A Young Doctor's Notebook & Other Stories (2012–2013): Season 1, Episode 4 - Episode #1.4 - full transcript
Balancing a heavy workload with a developing morphine habit, the young doctor finds it increasingly difficult to conceal his burgeoning addiction from his colleagues. After one humiliation too many, he resolves to make a clean start and a dedicated effort to combat the syphilis epidemic. But a blizzard-bound journey to visit a dying patient proves to be his toughest test yet.
Syphilis is killing you, that is
extremely serious and highly infectious,
I have to fight this... Open a ward.
I'll write a compelling letter
to the Zemstvo.
This is the dispensary.
This is the key.
Don't lose it.
I'm sure if we'll do this again
it will be better.
We're out of cigarettes and I need
to read a newspaper.
Oh yes, we do have a lot of fun here.
Only last month I heard a very amusing
anecdote.
I have to operate, I have to cut open
her throat and insert a metal tube.
I don't think I can do this.
Hours and hours of staring at the snow,
only interrupted by bora.
I am a murderer.
Morphine withdrawal is an unpleasant
business.
Nausea, insomnia...
severe allucinations...
You don't want to do that.
I am a doctor, I can handle it.
It will never be this good again.
A Young Doctor's Notebook
Episode 1x4
MOSCOW, 1934
"This is the end"
Get a doctor.
Oh! What do they want?
You. You're famous now, doctor!
Because of little Lidka
and her metal throat.
Only eleven hours to go.
All right.
Right, who's first?
Gargle.
Drops.
Pea.
Next!
You have malaria, intermittent fever.
See the nurse and ask for quinine
powder. Ten sachets.
Next!
Drops. Gargle.
Drops. Syphilis.
You all... have... Syphilis.
He just got cold, that's all.
No, you need treatment.
Extensive treatment.
Here at the hospital, starting now.
But I have too much to do at home!
Can you give me something?
I can give you a spade...
to dig three little holes.
I'm opening a new syphilis clinic.
- Where?
- Here, in Mur'ev.
But we don't have the room...
or the equipment... or the medicines..,
or the nurses, or the beds!
Details. I will write a letter
to the Zemstvo.
Is this going to take much longer?
I mean...
should I go and come by?
I can see the crown.
All right, let's hurry thing along,
shall we?
- Was it... Was it supposed to look
like that? - No...
but then you're not supposed to put
forceps in the baby's eye.
Oh, yes.
Um... Tell you what? You take this
to the ward,
and I will finish up in here.
We've had quite enough excitement
for one day.
- Not now, feldsher.
- But he took the quinine powder...
- that you prescribed.
- And?
All ten sachets of it.
I'll get the stomach pump.
He thought he'd heal faster, you see?
If he took all the medicine at once.
It's harshly rather ironic, because...
Sun over the yardarm.
What sun?
Don't tell me you still got
the stomach pain?
Strange.
Same time as last night.
You know, I don't think the morphine
is working.
Have you tried drops?
I've had a long day.
A hundred and eleven patients...
fifty cigarettes.
I just want to go back in my room...
and unwind.
Have you tried reading a book?
You know, Leopold Leopoldovic
left an extensive library.
There's turkish erotica.
Good morning.
Oh... Oh. not again...
Doctor, are you there?
Yes.
- Um... Give... Give me a minute.
- It's me, the feldsher.
I'm a miserable wretch.
Oh, God...
I'm pathetic...
and weak. I'm a disgrace to the...
Imperial Moscow University
of Medicine and Dentistry.
I disgust myself.
I deserve...
to rot in a forgotten hell like this.
Here's the self-pity.
And the incontinence.
- Doctor! Doctor!
- Yes.
Doctor!
- Doctor!
- Yes, I'm coming.
Doctor!
Doctor, go back to bed,
you're not needed.
- What? - None of us are, because of
the blizzard.
It's official: the hospital is closed.
So you woke me up to tell me
I could go back to bed?
