Not in yourself

The number of Russians with mental disorders is growing every year. Often, people in psychiatric hospitals are kept for years, and their fate depends only on the attending physician. TD correspondent Anton Kravtsov spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital

Breakfast is a smoke

“It is very easy to get to a psychiatric hospital. It is enough to drink too much and show aggression. Someone is convinced that the condition is inadequate. Then the ambulance car. Further is the work of technology. Push the buttocks. Iron stick with a piece of cotton wool. Called pajamas with number "4". Alien rubber slippers. Remember the pants. Phenazepam injection. Two minutes to bed. Crazing neighbors in the ward. Twenty seconds before disconnecting, ”I think, opening my eyes and trying to remember yesterday's events.

Grandfather sniffs into my face from a neighboring bunk, attached closely. Under the pillow, a crumpled pack of red "Marlboro". There is a bright emptiness in the head, in the body - lightness, in the legs - cotton wool. In the corridor they yell about breakfast.

The general hall of the fourth branch of the Moscow Region Psychiatric Hospital seems too light and spacious compared to the long chamber caught by bunks. The walls are painted into indefinable color. Near the window there is a bed with an attached patient. From the TV in the corner, the host of the Channel One mutters. At the wall - a couch covered with dermatin. On the contrary, four wooden chairs with golden capes. In one of them, an elderly woman. It has a blue dressing gown, which is worn by cleaners or salesmen of shopping tents. I sit through a chair from her and stick a blunt look at the screen.

- Where did you sit down, huh? - the woman jumps up.

- In a chair. It is forbidden? - I answer and understand that the language tossed in the mouth, like a half -dead fish.

- Of course not! This is for the staff of the chair. Not for you! You may be syphilitic or a speed spice in general!

“They are not transmitted through the chairs,” I say and weaves towards the dining room.

At first, old people eat, weak and obviously sick, then the rest. The latter line up at the door of a small dining room. Inside there are four tables, porridge is transmitted from a small window. In the center of each table, a bowl with a chopped loaf.

It is very easy to get to a psychiatric hospital. It is enough to drink too much and show aggression

Nurses feed the bedridden and those who are in chairs on wheels. They are planted around the gray table at the entrance to the dining room. The hands of one of the elderly are tightly tied to the armrests of long fabric belts. A dry grandfather in a stretched vest opposes and does not eat. He strains sinewy hands strewn with wen. A jugular vein appears on the neck. The orderly tries to shove at least a spoonful of semolina with ground pills in his mouth. At some point, the grandfather dodes and hits her foot in the stomach.

- Ah, you are such a bitch! Now I will tie it up! Creature! Mouth,*la, open or go to x **! - the nurse cries and the grandmother wears the old man Oblachu. He does not react and turns his head off the spoon.

- Well, open your mouth. It is necessary to have breakfast, otherwise there will be no strength at all, ”a younger colleague replaces her. She tries to speak as softer as possible, and her grandfather nevertheless languidly opens her mouth.

I am returning to the ward. Opposite lies his grandfather and makes shining sounds mixed with words. “Where is my tea?! Marina! I demand a boob! I ask me to be strangled! " - He twitches and tears. I take a thin blanket and cover my head.

Kurvas - lunch

Time in the hospital is not measured for hours, days or years. Despite the fact that a calendar with a holy miracle worker hangs on the dining room, and a clock on the wall is tied to the daily routine. From the rise to breakfast for about half an hour. After give tablets and immediately cigarettes. From cigarettes to lunch - about five hours. From a quiet hour to dinner - the same amount. The phone is issued about once every three breakfasts. A bath day is arranged every ten dinners.

Cigarettes are distributed by a lively hostess, who brings a wooden box full of multi-colored packs. A surname is written on each. Sister loudly calls her and gives out several cigarettes. After almost all patients are drawn to smoke.

- Here! I know who I will smoke with! We will smoke? - A tall, thin guy throws me as soon as I go into the smoking room. I do not refuse.

At the end of a small elongated room with a ceiling red from nicotine - a window with plastic glasses. Behind him is the grill. The window does not open, and the plastic glass cannot be knocked out even with a foot. Someone, apparently, tried to burn a hole in it, but left only traces of the lighter. Along the walls with scratched drawings and inscriptions, patients stand and squat. Not everyone has a smoke, so several people smoke one cigarette. The latter in the circle gets a burning salivary filter without tobacco.

Near a large pan with cigarette butts sits a stooped bald man of incomprehensible age. He chooses gobies, where there is still a little tobacco left and puts them on the floor in an even row, then to make a cigarette.

Not everyone has a smoke, several people smoke one cigarette. The latter gets a burning filter without tobacco

- Voronov, you are already just for ** albroke in the garbage! - yells young and thin. Voronov quickly rakes the cigarette butts and leaves the smoking room. It is not customary to leave him to document among men.

- How did you get here? - I ask a new friend.

- Murder. Seventeen stabs. Why did I only kill this khach? Although Neh ** was my girlfriend to try to rape, ”he argues without emotions. I give this joker half of the cigarette. Some man asks to leave him a couple of puffs, but gets a kick.

