Belgrade: Not a day passes without my thoughts drifting back to Belgrade and how the Serb people reshaped my perspective of the world. Let me share one particular episode.
During my stay at Bel Medic Hospital in Belgrade, recuperating from the burns on my lower legs caused by scalding water in my family's Krunska house, I had established a daily routine. Morphine doses, administered every four hours, provided relief for the initial ninety minutes, allowing me to focus on reading and attending to essential paperwork. As the drug's effects waned in the following ninety minutes, I juggled cell phone messages, meals, and occasionally, unable to go to the bathroom, sought a nurse's assistance with the bedpan. The last hour, ranking seven or eight on the pain scale, started uncomfortably and escalated to unbearable, leading me to seek solace in hallucinations and old memories.
On the ninth day, news from Pavle, my Serb legal adviser and friend, left me despondent. He reminded me of the looming deadline, with only six days left to visit the bank and sign the papers legally validating the sale of the house to the owners of Studio B. Serbian law mandated completing this process within fifteen days of the house sale.
Alerted now, we devised a plan: Pavle would arrange for the papers to be delivered to the hospital, and I would pay a judge or a notary to be a witness. It seemed simple, but two days later, before noon and moments before my late-morning dose of morphine, Pavle returned to the hospital looking grim. Unfortunately, he arrived during the last stages of my painful delirium, rendering me unable to think or communicate coherently. The nurse, familiar with the routine, filled the morphine contraption attached to my wrist and advised Pavle to return in fifteen minutes after I had stabilized.
Upon his return, alert and lucid, I asked, "Pavle, why the downcast expression?" He took a seat, took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, "Unfortunately, Gospodi Bozic, they will not let me or even Sasha, (the reasonably friendly bank official we had been working with), bring the papers here to the hospital. They insisted you must come to the bank."
Apparently, the bank's head manager stated that, for security reasons, the bank's cameras needed to record my signing of the papers at the counter, necessitating my presence.
Frustrated by this revelation, I had a dual reaction: outrage and laughter. After all, this was impressively orchestrated; the Serbian authorities had created and passed a law tailored to my situation within days or possibly hours.
Unwilling to resign to this obstacle, I came up with a solution. "Well, we will have to go there to sign."
"But your legs, the burns," Pavle stuttered.
"To hell with the burns," I snapped.
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