You could have just not come.
You're right in there?
Would you like to call a doctor?
Unfortunately, the hospital
is closed.
If just I had an atlas to read!
- So what do we fancy doing today?
- We?? Why God does just...
Um... I don't...
You know, I just... I thought
I might just have a bath.
Bath in home? Message understood.
Ok, you'll got it.
Really...
gentlemen!
I'll never thanks you enough,
I had no idea it was so big.
It's stuck, you know.
No, you go down, I'll go up.
Couldn't we... couldn't we sit
and put it on his side, and...
- This is a riddle.
- Just shove it!
Look at the state of this room.
What's that smell?
Smell? I can't... smell anything.
What do you mean? What... smell?
No, no, no. You haven't...
left the lid off the jar
of pickled sprats, have you?
Oh, yes, I have, I have!
Thank you.
- Give me those sheets. will you, doctor?
- No, no. don't worry, I know where the
mangle is.
That... that is not mine.
Leopold Leopoldovic left that here.
- Watch out!
- No, no.
- That is not going to fit.
- No, no, she's right.
It was foolish of me,
I don't need to have a bath.
No, no. A bath was requested,
a bath you shall have.
That's not sprats.
Certainly is a big bath.
It's big enough for two men.
Actually, doctor...
you wouldn't mind if I...
went back to my room
and left you to it?
What? No, no, no, not at all.
Please, go, thank God, thank...
thank you.
That's it.
I'm done.
I'm gonna make a clean start.
Yes, I'll write that letter to the
Zemstvo, today.
- Or, you don't think I can do it?
- No...
- I don't.
- Well, I can.
Now pass me the loofah.
Thank you.
Doctor! Doctor!
A letter for you, doctor.
From the house of the agronomist,
no less.
Maybe it's an invitation to the wedding.
It's the social event of the year...
and this, in the year with the
double hanging!
- Yes, but what does the letter say?
- In good time, doctor.
Now, this is the funny anecdote
I've been promising to tell you.
- Oh, what a timing!
- Palchikov, the clerk,
- and the tale of the dazzling trousers.
- I'm thrilled! But give me the letter.
Hell no, you're naked.
Where was I?
Oh yeah... Palchikov, the clerk.
- He fell in love... - Really?
- a humble clerk!
And she, the beautiful daughter
of the agronomist.
Such a union was impossible.
- Or wasn't? No.
- No. No.
Because, he hatched a plan.
He went into town..
and purchased a most unusual item.
- Was it a dazzling pair of trousers?
- An item of clothing.
- A most dazzling pair of trousers.
- ...dazzling pair of trousers.
So dazzling, in fact...
that she agreed to become his bride.
- Very dazzling.
- I will do so, this weekend.
It's a fairy tale.
Oh dear, she fractured her skull.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
This isn't good.
"I cannot cope,"
"I beg you honestly to come soon."
- Me? Who sent this?
- Um... doctor...
Um.... I can't read his name.
Oh! He thinks he can see her...
brain.
Well, I mean she shall be death
before I get there, won't she?
And you said he was in Grachevka?
And there's a blizzard.
"I appreciate that Grachevka is a great
distance to travel, especially
in a blizzard..."
But I've just got in the bath!
Um... No, it doesn't say anything
about a bath.
I'm gonna get a pneumonia!
Does look cold, in there.
Morphine and hydrochloric acid.
It is definitely...
habit-forming.
But... A little...
habit, it's not the same
as a morphine addiction.
Is it?
Then you want to see electric lamps?
They're supposed to brighten up now.
We can't really see them tonight.
They haven't got a generator yet.
Anything else to see in Grachevka?
I was told they have a whore, now.
Oh, that's nice.
Actually, I think will be long
to the agronomist's house.
Hello?
Oh, you're here for the wedding.
- I'm sorry, there's been a terrible
accident. - I hope so, I came all the
way from Mur'ev.
Oh, you're the doctor?
- Yes.