Illustration: Plavinskaya fields for TD

The guy here is in authority. He yells at the nurse, sprinkles attached patients, swear loudly obscenities. At the same time, it always helps staff, washes floors and feeds patients. For which he was actually in the fourth department is unknown. It is not customary to talk about this.

Lunch - a quiet hour

- I needed to go here, you know? To get rid of dark forces! And so I'm actually a poet! This is my profession, ”a bald man’s bald man will bother me from a neighboring toilet, but I don’t really listen to, staring at the tile wall opposite.

There are no partitions in the toilet. To the fact that four toilets are located in one row, and you always have a neighbor, you do not get used to it right away. The best place near the wall. There is a battery and a circle cleaner and dry. Closer to the entrance of the place worse. The old people are being taken there. They often miss.

- Petrovich, will you dig or not? - asks the orderly from me from me, trying to put the twisted grandfather on the toilet.
- No. I don’t want to, ”Petrovich answers modestly. A bald old man with a detached smile refuses to even get up from his chair on wheels.

A few more patients are trying to help the nurse. Among them, Anatoly, who drove a few breakfasts back with a broken leg. Doctors took a crutch from him and gave out aluminum walkers. In the hospital, they are considered less dangerous.

To the fact that the four toilets are located in one row, and you always have a neighbor, you do not get used to it immediately

- Why is he shy!? When he has eggs from a long seal, we washed him. At first, too, he was shy, and then liked it. He himself asked, - the nurse laughs and still leaves the toilet. Petrovich agrees to transfer to the toilet. Based on his chair, Anatoly helps the old man.

- Well, Petrovich, everything is fine. The thing went! He says joyfully, throwing his dirty diaper into a bucket.

“Yes,” Petrovich continues to smile, his head bowed concentratedly.

The toilet is one of the few points of the daily trip of Petrovich around the department. He visits him somewhere a day, and the rest of the time sits quietly at the table where the elderly feed. Sometimes his stroller is rolled away a few meters ago. In the corner by the window, it does not interfere. Anatoly from time to time rolls him along the corridor, tries to conduct conversations with him or wipes the snot when the old man forgets to do it himself. Petrovich talks little and loves when before going to bed he is covered with a blanket with his head.

Quiet hour

In the morning, a detour occurs in the department. Before that, in each ward, patients put in a small order and cover the beds with colorful bedspreads. After that, the head of the department comes. A cute short woman with well -groomed gray hair and a wide smile. She asks everyone about well -being and makes decisions on discharge. Such decisions are not often made, so after a few dinners after my settlement, the department was almost filled with patients.

In one of these rounds, I managed to convince the manager that I should work and beg for permission to sit quietly with a notebook in a common lobby during a quiet hour. In return, I need to look so that the patients from the supervisory chamber do not leave and lie for a hour for a hour.

All newcomers fall into the supervisory chamber, and violent and completely inadequate remain. This is a kind of sump with a musty air and the smell of urine. At the entrance to the ward lies the Italian. He, of course, is not an Italian, but for his hair, cheekbones, suction, suction and high growth, I call him that. Most of the time he quietly sits on a bunk. In the morning, the Italian carefully combs her hair back, washes, washed, hanging a white towel on his neck, puts his clothes in order. At dinner, he does not in a hurry, with dignity and always removes dirty dishes behind him. The Italian does not talk to anyone.

From the general hall, where I work and attend, I can see the Italian. For a couple with a nurse we look after him and pull it when he tries to climb into his underpants.

- Listen, why did you go here to work here? It’s hard to mess with patients and nervously, I ask the nurse. A middle -aged woman breaks away from the book and carefully looks around.

- Where to go? Living for 12 thousand? My son died sixteen years ago. The husband died of oncology. You can’t even go a cleaner. Everywhere non -Russian, ”she explains quietly, taking up the book again and making it clear that there will be no more conversation.

The head of the department is a cute short woman with well -groomed gray hair and a wide smile

A deaf roar is heard in the supervisory chamber. With such a sound, a bag of sand usually falls. We break off the places and run to the sound. At the far end of the chamber, the Italian lies unconscious in a perfectly round pool of blood. A drug addict is spinning over him. For the last three days, he is in a semi -domestic state from the strong drugs that they give him to relieve breaking.

- He himself! All this itself! He ran away and head right into the wall. He lay calmly, jumped up and ran, - one of the patients explains confusedly, protecting the drug addict. His words are confirmed by the neighbors in the ward.

I and three other patients pull the Italian into the bed. A nurse with scissors, peroxide and bandages already appears in the doorway. While she cuts out a hair clock around the wound and processes it, the Italian comes to her senses. With one movement, he throws away everyone around, and instantly sticks his head between the rods of the back of the bed. From suffocation, the head is poured with blood and begins to blue. It takes about a minute to get an Italian.

