When she stepped into the cool waiting room, she felt as if ice was covering all her back. There were other few people of different ages, waiting for their turn to enter into the doctor’s office. Not fear was the feeling dominating her, but… anxiety. She was always hoping that there is something wrong with her, something to bring her the fame she needed so desperately and she could never achieve other way; a scarce malignant tumor, for example. On the door hanged goldish letters, informing the name and the title of the doctor consulting that day. , COMRADE VIRGIL SECAROVICH, CHIEF OF RADIOLOGY AND LUNG DISEASE DEPARTMENT, PROFESSOR DOCTOR, UNIVERSITY LECTURER She was trying to guess how this prominent person of Tallinn’s medical society will look like. The waiting was marked by dry cough here and there, and a strong smell of chlorinate and medicaments. Just before she entered, she imagined him tall, young, not married and wearing glasses, but she realized that she was too dreamy to hope for a marriage to somebody that important while she was nobody.-“Name, please”, he asked without raising eyes from his papers.-“Olga Mitanov”-“Age”-“Seventeen “-“What brings you here?”“Comrade doctor from Dermatology sent me here because I have never suffered of scarlet fever, so I never had to treat one, there is no dermatological implication still …I got this “erythematic nodes” on my both legs which, comrade doctor, suspected to be related with tuberculosis.She said all of this without to take her breath, and then she suddenly remained silent, as a pupil waiting for the teacher to punish him with a ruler on his palm.-“Ooh, so you pretend to be Miss Knows All, don’t you? “-“Far from me, I’m just trying to help.”He made a fast movement with his eye brows and, then, continued:-“May I examine your chest? Please undress your T-shirt!”The cold touch of the stethoscope sent impulses in her body like wires implanted directly in her brain Even if she was seen before by men, (doesn’t she have a two years old daughter?) she was still ashamed of her half naked body and especially of her fallen breasts (why, on earth, they had to resemble, after breast feeding, her mother’s). And for this reason the “thirty-threes” pronounced during the chest listening came out feebly and shy.-“Do you ever smoke?”-“Yes, I do. I smoke two packets of cigarettes every day.” -“Oh my god, haven’t you got any parents?”- “I live alone, just with my daughter“-“So… you’ve got a daughter.” He made a funny movement in a daze, as if saying “it is not enough that, at seventeen, you smoke two packets of cigarettes daily, you’ve got a daughter too…”-“Yes, she’s two years old.”- “That means you delivered her at…fifteen?”-“Right. May I light a cigarette?”-“It is forbidden in a public health place. You seem to really need it, so please do, but just this once.-“Thank you. -“What about your husband, why doesn’t he live with you?”-“I don’t have a husband!”-“But you just …”-“I know” she shouted interrupting him,” the father of my daughter is not, and was never my husband! And I rather not talk about it!”-“As you wish, but you’ve got a problem and I can’t just prescribe your anything without to know your situation. Do you study or work?”-“I couldn’t study anymore; I was dismissed after one year of high school because of my pregnancy. “-“Do you have a job? “-“Yes, I make wedding flowers and accessories in a very small shop, downtown.”-“You make enough money, I assume?”-“Quite enough for me and my daughter.”-“So you can afford medication. “-“Yes, of course, as long as I have a job, the syndicate pays for the medical bills” said Olga with cough interruptions, ”But is there something wrong with my chest?”

“I’m skeptical about a certain sound, besides this cough as symptom, and the cigarette as a risk factor, so I kindly suggest further investigation.” -“What do I have to do?” -“Go now to the laboratory with this request and have a Tuberculin Test. Return after three days to read it. “-“Thank you very much, comrade doctor. Goodbye!”She went to the lab and had her test done, but a weird sensation of hunger hit her on her way out. She felt lucky that her mother worked in a nursery and she could leave Last three days faced Olga with severe work problems. The Tuberculin Test got her arm swollen and she could barely move it; every movement causing violent pains in the affected area. When she arrived to the hospital, Intra-Derma Reaction was showing all over her arm up to the shoulder. Some nurses from the laboratory exclaimed:Body! I never saw something like that in my entire life.Me, I saw something like that about ten years ago but that man is dead. Dead like he’s never been alive.Olga was not afraid of death, so their words didn’t have any effect on her, other than curiosity and excitement, but she was sad about these nurses. Were they trained by people working in funeral business, or how could they talk like that, so irresponsible? What if instead of her, an old cardiac woman would have this I.DR? She would die, then, from the impact with their words, wouldn’t she? the microbiologist doctor didn’t seem to be annoyed by them. He wrote conscientiously, in his file: Palmer V plus pustule and he advised her to perform X-ray, to locate the tuberculosis. Descending the stairs in her way to the radiologist she was thinking at Comrade Secarovich, who made a good impression on her. He could be her grand-grand father as he was about 70 years old. Especially the white hair on the temples made him look kind, sensible, and interesting, not infatuated as she would expect.