Moped.

Ah, rather… mini-moped I used it to go for a ride, and strangely enough, for a purpose. The reason was that the nearest grocery store to the Rusanivski Sady was the “Olimpiyskiy” supermarket, which was a good 6-7 kilometers from my summer house. I didn’t ride for long. When I had already moved on to my second year at KPI, I got into a completely silly accident that deprived me of the magic of going to the village with my classmates, as I was diagnosed with a concussion and was told I couldn’t work in the sun.

It was the first experience in my life when I realized that if there are issues with the mind, the opposite part of the body will suffer (mainly from painful vitamin injections). Later, life dialectically added to this rule, as it turned out that if you look for problems in your backside, then, in turn, your head will hurt.

The accident I was involved in happened when a truck that had just passed me suddenly decided to turn right. There was no sidewalk in that area—just a large parking lot near the agricultural machinery store. I was an unnoticed target, so the driver only hit the brakes when he saw my body flying over the cab, not when the rear wheels of the truck rolled over my moped, and certainly not when I, trying to avoid a collision and a fall, attempted to turn right along with the truck.

I later realized that I was quite a messed-up person, as my last thoughts before hitting my head on the asphalt, which could have been my final thoughts, were entirely filled with profanity.

They covered up the accident. The police scared me by saying they would write a letter to my university stating that I was a repeat offender, and that they wouldn’t investigate further and would expel me. I was also told that a truck with those license plates doesn’t exist, and so on. The truck quickly left the scene of the accident when it realized everyone was okay. I called the police, who arrived an hour later and then called an ambulance. The moped was left lying on the asphalt with a crushed rear wheel and leaking gasoline.

The ambulance arrived very quickly, looked at my large bruise, and categorically declared — traumatic brain injury, I needed to get to the hospital urgently. I had no symptoms other than losing consciousness. As for the headache and nausea, that could have just been a result of stress.

It’s important to understand that there were no mobile phones back then, and it was a typical situation of “Kolya Gerasimov went out for kefir.” My grandparents were at the dacha, trying to fend off dark thoughts, which, in this case, were the most accurate. I left at 10 in the morning to get kefir, and it wasn’t until three in the afternoon that I was able to reach anyone. I had tried to call earlier, but my mom was apparently “on the line,” and her phone was constantly busy.

I was only able to get through to the hospital itself. It was the Emergency Hospital, or BSP. A unique establishment. I asked them to clean my abrasions—they told me they had a department for head injuries, and that wounds were treated elsewhere. I asked to be taken to the shower to at least wash the dirt off my abrasions—they finally found some place with cold water after a lot of effort. In the ward next to me, there was a construction worker who had fallen off a ladder and ended up covered in parquet varnish. The nurses only discovered the varnish on him two days later when they tried to give him an injection in his vein. They washed it off. From his elbow. And that was it. He lay there in the varnish the whole time I was “being treated.”

After the trouble I had washing up, I was very cautious with my requests, but I still asked to make a call. Under the watchful eye of the nurse, who clearly didn’t want any extra fuss, I dialed the home phone again, but it was busy once more. The other relatives were at the dacha. The only option left was to call one of my mom’s friends, who could then reach her and relay the information. I decided to call Aunt Natasha. The downside was that she was a panicky person, but the upside was that she was our neighbor at the dacha and, most importantly, she would understand from my description where the moped was located.

I call her and start from a long way off. “Good evening, Aunt Natasha.” But I had underestimated her: she quickly worked out that I had never called her before, which meant something had happened, and if something had happened then it was 100% something terrible, and she cut me off at once: — Romochka, where are you calling from? Is everything all right? — she knew I was at the dacha and that there was no telephone there.