- Sorry, I had no idea, you're so...
- So pleases to hear that.
- Just tell me what happened. - Right.
- Well. I'll start from the beginning...
- I already know about the trousers.
Of course! Yes, um...
- It's a cranium...
- Cranium...?
It's a really big hole in the head.
And several cracks...
everywhere. I put a bandage on it,
but... um...
I've really just graduated.
High school's thirteen fives.
Stop saying that.
It means nothing, out of there.
And I got fifteen.
Gosh.
You don't mind if I take notes, do you?
It's actually quite exciting,
this will be my first operation.
Do you have morphine?
Yes, yes, I do... It's right there,
in my bag.
It's brand new.
The bag.
Morphine.
How many units you're going to give her?
All of it.
All of it.
Gosh, that's a lot, isn't it?
But then I suppose you want her to be
asleep for the into cranium...
What are we going to use to take out
shreds?
Well I don't mean the bone fragments.
I mean the gate parts.
Should I sterilize the...
A second one.
I see.
That is a lot of morphine.
Then I suppose that...
we're actually not going to do
the operation, don't we?
Gosh...
Can't we do anything for her?
I suppose not.
- Is she...
- Not yet.
She is...
now.
- Oh God, I feel... - Releaved,
- ...sick.
There is ham, by there?
I missed dinner.
So much blood...
There's blood everywhere.
I don't think he's worried about his
trousers, I think is rather about his
dead wife.
She's dead?
I'm a murderer!
I'm a murderer!
Can we do anything for this poor soul?
Would morphine help?
- I'm a murderer.
- I don't know.
Not as much as...
Just a little bit... you know...
half unit.
Well you have the morphine.
I'm a murderer.
You do it.
It will make you...
She died, the whore.
Last week, syphilis.
Excellent.
Thank you for your help.
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
What is it?
What do we stop for?
Have we lost the road?
Road?
What road?
We've gone across fields for hours!
Now we lost fields!
Wait here.
I thought you wanted to see Grachevka.
I thought you wanted to have
an intelligent conversation.
With this little notebook?
Who's gonna want to read this
juvenile memoirs?
You were like that once.
But now look at you.
About to die in the snow
for a shot of morphine.
You do know it'll get worse than this,
don't you?
You think this is bad? This is nothing!
Wait until you find yourself...
at a Goldieva farmacy, lying...
in another man shit, picking
the inside of the dirt.
- I knew you couldn't handle this.
- Shut up, shut up!
The key is not there, you threw it away!
- What are you doing?
- It's here, somewhere!
What do you mean, "here"?
Don't know even where "here" is!
Where did you last see it? Russia?
You're not going to find it!
Here's, you see, the...
bliss in the soft grass.
And what about me?
I've lost everything!
My livelihood, my dignity, my friends...
You know who my friends are now?
Pelageya!
Demyan, Leopold...
because they're all dead!
Because I can write them a prescription
for morphine that they will never need!
Shut up!
I said shut up!
Go ahead!
Do it!
You have as good as killed me already.
Cigarettes!
God!
What...?
PROMISING YOUNG DOCTOR
FOUND DEAD IN SNOW
Morphine withdrawal is an unpleasant
business.
I am a doctor, I can handle it.
Help me, doctor, I have a strangulated hernia.
Young man...
I have vested experience
of strangulated hernias.
Ask me anything.
Leopold Leopoldovic!
There is one thing I would like
to ask you.
Why don't you just fuck off?
It will take you...
to a lush meadow with the high summer
where you lie in the soft grass,
and bask in the sun.
And feel nothing but bliss.
And you will never want to return to
this frozen pisshole in the snow.
I brought you a piece of ham...
- fat.
- Thank you.
- It's better?
- It is worse.
Doctor, let's finish this in the morning.
Esteemed colleagues of the Zemstvo,
as you know, i run a small hospital
in Mur'ev.
During my short time in this post,
I have become aware of a serious
problem in the region:
syphilis.
