At the end of the corridor I turn left into a narrower hallway less well lit with fluorescent lighting fixtures in the ceiling. There are no windows here. Doors line each side. Metal benches sit against the walls between the doors. The walls are faded brown, paint peeling in a few places. The floor is smooth concrete – and smoother still from the constant traffic and constant sweeping and scrubbing. People sit or stand in small groups up and down the hallway. A few patients lay on gurneys.
I see a desk halfway down the long corridor and walk perhaps 30 yards towards it. A stern looking woman in a blue nurse’s uniform sits with her back to the wall on a straight-backed wooden chair behind the worn desk. I hand her the slip I’d received at check-in. She looks at it. Looks at me and frowns. She waves for me to give her something else. I stare blankly. She says, “Ka-ni’ga.” I should know that word, but I panic and give her another blank stare. “Dok’koo-ment!” she says, rolling her eyes. Ah! Document and she had said “book” first, I now realize. I hand her the thin passport-like book I’d been given before arriving at the clinic. She sniffs and writes information on a ledger in front of her, glancing at my paperwork as she does. She writes a number on my slip, slaps it between the pages of my book and hands it back to me. “Sem-nad’sit”, she says, waving vaguely back to my left and looking down at the ledger on the desk. I should know that word too, but it doesn’t register. I smile and say, “Thanks.” Walking down the corridor the way she’d indicated I pull the slip from the book and see “17” written on it. Seventeen, “sem-nad’sit”. Of course. That’s what she’d told me.
Walking along I notice the small white painted numbers on the dark wooden doors to my right. 33 ... 31 … 29. At least Ukrainian and American numbers are the same. Good. Soon I’m at 17. The door is closed. Now I’m stumped. Do I go in? Knock? I opt to wait it out. I sit on the bench outside the door. Other people sit on the benches around me. I play “Watch the natives”. Uniformed attendants periodically come out of the numbered doors and wave people into the rooms. I settle back and hope someone comes for me.
I amuse myself watching people, guessing their ailments, where they’re from, telling stories in my head. Pretty soon a large -- a very large, actually -- woman comes out of door 17. She has on the ubiquitous blue uniform. Her hair is covered in a white handkerchief tied pirate style. She looks around, squinting and asks a half-question, “Dzhon?” John, that’s me. I smile and stand up. She beckons and I follow her through door 17 into a small anteroom with a bench and a chair. A second door is on the opposite wall as I walk in. She says something and I hopefully hand her my slip. She looks at it and then stuffs it in her pocket. She says something to me. I stare. She motions at my clothes and says something again and points at a sheet folded on the bench. Now I get it. I start to unbutton my shirt. She nods and leaves through the second door.
I strip down and wrap the sheet around me. I hang my clothes on a hook on the wall and slide my shoes under the bench. I’ve left most of my valuables in the hotel. Now what? This time I decide to take action. After all, there are no natives to mimic in this little room. I knock on the second door, open it and start to go in.
The attendant is facing away from me as I start to enter. She whirls around frowning and holds up her hand in the universal sign for stop. She says something that I interpret as “Idiot. Wait until I call you.” I say “Eez-veh-ni’teh. Sorry.” And quickly back out and into the anteroom.
I plop down on the chair and wait. A single bulb in a fixture on the wall barely illuminates the room. The floor is scuffed and the linoleum worn through to the concrete in places. I hear voices from the other side of the door to the treatment room and water running. It’s stuffy in here -- airless. A trickle of sweat runs from my temple and down my cheek. It’s warm, and I’m nervous.
After several minutes the attendant sticks her head in and motions for me to enter. I begin to think of her as Olga; she looks like an Olga to me for some reason. I realize she’s nearly as tall as I am, and has shoulders almost as wide. Sturdy she is.
I pass through the second doorway into the treatment room. I’m standing in a high-ceilinged room between two empty bathtub-sized tin tubs sitting on slightly raised concrete platforms. Plastic shower curtains on the far side of each tub block the view beyond them to either side – effectively making a treatment room with two tubs in it. I imagine the entire wing is set up the same way: each door in the main corridor leading to a treatment room with two tubs. It’s even warmer and more humid here than in the anteroom. The smell is a mixture of sweat and a fresh water lake with a few rotten eggs thrown in for good measure. I hear the murmur of voices around me beyond the shower curtains. The concrete floor is wet.
Four or five paces beyond the tubs I see a red brick wall. Three or four exposed pipes run along it near the floor. It has windows set high up. I realize this room is a couple stories high. There’s no air conditioning, only the breeze finding its way in through those windows. Sunlight streams in as well. A drop of sweat falls off the end of my nose.
A young man in jeans and a faded blue t-shirt appears from the right in the space beyond the tubs. He’s pushing a wheeled cart with several buckets on it. I realize this space is actually part of a service corridor running the length of the building. Clever. The cart looks heavy; he looks hot and tired. Olga says something to him. Without breaking stride, he looks at her, nods, and continues out of sight to my left.
Olga motions me towards the tub on my right. She reaches down next to the tub, lifts a large bucket and dumps black, slick-looking mud from the bucket into the bottom of the tub. She motions for me to get in. I put a foot on a small box and start to climb in. She says something and gives my sheet a tug. I swallow hard and unwrap the sheet. Olga holds up the ends to somewhat block her view of me and turns her head giving me a bit of privacy -- at this point anyway. I quickly climb into the tub. I realize that it is lined with plastic sheeting. I just fit with my back reclining comfortably against one end and my feet just short of touching the other end. I also realize the mud I’m sitting in is more than faintly warm and feels oily. It’s little disconcerting at first, but not bad.
