Masha spent the next two weeks in one of the worst hospitals in a city full of bad hospitals. Her roommates numbered between three and five, placed on sagging metal cots in a room with no dividers. The hospital had only the most rudimentary medicines and equipment that dated back to the middle of the twentieth century. One of Masha’s roommates had a pregnancy that had become nonviable at twenty-six weeks, but the drugs used to induce labor were ineffective or insufficient and she lay in the room for days, struggling to give birth to her dead baby.