And it is my intention to fight
this scourge...
and set up the "Leopold Leopoldovic"
Syphilis Clinic.
I have the staff in situ to realize
this dream, but I lack equipment.
Attached is a list with the
most pressing...
extremely serious and highly infectious,
I have to fight this... Open a ward.
I'll write a compelling letter
to the Zemstvo.
This is the dispensary.
This is the key.
Don't lose it.
I'm sure if we'll do this again
it will be better.
We're out of cigarettes and I need
to read a newspaper.
Oh yes, we do have a lot of fun here.
Only last month I heard a very amusing
anecdote.
I have to operate, I have to cut open
her throat and insert a metal tube.
I don't think I can do this.
Hours and hours of staring at the snow,
only interrupted by bora.
I am a murderer.
Morphine withdrawal is an unpleasant
business.
Nausea, insomnia...
severe allucinations...
You don't want to do that.
I am a doctor, I can handle it.
It will never be this good again.
A Young Doctor's Notebook
Episode 1x4
MOSCOW, 1934
"This is the end"
Get a doctor.
Oh! What do they want?
You. You're famous now, doctor!
Because of little Lidka
and her metal throat.
Only eleven hours to go.
All right.
Right, who's first?
Gargle.
Drops.
Pea.
Next!
You have malaria, intermittent fever.
See the nurse and ask for quinine
powder. Ten sachets.
Next!
Drops. Gargle.
Drops. Syphilis.
You all... have... Syphilis.
He just got cold, that's all.
No, you need treatment.
Extensive treatment.
Here at the hospital, starting now.
But I have too much to do at home!
Can you give me something?
I can give you a spade...
to dig three little holes.
I'm opening a new syphilis clinic.
- Where?
- Here, in Mur'ev.
But we don't have the room...
or the equipment... or the medicines..,
or the nurses, or the beds!
Details. I will write a letter
to the Zemstvo.
Is this going to take much longer?
I mean...
should I go and come by?
I can see the crown.
All right, let's hurry thing along,
shall we?
- Was it... Was it supposed to look
like that? - No...
but then you're not supposed to put
forceps in the baby's eye.
Oh, yes.
Um... Tell you what? You take this
to the ward,
and I will finish up in here.
We've had quite enough excitement
for one day.
- Not now, feldsher.
- But he took the quinine powder...
- that you prescribed.
- And?
All ten sachets of it.
I'll get the stomach pump.
He thought he'd heal faster, you see?
If he took all the medicine at once.
It's harshly rather ironic, because...
Sun over the yardarm.
What sun?
Don't tell me you still got
the stomach pain?
Strange.
Same time as last night.
You know, I don't think the morphine
is working.
Have you tried drops?
I've had a long day.
A hundred and eleven patients...
fifty cigarettes.
I just want to go back in my room...
and unwind.
Have you tried reading a book?
You know, Leopold Leopoldovic
left an extensive library.
There's turkish erotica.
Good morning.
Oh... Oh. not again...
Doctor, are you there?
Yes.
- Um... Give... Give me a minute.
- It's me, the feldsher.
I'm a miserable wretch.
Oh, God...
I'm pathetic...
and weak. I'm a disgrace to the...
Imperial Moscow University
of Medicine and Dentistry.
I disgust myself.
I deserve...
to rot in a forgotten hell like this.
Here's the self-pity.
And the incontinence.
- Doctor! Doctor!
- Yes.
Doctor!
- Doctor!
- Yes, I'm coming.
Doctor!
Doctor, go back to bed,
you're not needed.
- What? - None of us are, because of
the blizzard.
It's official: the hospital is closed.
So you woke me up to tell me
I could go back to bed?
You could have just not come.
You're right in there?
Would you like to call a doctor?
Unfortunately, the hospital
is closed.
If just I had an atlas to read!
- So what do we fancy doing today?
- We?? Why God does just...
Um... I don't...
You know, I just... I thought
I might just have a bath.
