Shots. Five of them. In the arm.
I wasn't prepared for that.
It's not that I'm squeamish, or that I have a low pain threshold. It's just that that's a lot of shots, man. I suggest that maybe I could get some of them later; check myself into a little Russian clinic, disinfect the injection site with some Stolichnaya, and submit myself to the large but capable hands of Olga, the rather mannish Siberian nurse.
My doctor gives me a sidelong glance as he lays out the syringes.
"The Russian medical system oscillates between modern and medieval," he says. He chooses a syringe and frowns at it. "You never know what you're going to get. Now take off your shirt."
"But don't you think," I say as I disrobe,"that it's worth giving it a try? I mean, peristroika, glastnost, all that?"
He thwacks the syringe with his finger. "That was twenty years ago. Hold still."
So still I hold, betrayed by a country that can export cultural gold like Dostoyevsky and Yakov Smirnov and yet apparently not provide a tetnus booster. I am about to wax rhapsodic on the technological innovation of Sputnik when Dr. Cahn launches the first of five rockets into my arm.
I mutter and curse. I smite him with my eyes. I harbor evil feelings towards him. All the while, little Chernobyls are melting down in my tricep.
"Isn't there a pill for this?" I hiss, sending him as much bad mojo as I can muster.
He drops the empty syringe with a satisfied sigh and reaches for another. "Consider it pure joy, my brother. Now, for the love of God, stop squirming and hold still."
Yeah, right. Pure joy my приклад.
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