Illustration: Plavinskaya fields for TD

- So! To knit him. Bring belts and diapers, ”the nurse commands.
- Lord, help! God's sake. Let go ... why ... - the patient is raving, but falls asleep tightly a minute after several injections. I catch myself thinking that I continue to drag out a clamp on the Italian. The feeling is like you are tieing a dog at the store so that it could not run away. I don't want to remember this feeling.

Quiet hour - dinner

In the afternoon, almost everyone gathers in the lobby. The staff watches the series about the Turkish sultans. Several patients who are not interested in reading books. One of the patients works in the yard and paints a fence. This, in fact, is the only chance to get outside. The rest can simply sit at the lattice door and feed the pigeons with bread, which they carried away from lunch.

- Do you really think that all who are here are sick people? That is, they definitely need a psychiatric hospital? - I ask the orderly, who does not watch the series.
“I think not,” she answers after a short pause. -Someone, like you, hit by accident. And we write someone, and after two weeks he again comes to us. Relatives pass or nowhere to live. Which of us is more sick, another question. Maybe we ourselves, working here for several years.

The woman is distracted, because one of the attached patients has lost a sheet and an oilcloth. She approaches him, correctly straightens the pillow and bed, covers the sleeping man with a blanket, tells him something. While she does this, colleagues do not pay attention to her. The orderlies that seemed to me with bitchy are courteous and attentive when no one looks at them.

Time flows slowly. From boredom, patients run between the smoking, hall and bunks. Someone is going to chat or eat sweets in the wards that the relatives of some patients convey.

A daughter came to the violent grandfather in the vest. He sits, tied to a stroller, so the girl was passed right into the department. This is usually prohibited.

Seemingly bitchy nurse are courteous and attentive when no one looks at them

- Dad, hello. It's me - Natasha.
“And I am dad,” the grandfather replies, not turning his head. An indifferent look, he rested on the faded wall of the hall.
- You are being treated here!
- And you can’t tell me, who came up to you? -asks the orderly to determine if the old man understands something or not.
“I am Natasha,” the daughter tells.
“EEEMM ... I am Natasha and Tamara,” the grandfather repeats indifferently, then suddenly strains and begins to speak coherently. - OK. We will be more about the case! Where will you go now?
- Let's go on business. Dad, I'm with you, you hear, I will come to you. You are being treated!
- OK. Call. Tea! Strong! - He commands, straightening up a little on a chair, never noticing his daughter.
“All, dad, for now,” Natasha kisses him goodbye and quickly leaves the department.
- Who was so affectionately fit there? However! Listen, I suggest you gather and choose a new minister of culture. What will happen, I do not know, but there will be laughter! - The old man is crazy and laughs. Someone adds the volume of the TV.

Breakfast is a smoke

For breakfast, a long sleepy line of patients is built. At night, someone set fire to the mattress in one of the chambers. The nurses were taken away from the lighters, so the patients frown. They are not happy even with delicious oatmeal in milk and a loaf with a piece of oil that they give today. The nurse, as usual, feed the elderly at the table near the entrance to the canteen. Anatoly is busy with Petrovich, who again does not want to eat normally. Oatmeal flows in his face, but he holds a spoon himself.

- Get a rag soon! Now everything will fall. Monitor the situation, - Anatoly commands, but the porridge is already plusing on the table. - That's it, damn it! Falled!

Petrovich still takes out a scarf and wipes his chin. He eats more accurately, leaving a piece of bread for later. I suggest Petrovich to ride him along the corridor and take him to the toilet. The old man refuses modesty.

- Yes, it is not necessary to carry it in a stroller. Yesterday he suddenly got up and reached the toilet, ”says Anatoly. Before that, many thought that Petrovich could not serve himself.

Nevertheless, I take Petrovich to ride from the hall to the smoking room and vice versa. While we are going, he admits that he wants girls and dinner. Manissaries between patients, we reach the lattice door leading to the courtyard. On the other side, pigeons are already crushing in anticipation of bread crumbs, a large flower garden is broken in the center of the courtyard, and squirrels jump somewhere behind the fence. I suggest Petrovich to sit and breathe air. He again modestly resist.

I suggest Petrovich to take him to the toilet. The old man refuses modesty

“You know, I will not fundamentally have lunch,” Petrovich suddenly declares.

- Why? - I ask, crumbs to the birds Baton.

- Late now. And I can’t say. I am enchanted. Like him, who is attached in a chair.

- To whom did my daughter come yesterday?

- And I have no daughter. I have no one. Although she is now, - the old man frowns and half races. “She is a dead capital that no one needs.” I don't need her! Because I do not recognize her.

- Why?

“It's hard to explain,” says Petrovich and switches to birds.

I leave the old man to breathe air, and I go to the smoking room myself. On the way I go for pills. I involuntarily speak with a nurse about Petrovich.

“He's not the first year here.” His daughter brought and said that we would do something with him, that she did not need him. I didn't come anymore. I do not know what will happen to him next. Maybe a boarding school or ... - the nurse does not finish the phrase.

Petrovich will enter the boarding school for the elderly, most likely only if he does not have time to die here in the hospital.