Bath in home? Message understood.
Ok, you'll got it.
Really...
gentlemen!
I'll never thanks you enough,
I had no idea it was so big.
It's stuck, you know.
No, you go down, I'll go up.
Couldn't we... couldn't we sit
and put it on his side, and...
- This is a riddle.
- Just shove it!
Look at the state of this room.
What's that smell?
Smell? I can't... smell anything.
What do you mean? What... smell?
No, no, no. You haven't...
left the lid off the jar
of pickled sprats, have you?
Oh, yes, I have, I have!
Thank you.
- Give me those sheets. will you, doctor?
- No, no. don't worry, I know where the
mangle is.
That... that is not mine.
Leopold Leopoldovic left that here.
- Watch out!
- No, no.
- That is not going to fit.
- No, no, she's right.
It was foolish of me,
I don't need to have a bath.
No, no. A bath was requested,
a bath you shall have.
That's not sprats.
Certainly is a big bath.
It's big enough for two men.
Actually, doctor...
you wouldn't mind if I...
went back to my room
and left you to it?
What? No, no, no, not at all.
Please, go, thank God, thank...
thank you.
That's it.
I'm done.
I'm gonna make a clean start.
Yes, I'll write that letter to the
Zemstvo, today.
- Or, you don't think I can do it?
- No...
- I don't.
- Well, I can.
Now pass me the loofah.
Thank you.
Doctor! Doctor!
A letter for you, doctor.
From the house of the agronomist,
no less.
Maybe it's an invitation to the wedding.
It's the social event of the year...
and this, in the year with the
double hanging!
- Yes, but what does the letter say?
- In good time, doctor.
Now, this is the funny anecdote
I've been promising to tell you.
- Oh, what a timing!
- Palchikov, the clerk,
- and the tale of the dazzling trousers.
- I'm thrilled! But give me the letter.
Hell no, you're naked.
Where was I?
Oh yeah... Palchikov, the clerk.
- He fell in love... - Really?
- a humble clerk!
And she, the beautiful daughter
of the agronomist.
Such a union was impossible.
- Or wasn't? No.
- No. No.
Because, he hatched a plan.
He went into town..
and purchased a most unusual item.
- Was it a dazzling pair of trousers?
- An item of clothing.
- A most dazzling pair of trousers.
- ...dazzling pair of trousers.
So dazzling, in fact...
that she agreed to become his bride.
- Very dazzling.
- I will do so, this weekend.
It's a fairy tale.
Oh dear, she fractured her skull.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
This isn't good.
"I cannot cope,"
"I beg you honestly to come soon."
- Me? Who sent this?
- Um... doctor...
Um.... I can't read his name.
Oh! He thinks he can see her...
brain.
Well, I mean she shall be death
before I get there, won't she?
And you said he was in Grachevka?
And there's a blizzard.
"I appreciate that Grachevka is a great
distance to travel, especially
in a blizzard..."
But I've just got in the bath!
Um... No, it doesn't say anything
about a bath.
I'm gonna get a pneumonia!
Does look cold, in there.
Morphine and hydrochloric acid.
It is definitely...
habit-forming.
But... A little...
habit, it's not the same
as a morphine addiction.
Is it?
Then you want to see electric lamps?
They're supposed to brighten up now.
We can't really see them tonight.
They haven't got a generator yet.
Anything else to see in Grachevka?
I was told they have a whore, now.
Oh, that's nice.
Actually, I think will be long
to the agronomist's house.
Hello?
Oh, you're here for the wedding.
- I'm sorry, there's been a terrible
accident. - I hope so, I came all the
way from Mur'ev.
Oh, you're the doctor?
- Yes.
- Sorry, I had no idea, you're so...
- So pleases to hear that.
- Just tell me what happened. - Right.
- Well. I'll start from the beginning...
- I already know about the trousers.
Of course! Yes, um...
- It's a cranium...
- Cranium...?
It's a really big hole in the head.
