Dr. Nicholai Kharisov was an extremely attractive man in his early 40s, with piercing blue eyes, light blonde, thinning hair, and the devil's own goatee. We would become fast friends before my journey was over. He was married with two darling children and a lovely, submissive wife. On a subsequent trip to Moscow the following year, my crew and I stayed in an empty apartment in the same building where Dr. Kharisov lived with his family. But we had to build this bridge first.
I met Dr. Kharisov at the Insitute the next morning. We had a brief chat before being ushered into Dr. Gerasimova's office. "You know, she is an important woman, an important doctor. How do I know that you are not going to embarrass me in some way?"
"You don't. But I promise you that I won't.
"This is...this is very difficult, you know?"
"I understand."
"Well, whatever you do, whatever she asks you, just don't tell her that you've never laid eyes on a burn patient before."
"Okay, I won't."
Dr. Kharisov's English was good enough to make me nervous, and it was the first nervousness I'd felt since I'd arrived in Moscow. I excused myself and headed for a loo, passing more than one guerney with a deceased burn victim on it . The lavatory was filthy, literally -- there were feces smeared on the wall. Thank god I only had to pee! There was no toilet paper. Mental note to self, bring toilet paper and keep some in the car. There were books in the lavatory, hard bound and paperback, and pages were torn from the books to clean one's private parts, then the soiled paper was put into a waste bucket. Of course, you couldn't flush the pages of a book down the toilet. Bound to create serious plumbing problems.
On the way back to the waiting area outside Dr. Gerasimova's office, I asked myself what had I gotten into. But there was only one way to find out, and that was to get into it.
The clearest and most immediate impression I had of the burn ward where Dr. Gerasimova's offce was located was the horrific smell. I'd been in many hospitals and had never been physically disturbed by the characteristic odors. This was different. The air was stifling, stagnant, the energy of intense pain and suffering powerfully assaulting my physical senses. I hadn't yet seen a burn patient, but the smell wafting through the dingy gray corridors prepared me for what I would eventually see: men in tattered bathrobes and cloth slippers on their way to the rebandaging room or returning from it. Skin donor cadavers lay barely covered on rickety guerneys.
