ten.”
Her voice emerged from the black outline.
“Oh, sorry to disturb you.” I start towards the modern elevator. She moves towards the old elevator at the other end of the building, but when I turn around a few steps later, I can no longer see her. I press the button for the elevator and it takes a while to arrive. While I was out, somebody took it to the eighth floor. Guess I’m not the only one who’s awake.
While I’m waiting for the elevator, I look around the ground floor hallway. It runs the length of the building and is lined with windows that are almost big enough to serve as doors. They start about knee height above the floor of the hallway and extend to the ceiling. They look out onto a lawn which seems to be about level with the floor inside. But they’re clearly not intended to provide access to the lawn, because, in keeping with the finest traditions of Soviet architecture, the windows are barred. All except one, the one closest to the elevator. I take the two crutch-steps over to it just as the elevator arrives. There’s an ashtray on the outside window sill. I turn the handle and the window opens. This must be a secret smoking area that patients use to sneak in a cigarette after hours. Maybe even the staff, which would explain why the bars were removed.
I should probably head back to the room. But then I think of the prospect of staring at the ceiling for a few more hours. I can just about make it through the window. First, I put my crutches outside. Then I grip the sides of the window frame, and hoist my healthy leg, first onto the window sill and then down onto the lawn. I pull the window closed behind. Without the latch, it stays closed just enough that a cursory look won’t discover anything out of place.
I take a lap around the building on my crutches. The cool air feels nice. When I complete the lap, I open the window again with a push and hoist myself inside.

*

The next day, it’s afternoon, and I’m bored out of my mind again. Back to the gas station for another snack. As I’m waiting for my rubbery hotdog, a guy comes in to pay for gas. He looks at my crutches and my bandaged leg.
“Soldier?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“From the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get hurt?”
“Near Lyman.”
“I had a brother who was killed near Bakhmut. It took a month before they could recover
his body.”
“Shit, so sorry to hear that. That’s terrible.” The guy looks like he’s about to launch into a war story about his brother’s death. I already know how it’s going to go. Something will happen, somebody will die, and there will be no point. The next person will tell the next war story. I just want to pay and get out of there, but the lady at the register ignores the money in my hand and focuses her attention on the other customer.
“My son was fighting in Zaporizhia. I haven’t heard from him in a month,” she says. She looks close to tears, but I really didn’t want to have this conversation again. Now she’s got her phone out and she’s turning the screen toward the guy.
“Fedya,” she says.
Then she turns the display towards me.
I’m a bit surprised. I was expecting to see some badly-taken family photo or maybe a portrait from ten years ago, just like the dozens people have shown me during my time in Ukraine. Instead, I see a sharp, clear picture of a very muscular Fedya standing next to a road bike wearing a triathlon outfit. Didn’t think triathlon was a popular activity in these parts. Maybe my surprise shows.
“He used to do triathlons.”
She finally puts the phone away and takes my money. I just turn around and leave as fast as my crutches will carry me.
I hobble back to my gazebo and sit down. The sun is setting and I am, once again, looking at the concrete edifice and the wooded hills behind. The view from the roof must be pretty nice. Or from the top floor windows. I count the floors again. Definitely nine. So the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. Not the modern elevator, anyway. There’s nothing to do and the sunset looks nice in the way very ordinary things look nice when you’re bored out of your wits. I’m ever more curious about the view of the surrounding forests and hills. I’m in no state to take the stairs, but there is the old elevator.
I hobble inside and ring the bell. It takes a while, and I’m starting to think about leaving, but eventually the elevator slides down to floor one and the nurse-helmsman pushes the doors open.
“Ninth floor, please.”
She pushes the up button.
“You’re from Trauma. Fifth floor.”
I’m surprised she remembers me. She never seemed to give me a second glance. Maybe
it’s the language barrier. Wounded foreign fighters are a rarity in this hospital. When the elevator lines up with doors on the fifth floor, she presses stop.
“I wanted to go to the ninth floor to see the sunset.”
No response. She pushes the doors open and stands aside, waiting for me to get off.
The sunset isn’t that important. It’s just a little trip to pass the time. It was a pretty ordinary sunset anyway. Certainly not worth an argument; arguing in a foreign language is hard. So I just hobble off and go to my room.
The next day (Or is it two days later? All the days here are the same, like a sort of strange cross between Grey’s Anatomy and Groundhog Day.) I hobble down to the gas station again for another hotdog.
“How are you today?”
“Can’t complain, the knee doesn’t hurt too much.”
She starts spreading the mustard on the hotdog bun.
It’s taking a while and the silence is awkward so I say, “Any news?” I almost add “From Fedya,” but in the end I can’t bring myself to say it.
“No.”
I instantly regret asking. A moment later she continues.
“You know, he only had a concussion when they took him off the battlefield.”
I’m confused, I’m pretty sure she told me twice that her son was missing in action, not taken off the battlefield. 
“We were so happy. Of all the hospitals in Ukraine, he ended up in the one near his home town.”
I try to think of a neutral phrase that won’t come across as insensitive, but also won’t betray that I’ve lost the thread of the conversation.
“That’s very lucky.”
“But we haven’t heard from him in a month.”
Now I am completely lost in the sauce. How can somebody disappear at a hospital? I don’t think I’ve ever felt this awkward in my life. Here’s this poor woman telling me about the worst experience of her life and I just don’t know what to say. I almost forgot to take my hotdog in my rush to get out. I resolve I’m not coming back to the gas station, no matter how bored I get at the hospital. I just can’t take any more awkwardness.

