"We need to save, period. Emotions come later"
White coats, the quiet creak of gurneys and the smell of antiseptic, which eventually becomes familiar here. The Central Military Clinical Hospital named after Alexander Vishnevsky is often referred to as the City of salvation. In its long passages and corridors, behind every door, those who had recently been on the front line are brought back to life. Here, nurses become "mothers" for patients, and dressing rooms are a place of real medical excellence. Izvestia spent a day at the Vishnevsky National Medical Research Center for High Medical Technologies to meet women who have dedicated their lives to saving others.
"This is our internal motto and code of honor"
The March cold outside the hospital window turned the Moscow region landscape into a motionless white panorama. At the entrance, guests are greeted by a bronze bust of Alexander Vishnevsky. The chief surgeon of the Soviet Army, in a ceremonial tunic, looks down at his successors from a marble pedestal. There are potted greenery all around.
"We have a special relationship with people here," the escort says softly as we walk through the long, bright passages. — The main rule that every employee knows: "For everyone's life — as for his own!". This is our internal motto, a code of honor, if you will.
We walk past beige walls lined with wheelchairs and wheelchairs. Medical equipment is on the trolleys. The corridors are quiet, but there is constant work behind this external silence.
The history of the hospital began in June 1968. Then the 3rd Central Military Clinical Hospital was opened. Today, a church stands next to the buildings, consecrated in honor of St. Luke, Archbishop and outstanding surgeon Valentin Voino—Yasenetsky, author of the famous "Essays on Purulent Surgery."
— Experts understand that in addition to mastery, there is a question of faith. This is an important internal compass. We often repeat that the surgeon's hand is controlled by the Lord," the attendant explains.
"Medicine is the vocation of my whole life"
We knock on the door of the office of the head nurse of the 31st department of neurosurgery. This is a place where fighters with spinal injuries and circulatory disorders recover, that is, those with paralyzed limbs or impaired internal organs.
A young woman gets up to meet us, a little embarrassed. She adjusts her white coat, offers to sit down, and while we're settling in, she confesses: "Honestly, this is the first time I've talked to journalists."
Natalia Vasilyeva came here in 2007, right after her studies. I started as a nurse on duty. Dozens of patients were under her control all day long: injections, IVs, complicated dressings. Then I spent years in the dressing room, working in the department of arthroplasty, where joints are changed, then I got into neurosurgery.
The pandemic was a test for her, as it was for many doctors. When colleagues were out of action due to illness, Natalia took on additional shifts - she went to the post, worked in the dressing room, replaced the procedural nurse. In 2022, the management offered her the position of senior nurse.
— Was it scary to take responsibility for the team?
— Of course, at first it's exciting — there are so many people under your command. But it helped that I went through all the positions myself. The girls have known me for a long time, we speak the same language," she smiles.
She calls the team a second family and says that they come here to take shifts without feeling heavy — "we're a bit of a fan of our work."
Natalia Yurievna often replaces a psychologist for fighters. The wounded need to speak out, to entrust to someone those fears that you won't tell your family about.
When asked to recall the most striking case from practice, she responds instantly. One day, a patient with a tracheostomy (a surgically created hole in the neck for breathing bypassing the nose and larynx) started bleeding suddenly. It turned out that the fragment had damaged the carotid artery and kept the vessel from bursting.
— There is no panic at such moments. Only cold calculation. We need to save them, period. Emotions come later, at home," she admits.
Despite the fact that Natalia Yurievna's family did not have doctors, she dreamed of becoming a nurse from a young age.
"When I was a kid, I used to play hospital with dolls all the time," the head nurse recalls. — I have always been attracted by the opportunity to help people, and this dream has turned into a real vocation.
Saying goodbye, we catch Natalia Vasilyeva's gaze — calm, confident and very kind.
"The dressing room was my element"
The road to the next squad resembles a real quest. Vishnevsky Hospital is a huge medical complex with its own internal geography: long passages, identical corridors, numerous forks.
— Have you been getting used to the logistics here for a long time? I ask my escort, admitting that I'm unlikely to find a way out without help.
— My parents work here, I've been living within these walls since childhood, but even it took me a month to get everything in my head, — the interlocutor smiles. — And the markers on the floor and, of course, our staff help the patients. We will always tell you the way.
