Page 182 - Revelation

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation

second farm with a smaller and not so beautiful house. Regrettably, the second gift
soon disappeared too... A small woollen factory was the next and last help from my
grandmother’s patient parents. It functioned like a well-oiled machine and could bring
a very good profit allowing the family a comfortable living, if managed correctly.
However, by that time the misfortunes had affected my grandfather so that he indulged
in "hard" liquor and therefore the total ruin of the family did not keep them waiting too
long...

It was precisely my grandfather’s careless "economy" that put all his family in a
very difficult financial situation, when all the children had to work to maintain
themselves and forget about their further education in higher schools or institutes. For
this reason, on burying her dreams to become a doctor, my mother went to work at the
central post-office, simply because there was a vacant seat at that moment.
So, the life of the young and "old" families of the Seriogins passed in simple
everyday chores without any special (good or bad) "adventures".

Almost a year slipped by. My mother was pregnant, expecting her first-born. My
dad literally "flew" with happiness and repeated over and over again that it would be a
son. He was right – they did have a boy... But the circumstances of his birth were so
horrific that even the sickest imagination could not have invented it…
My mother was taken to the hospital on a Christmas day shortly before the New
Year. Certainly, everybody worried but none expected any negative consequence
because my mother was a young and strong woman with the perfectly developed body
of a sportswoman (she went in for gymnastics since being a child) and the general
opinion was that she should give birth very easily. But evidently someone there "at the
top" vigorously opposed, for some unknown reasons, my mother having a child... What
I am going to tell further is far beyond all human concepts of mercy and honour or
Hypocratic oath. That night a doctor on duty called Remeika saw that the delivery had
complications and decided to call the chief surgeon of the Alitus hospital, doctor
Ingeliavitchus who had to leave the festive table to come to the hospital. Naturally, the
doctor appeared "a little" tipsy and on hastily examining my mother, decided right
away: "Cut open!", apparently wishing to come back as quickly as possible to the New
Year celebration he had to interrupt. Nobody on the staff wished to contradict him and
my mother was prepared for the operation. And than "interesting" things began to
happen which made my long hair stand on end when I heard this part of the story.
Ingeliavitchus began the operation and, having applied the lancet on my mother,

left her on the operating table! She was anesthetized and could not know what happened
around her in that moment. But the nurse who assisted during the operation told her
that the doctor was "urgently" called to take care of some "urgent case" and
disappeared, leaving my mother cut open on the operating table... One may ask what
case could be more "urgent" for a surgeon than two lives that depended fully on
him right now and which he left to the mercy of fate so easily?! But this was not all
yet. In several seconds the nurse was called from the operating-room, because the
surgeon "urgently" needed her help in another case, and when she flatly refused,
saying that there was an "open" person on the table, she was told that they would send
"somebody else" at once. But nobody ever came…

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