And several cracks...
everywhere. I put a bandage on it,
but... um...
I've really just graduated.
High school's thirteen fives.
Stop saying that.
It means nothing, out of there.
And I got fifteen.
Gosh.
You don't mind if I take notes, do you?
It's actually quite exciting,
this will be my first operation.
Do you have morphine?
Yes, yes, I do... It's right there,
in my bag.
It's brand new.
The bag.
Morphine.
How many units you're going to give her?
All of it.
All of it.
Gosh, that's a lot, isn't it?
But then I suppose you want her to be
asleep for the into cranium...
What are we going to use to take out
shreds?
Well I don't mean the bone fragments.
I mean the gate parts.
Should I sterilize the...
A second one.
I see.
That is a lot of morphine.
Then I suppose that...
we're actually not going to do
the operation, don't we?
Gosh...
Can't we do anything for her?
I suppose not.
- Is she...
- Not yet.
She is...
now.
- Oh God, I feel... - Releaved,
- ...sick.
There is ham, by there?
I missed dinner.
So much blood...
There's blood everywhere.
I don't think he's worried about his
trousers, I think is rather about his
dead wife.
She's dead?
I'm a murderer!
I'm a murderer!
Can we do anything for this poor soul?
Would morphine help?
- I'm a murderer.
- I don't know.
Not as much as...
Just a little bit... you know...
half unit.
Well you have the morphine.
I'm a murderer.
You do it.
It will make you...
She died, the whore.
Last week, syphilis.
Excellent.
Thank you for your help.
Come on!
Come on!
Come on!
What is it?
What do we stop for?
Have we lost the road?
Road?
What road?
We've gone across fields for hours!
Now we lost fields!
Wait here.
I thought you wanted to see Grachevka.
I thought you wanted to have
an intelligent conversation.
With this little notebook?
Who's gonna want to read this
juvenile memoirs?
You were like that once.
But now look at you.
About to die in the snow
for a shot of morphine.
You do know it'll get worse than this,
don't you?
You think this is bad? This is nothing!
Wait until you find yourself...
at a Goldieva farmacy, lying...
in another man shit, picking
the inside of the dirt.
- I knew you couldn't handle this.
- Shut up, shut up!
The key is not there, you threw it away!
- What are you doing?
- It's here, somewhere!
What do you mean, "here"?
Don't know even where "here" is!
Where did you last see it? Russia?
You're not going to find it!
Here's, you see, the...
bliss in the soft grass.
And what about me?
I've lost everything!
My livelihood, my dignity, my friends...
You know who my friends are now?
Pelageya!
Demyan, Leopold...
because they're all dead!
Because I can write them a prescription
for morphine that they will never need!
Shut up!
I said shut up!
Go ahead!
Do it!
You have as good as killed me already.
Cigarettes!
God!
What...?
PROMISING YOUNG DOCTOR
FOUND DEAD IN SNOW
Morphine withdrawal is an unpleasant
business.
I am a doctor, I can handle it.
Help me, doctor, I have a strangulated hernia.
Young man...
I have vested experience
of strangulated hernias.
Ask me anything.
Leopold Leopoldovic!
There is one thing I would like
to ask you.
Why don't you just fuck off?
It will take you...
to a lush meadow with the high summer
where you lie in the soft grass,
and bask in the sun.
And feel nothing but bliss.
And you will never want to return to
this frozen pisshole in the snow.
I brought you a piece of ham...
- fat.
- Thank you.
- It's better?
- It is worse.
Doctor, let's finish this in the morning.
Esteemed colleagues of the Zemstvo,
as you know, i run a small hospital
in Mur'ev.
During my short time in this post,
I have become aware of a serious
problem in the region:
syphilis.
And it is my intention to fight
this scourge...
and set up the "Leopold Leopoldovic"
Syphilis Clinic.
I have the staff in situ to realize
this dream, but I lack equipment.
Attached is a list with the
most pressing...