Olga bends down and comes up with another bucket. She upends it right on my crotch. So much for privacy. This bucketful is even warmer than the first. It’s a notch above disconcerting – not painful, but, well, unusual. While I’m getting my brain around this, Olga pours a bucket of mud on my chest. It’s hotter still. It smells of sulfur, but not unpleasant – thick and very smooth, a bit thinner than toothpaste. Olga motions for me to spread the mud around on my body. I start spreading it on my arms and chest. She dumps one last bucket of goo on my legs. She puts the empty buckets in the service area beyond the end of the tubs, then returns to spread the mud over my legs – paying particular attention to my ankles and knees. She motions me to lean forward and spreads mud over my back. I’m sweating like a horse – partially because of the heat from the mud, partially from the nervousness from what’s happening.
Olga motions me to lay back on a towel rolled up as a headrest behind me. She folds the plastic sheeting up and over me. She tucks me in like a baby. I feel claustrophobia setting in. She throws one more clean plastic sheet over me, and heads out into the service corridor. I think, I’m OK. This is going to be OK. I’m OK. And just then she’s back carrying three heavy, tan flannel blankets. She proceeds to lay these over me. I can feel the weight of them pushing my back into the mud that I’m covered in. Hot. I’m really hot. I can’t even wipe the sweat off my face because my hands are under the sheeting. I’m OK.
Olga looks at me and gives me a questioning, thumbs-up sign. I nod and give her a half-smile. I can see a clock on the brick wall of the service corridor. I only have to do this 20 minutes. I’m OK. Sweat pours down my face. Actually I’m not OK. I try to remember the Russian word for Help.
I look at the clock again. I tell myself to calm down. If some of the invalids I saw in the corridor can survive and even thrive on this, then certainly I can. I close my eyes and try to think of something pleasant. I hear a rattling noise near my feet and open my eyes. The attendant with the cart picks up the empty buckets from the floor near my tub, puts them on his cart, and pushes on down the hallway. He doesn’t even glance at me. Five minutes have gone by. Not bad. I close my eyes again.
Someone is shaking my shoulder. I open my eyes. I look at the clock and realize with a start that I’ve been in the mud for 30 minutes – sound asleep the last 20 minutes or so. Olga is taking the blankets off me. I’m done. I’m not even sweating anymore. Amazing. Actually I feel really relaxed and refreshed.
Olga unwraps the plastic sheeting and motions for me to help her scrape off the mud from my arms and legs and other places she doesn’t want to touch. I do, while she uses her hands to wipe some of the mud off my back. Then she motions for me to get out and she gives me a hand. The mud on the bottom of my feet makes the wet floor next to the tub feel like an ice rink. She indicates that I should stand where I am. She turns and grabs a garden hose that’s hanging on the wall between us and the anteroom. She sprays water on one of her hands and adjusts the hot and cold taps until she’s satisfied with the flow and temperature. Then she turns the spray on me. She washes me down from head to toe like she’s hosing down a car and then motions for me to turn around and does my back side. Mud cascades off me and through a drain in the floor.
She turns off the hose and motions me toward a shower stall near the tub to my left. She hands me a large clean white sheet. It’s clear I can finish washing off the mud in relative privacy of the shower stall. I lay the sheet on a chair near the shower, go in the stall and pull the curtain closed. Olga’s already started the water for me. I adjust it to make it cooler. No need to start sweating again. I start wiping down the mud. The shower head is on a flexible hose. I pull it out of its bracket and spray my hard to reach cracks and crevices. It’s surprising how much mud is still on me after Olga’s hose job. Every time I think I’m done, I find another spot with the black mud on it. Eventually I just declare victory. I turn off the water, step out of the shower, and wrap the sheet like a toga around me.
Olga is still cleaning up the tub and floor from my treatment. She looks up as I come out. She straightens up and points towards the door from which I’d entered.
I smile and wave. “Spa-see’bah. Thank you.” She nods, sighs, and turns back to her work.
I reenter the anteroom. My clothes are where I left them. Two clean towels are on the chair. I give myself a final drying with the sheet then use a fresh towel to continue drying off. I put streaks of black on the towel as I continue to find the mud’s hiding places. Sorry.
I’m pretty sure I still have mud in places I haven’t looked, but elect to get dressed without wasting any more time. (The next morning I’ll find streaks of mud on my pajamas.) I pull on my clothes and look around for anything I’ve forgotten. I pile the used sheet and towels on the bench. As I’ve been coached to do, I pull a few Ukrainian griebna from my pocket, open the door to the treatment room and hand the money to Olga. She smiles and nods a thank you. “Spa-see’bah. C zdah-roh’vee-yah. Do-sve-dahn’ee-yeh” Thank you. Good health. Good-bye. I turn and head back through the anteroom out into the main corridor. Outside my door a woman sits on the bench. A man in a wheel chair sits next to her.
I’ve lost track of which way the exit is. I see the desk down the hallway to my left and head away from it. In a few steps I see the larger windowed corridor leading to the main lobby. I turn right and again begin dodging people coming at me. I find the exit and walk out the wide doors onto the large plaza outside the clinic and into the bright Crimean sunshine and dry, fresh-smelling air. I’ve had my first mud treatment … and survived … and even enjoyed it. I hope the massage I’ve booked for tomorrow is as good. Or maybe I’ll take another mud treatment. I hope I get Olga.