*

Once gas station hotdogs are off the menu, the only other comestibles that I can use to pass the time are little plastic cups of tepid coffee that come out of a vending machine near the hospital entrance. So mid-morning on one of the following days, I come to the vending machine and see four nurses and two doctors standing in a neat little row outside the entrance, like they’re waiting for a meet-and-greet with somebody famous and important. 
As the vending machine spits out a poor excuse for an Americano, an ambulance pulls up. I take the plastic cup, hobble two steps over to a chair by the wall, and try to gently lower myself down without spilling the coffee. Meanwhile, a ramp comes down from the rear door of the ambulance. One of the nurses climbs up into the ambulance and a second later is pushing a wheelchair down the ramp. In the wheelchair is an athletic man, about fifty-five years old. No shirt, graying hairs on his chest, IV bag hanging on a stand attached to the wheelchair. The other end of the IV is in his right arm. His left arm is missing, amputated around the midpoint between the elbow and the shoulder. A bandage, blood seeping through, over the stump.
The wheelchair reaches the bottom of the ramp as one of the doctors approaches.
“Good morning, general. Welcome to our facility.” Is there a slight hint of servility in his voice? Or am I just projecting that?
The general mumbles something in response. He looks worse for wear and not in the mood to be exchanging pleasantries. Generals don’t usually lose arms in wars, but in this war, artillery can hit far behind the front line. 
The nurse pushes the wheelchair through the entrance, past my chair, and down the hall towards the old elevator. The meet-and-greet line files obediently behind them.

*

The night the general arrives, I’m tossing and turning in pain again. I’m trying to limit the amount of painkillers I let them inject in me thinking they might not be good for my health long-term. Just as I begin to doze off, I think I hear someone run down the hallway. That would be odd, most people here can hardly walk. Half a minute later, more urgent steps in the corridor, several people, hurrying. Then they stop. Agitated voices, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. More steps going in different directions. Doubly odd, the place is usually dead silent in the daytime, not to mention the middle of the night. A few minutes pass in silence. Then the door opens and a man in nurse’s scrubs comes in, barely illuminated by the weak light from the corridor. I don’t move. I just want to sleep. The male nurse takes three steps into the room. My roommate, the one without the leg, probably wasn’t sleeping either and lifts himself up on an elbow. The nurse notices him and seems to hesitate mid-step.
“How’s it going, boys?” the nurse says after a split second, in a tone that seems to mix false joviality with a rictus nervousness, “Everybody feeling alright? Anybody need any…uh…painkillers?” 
“Nuh,” mumbles my roommate sleepily and his scrawny frame drops back down. But the nurse isn’t leaving. Is he bending over? Is he looking for something under the beds? Hard to tell in the weak light.
Another male nurse sticks his head in through the door.
“Come on, Kostya, it’s all good, they found him,” the second nurse says. The first nurse straightens up, walks out, and closes the door behind him. But it’s not all good, because they’ve now well and truly woken me up. Try as I might, I just can’t find a comfortable sleeping position, so I figure the best thing to do is go for a stroll. I find my crutches, take the elevator to the first floor, climb through the window, and do two laps around the building. I get a few miserable hours of sleep before a nurse wakes me mid-morning for my shot of antibiotics.
After the shot, I amble downstairs to the vending machine. Tepid coffee is still coffee and, having satisfied my socially-acceptable drug addiction, I amble back down the hallway towards the old elevator.
Coming out of the elevator is a male nurse pushing a wheelchair. At first, I think it might be Kostya who invaded our room last night, but I can’t tell for sure. Then I look at the patient in the wheelchair. Amputee, left arm missing from somewhere around the midpoint between the shoulder and the elbow. He’s slumped in the wheelchair, but his broad shoulders still give him a mildly athletic look. Not a bodybuilder physique. More like a swimmer. Or a triathlete. Bushy beard. Maybe he just came out of surgery. His eyes are totally blank, staring into space directly ahead of him. They’ve injected him with something sedative for sure. I have seen him before, maybe chatted to him in the elevator? Or by the vending machine? Possibly. I just can’t place him.