The 34th therapeutic department, where neurological patients undergo rehabilitation, smells of mint and cleanliness. Senior nurse Zinaida Slyusarchuk greets us with a professional, almost maternal smile. She has been working here for half a century — she got into medicine almost by accident, but fell in love with the profession from her first shift.
"I went out with my friends, and then I fell in love with anatomy," laughs Zinaida Sergeevna.
Her passion has always been dressing. During the campaigns in the North Caucasus, operations and dressings were a continuous stream. Microsurgery was just taking its first steps back then.
"This is creative work," she told Izvestia. — You see how a wound heals under your hands, how life returns to the tissue, and you realize that everything is not in vain.
Today, her working day is filled with many tasks: patient visits, staff monitoring, documentation management, classes with young specialists. Every day is similar to the previous one, but at the same time it is unique.
For 50 years of work, Zinaida Sergeevna has not just observed the development of medicine, but participated in it. She opened new blocks, assisted in the most complex operations, mastered technologies that previously seemed fantastic.
— We worry about everyone. If you think about a person in the evening, it means that you didn't work in vain," admits Zinaida Sergeevna.
"If you don't regret it, how can you treat it?"
Maria Florinskaya's office is always full. Six benches in the corridor are densely occupied by those who came for a cardiogram. She sees up to 70 patients a day. And when a short, energetic woman in a white coat appears at the door, the queue falls silent.
"Please sit down, I need to finish with the patients," she tells us softly but firmly, and disappears through the door again.
Maria Alexandrovna has been here since the very beginning, since 1968. She saw how new buildings were being built on the site of the wasteland, how the equipment, shape, and generations were changing.
— The first chief is Pozdnyakov, a handsome officer. Glukhov, who replaced him, instilled in us an academic style in everything from diagnosis to communication style. A real school," she shared in an interview with Izvestia.
For 57 years, legends of the Soviet Union have passed through her office: marshals, artists, Olympians. Leonid Utesov, Valentina Tolkunova, Lyudmila Sazonova — she remembers everyone. On the table are photographs and books with signatures of grateful patients: from General Leonid Ivashov, commentator Vladimir Maslachenko, Colonel Viktor Sukhov. The latter presented the nurse with a collection of his poems.
But for her, there is no difference between a celebrity and an ordinary fighter. Many people now call her Mother.
— I feel very sorry for my patients, especially the wounded. I'll treat them to a piece of candy and have a heart-to-heart talk. I'll say, "Smile, everything's going to get better, let's go dancing again!" she shares. — And if you don't regret it, how can you treat it?
After college, she was hired at the Vishnevsky Hospital almost instantly. She hasn't left since—not for a day, not for an hour. They invited her to the First City Hospital and promised her a raise, but she refused.
"They keep their walls," she says simply. — Our team is wonderful, friendly, everyone supports each other. That's the main thing.
She finds strength not only in work, but also in the simple joys of life — caring for the garden outside the hospital, caring for stray cats. He answers the question about fatigue with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
— It happens, of course. But you can't give up. I'm a communist labor striker, I'm not allowed," Maria Florinskaya emphasized.
It seems the whole hospital relies on people like her.
Looking at these women, you can't help but recall the famous saying: "Choose a job you like, and you won't have to work a single day." Within the walls of the hospital, this phrase takes on a tangible meaning. Despite chronic lack of sleep and a busy schedule, which sometimes leaves no time for a full meal, the staff retains an amazing inner light.
Art in the walls of the hospital
In the corridors of the hospital, the eye keeps catching bright posters: performances by famous artists, photo exhibitions, movie screenings. The club hall is never empty. So on March 5, a concert was held by young artists who came to visit those undergoing treatment and medical staff.
— Now we have mostly guys from the front in the hospital. And we try not to make them feel isolated," the escort explained to me. — Recently, a Shaman performed, Natalia Varley came as part of the Soviet Cinema Week. And the troupes of the leading theaters come to us, they play performances.
The latter is the Vishnevsky Living Room project, named after the famous surgeon whose name the National Medical Research Center bears. The organizers invite theaters, discuss the repertoire, and choose classic productions that are understandable and familiar to many.
Such meetings are remembered by fighters for a long time, because behind them there is attention and support, the feeling that life goes on, that they are expected, remembered and loved outside the hospital.
In the corridors, you can find paintings painted by artists and by the patients themselves. Landscapes change according to the seasons — in winter there are landscapes with snow, in summer there are sunny ones. This is how the seasons symbolically change within these walls.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
