MAR 2025 - Rescue

In 1989, a Swedish couple who’d been hosting me while I taught seminars in drama and language acquisition in Stockholm, invited me to go with them to Russia for a ten-day visit. We picked a bad day to arrive. A young man landed a plane in Red Square, in spite of heavy security. At the same time, two Russian pilots flew to a town in eastern Sweden asking for asylum.

My friends had been to Russia many times. They talked of the wonderful people they’d met, the adventures they’d had. Our experience on the train to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was nothing like they described. They were all unfriendly and I wondered how to ask for their help. I had vials of medicine that kept my leukemia in check, which needed to be frozen. When my friend asked a conductor, in Russian, where I could put my medicine, he sneered and said I shouldn’t be traveling if I had medicine needing to be frozen. His response made me anxious. How was I going to find a place to store it?

A few minutes later, I saw a woman carrying a coffee cup. I asked my friend to ask her where she got the coffee. She told him there was a dining car a few cars ahead. I decided to try to find it. I figured if there was food there must be refrigeration.

Every time I entered and left a car I had to show my ticket. The guards, who were everywhere, were frustrated by my inability to speak much Russian. Finally, I found one who spoke English. He told me there was a refrigerator two cars up. I thanked him, in Russian, one of the few words I knew, and kept going until I found the car.

The refrigerator was at the back of the car, which was close to the front of the train. I waited until a guard left, then opened the refrigerator and put my medicine behind some cans, hoping no one would see it and maybe throw it out. It seemed a long way back to the car where my friends were.

The guards were angry. One yelled at my friend when she said, “Three gold rings,” instead of saying, “three rings gold.” Oy! 

I was taking all this in when I heard one of the English-speaking passengers say, “It must be time for the train to separate.” I suddenly had a bad feeling and asked what she meant. “The front cars are going to Finland so they’ll be decoupled from our train, which is going to Leningrad.”

Shocked, I started running through the cars, recognizing too late I’d forgotten my ticket, yelling, “Medicine,” to the guards who tried to stop me. I was racing against time as I squirmed away from them. Just before I got to the car with the refrigerator, a guard, who towered over me, kept yelling, “Nyet.” (No.). I ignored him and squeezed through the slightly opened car door. He followed, pulling me back. I shook free of him, opened the refrigerator door, and searched for my medicine. It wasn’t where I put it. All the time he kept screaming and pulling at me. I found the medicine, which had been moved to a different shelf, but seemed all there, and turned to leave. The guard was blocking my way, accompanied by a torrent of Russian. Desperate, I ducked under his outstretched arms and ran as fast as I could, not knowing how long he would follow me.

Just as I got about halfway back, I heard a thunderous noise. The car I was in shook. The front cars were being decoupled. Exhausted by the effort and close call, I made my way back to the car where my friends were.

Fortunately, we found a friendly guard who told my friends there was a refrigerator the guards used. He offered to store my medicine in it until it was time to leave the train. 

When I was first diagnosed with a rare and anomalous form of leukemia, I was accepted into an experimental program requiring me to inject myself with medication that had to be frozen, which kept the disease at bay, I never expected I’d have to rescue my medicine from guards chasing me in a train car about to be decoupled in a country where I didn’t speak the language.

How do you react in a dire situation?

---

MARCH 2025 MONTHLY STORIES