*

In the afternoon, I’m sitting in the gazebo again. My roommate, the one missing an eye, comes out of the building, sits down next to me in the gazebo, facing the hospital. He pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking.
I vaguely gesture to the building and say, “It must’ve been quite nice back in the day,” mostly just to say something.
“It should be condemned.”
“Condemned?” I repeat the word without understanding its meaning in Ukrainian.
“Yeah, like they shouldn’t let people inside.”
“Why?”
“Some Soviet buildings from the early eighties are made of concrete blocks joined together with steel bars. Sometimes the steel bars rust.”
“Oh shit.”
“But the worst part is that in some buildings, they insulated the spaces between the blocks with a tar-rubber mixture. Heat it to about 1000 degrees and it starts burning. Well, not really burning, more like smoldering, but the spaces between the blocks are all connected like a giant network, so eventually the fire spreads to the whole building and then, sometimes even the rusted steel bars melt. Then the whole building can collapse. You can find a bunch of videos on YouTube. One collapsed in Russia in Krasnoyarsk about three years ago.”
For all the callousness of Soviet building codes, I find that hard to believe, but I don’t want to argue.
“Hope it’s not like that here.”
“Oh, one hundred percent it is.” He now has the tone of an underappreciated expert who finally has his chance to lay down some knowledge on his audience.
“Before the war, I used to work for a company that would go in, scrape the tar out of the cracks and pump in this German insulating foam instead. But it costs a ton of money, and most government institutions don’t have that kind of money. So they just pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Like asbestos or lead paint.”

*

I can’t sleep again. My knee hurts. My head is full of thoughts of collapsing old buildings, disarmed generals, and mothers missing their sons. After what must be a couple of hours, I go for a stroll.
Stepping out of the elevator, I almost have a heart attack. It’s the first time I see someone else coming in through the window. It’s a man, broad shoulders, lean athletic physique, bushy beard, no left arm. In his right arm, he’s holding what looks like a large disposable plastic jug. After a split second, I calm down a bit. Just another patient, probably out for a smoke. Then, I actually recognize him. He’s the guy I saw in the wheelchair, sedated, coming out of the elevator earlier that day.
“Evening,” he says.
“Evening, how’re things?”
“I’m gonna take this bitch down tonight. I’m stopping this here.”
Did I understand correctly?
“Stopping what?” I ask cautiously.
“The stuff they do here. They caught me yesterday, but today I slipped out. That dickhead is not gonna be using my hand to jerk off,” he says, almost in a tone of sarcastic mockery, like he was making fun of a politician on television.
There’s a moment of awkward hesitation. “He could have just taken his general’s pension and lived happily with one arm. Didn’t need to take my arm as well.” 
He swings the jug in his right hand slightly.
“Got this from the gas station.”
I definitely don’t understand or the guy is another crazy. Should I tell someone? But there’s no one around. Part of me wants to go back to my room, climb into bed, and pretend this never happened. But it looks like he’s heading for the elevator, and I sure don’t relish the prospect of an elevator ride with a psycho and what looks like a jug of gasoline. I move towards the window, while he gets in the elevator.
I start my obligatory lap around the building hoping he’s asleep by the time I get back. But when I round the last corner and find myself on the front side of the building again, I see the windows near the elevator are engulfed in flames. My adrenaline shoots up, and, not thinking, I hobble over to the window that I used a few minutes earlier to get out. I stop a few feet from the building, unsure what to do. I’m thinking the decent human thing would be to try to get inside and save some people, or at least wake them up. But I can hardly walk, much less carry an immobile patient. Then a segment of the floor near the one unbarred window collapses making getting in, much less getting anyone out, impossible. At this point, I decide to put as much distance between me and the burning building as possible, in case my roommate was right, the steel bars between the concrete blocks melt, and the whole building comes down.
I hobble in the direction of the gas station, the only other building nearby. When I get there, the lights are on. But even though it’s supposed to be open 24/7, the doors are locked and I can’t see anyone inside. A few seconds after me, a couple of breathless nurses emerge from the gloom. Then, a guy who looks like he might be a doctor. We stand and look towards the burning hospital, lit up in an eerie glow against the hills. I guess we talk, but none of it makes much sense to me. A few more people arrive from the direction of the hospital. In a few minutes, we hear some sirens in the distance, but before the fire trucks arrive, there’s a massive rumbling sound and the hospital collapses. At some point, an ambulance stops by the gas station. The paramedics take our names and ask about our injuries. Then they leave. 
A civilian car comes and picks up the two nurses. I guess they’re from the town nearby and they just called someone to come pick them up. Around daybreak, a second ambulance comes to take me to a military hospital in Lviv. There, I’m just another in the long line of war wounded. Nobody asks about the hospital in the Carpathians. I don’t tell anybody either. I wouldn’t believe a story about a hospital in a forest where they did arm transplants from unwilling triathlete donors to fat-cat generals, so I figure nobody would believe it if I told it. The news definitely never mentions it.  
In a war, you can hide a few dozen extra fatalities, and nobody bats an eyelid. Just another war story. Something happened, somebody died, there was no point. Somebody told the next story. And I never did find out what happened to Fedya and his mom.