Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

by Timothy Snyder

I was tested, slowly, for flu, for this and that, with little result. I had undergone my appendectomy in the same hospital two weeks earlier, but no one in the emergency department seemed inclined to look at my electronic record. I had brought a folder with the printouts and a CD from the Florida hospital, and I had just enough presence of mind to offer it to the doctors. They were not interested. “We do things our own way,” said the resident. The doctors and nurses seemed unable to complete a sentence, let alone think about my case as something with a history. I could see, or rather hear, why they were distracted. The familiar sounds from beyond the curtain drew my attention as well, even as my vital signs worsened and the infection spread through my blood. An alcoholic beyond the curtain to the right, an older lady from the sound of her voice, kept crying out “Doctor!” or “Nurse!” A second alcoholic, to the left, was a loquacious homeless man. When asked for his belt, he riffed on the idea of the “Belt of Orion,” comparing himself to the hunter and rapist of Greek mythology. Whenever approached by a female doctor or nurse, he said, “You belong to me; don’t try to fight it.” One of the nurses declared that she didn’t belong to anyone. When he was discharged, he was asked the standard questions about whether he felt safe at home. This was absurd, since he had no home and was going back out into the cold. It was also obscene, since his answers to the questions involved the ...