[In the opening chapters of Alexei Navalny’s “Patriot: A Memoir,” he describes almost dying on board a plane to Moscow from an attempted assassination – poisoning by a nerve agent…just another day in Putin’s Russia.]
Real writers are special people, you know. When I am asked what it’s like to die from a chemical weapon, two associations come to mind: the Dementors in “Harry Potter” and the Nazgul in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” The kiss of a Dementor does not hurt: the victim just feels life leaving. The main weapon of the Nazgul is their terrifying ability to make you lose your will and strength. Standing in the aisle [of the plane], I am kissed by a Dementor and a Nazgul stands nearby. I am overcome by the impossibility of understanding what is happening. Life is draining away, and I have no will to resist. I’m done for. This thought swiftly and potently takes over from I can’t take it anymore.
…
[Navalny describes coming out of long coma.]
If you imagine that coming out of a coma is more or less instantaneous, as the movies would have us believe, I have to disappoint you. I would be only too glad to say that one minute I was dying on the plane and the next I opened my eyes to find I was in a hospital and looking at my beloved wife, or at least a team of doctors peering at me anxiously. That is not what happened. Getting back to normal life took several weeks of very unpleasant and persistent visions. The whole process was like a long-drawn-out and highly realistic journey through the circles of hell. It wouldn’t surprise me if that whole concept was devised by people who had been in a coma and seen the same things I did. There was an unbroken succession of hallucinations, through which I occasionally glimpsed reality. As time passed, there was more reality and less hallucinating.
...I was visited by my doctor more frequently than by anybody else. He was a very famous and respected neurosurgeon from Japan, a professor. He would talk to me at great length, quietly, carefully explaining what had happened, what kind of treatment I should expect, how long I would need for rehabilitation, and when I would finally be able to see my family. I was tremendously impressed by how professional and authoritative he was. He is the first person I remember clearly after emerging from the coma. He was a great guy, good-looking if slightly balding, serious, and highly intelligent. For some reason, though, he was also incredibly sad.
The nurses told me afterward that his two-year-old son had died in an accident, run over by a car in Japan. The professor had tried to save his son’s life, operated on him himself, but, tragically, the child died in his arms. During one of the professor’s visits he read me a haiku he had written in memory of his son. I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life. After he left, I couldn’t get those heartrending lines out of my mind and quietly wept over them for several days.
When the professor was with me, though, I put on a brave face, not least because we were discussing a plan to get me back on my feet, which I really liked. Next week, the professor told me, I would be given new, bionic legs in place of my old ones, which I had evidently lost. After that he would perform a tricky neurosurgical operation to replace my spine. The new one would be a big improvement because it would have four gigantic mechanical tentacles attached to it, just like Doctor Octupus in the Amazing Spider-Man series. I was rapturous.
Imagine my disappointment when I was told there was no Japanese professor, that all our talk and plans and long conversations had been one big hallucination, caused by my being given six different psychotropic drugs simultaneously. I was so stunned. I demanded to see the entire hospital staff. Perhaps I had gotten some of the details mixed up and he was not a neurosurgeon but, say, a resuscitation specialist. Alas, there was no one at Charite – my hospital – who fit the description. I gave every impression of accepting that, as the doctors and my family were telling me, I had imagined the whole thing. I did, nevertheless, devote several hours to googling famous Japanese neurosurgeons on the off chance there was one whose son had died in an accident. If there wasn’t, I would have to face the fact that I had been crying my eyes out for three days over a haiku I had made up myself.
…
[All the above to bring you to Navalny’s social media post a month after his attempted assassination]
September 21, 2020 A Post about love.
Yulia [his wife] and I had our wedding anniversary on August 26. We’ve been married for twenty years. I’m actually quite glad I missed it and can write this today, when I know a bit more about love than I did a month ago.
You will have seen the scene a hundred times in films and read descriptions of it in books: one person is lying in a coma, and their partner, through their love and ceaseless devotion, brings their beloved back to life. And, of course, that’s exactly how it was with us, strictly in accordance with the canons of classic films about love and comas. I slept and slept. Yulia came to see me, talked to me, sang me songs, and played music for me. I cannot lie: I don’t remember any of it.
But I will tell you what I do remember. Perhaps, actually, it can’t even be properly described as a remembering. It is more a collection of my very first sensations and emotions. It was so important to me, though, that it is now forever implanted in my brain.
I am lying there. I have already been brought out of the coma, but can’t recognize anybody and don’t understand what is happening. I can’t speak and don’t know what speaking is. My sole pastime is waiting for Her to come. Who She is I am uncertain. Neither do I even know what She looks like. If I manage to make out something with my unfocusing eyes, I’m unable to remember the picture. But She is different, that much is clear to me. So I just lie there and wait for Her. She comes and is the main person in the room. She straightens my pillow and makes it very comfortable. She doesn’t have a low, sympathizing voice but speaks cheerfully and laughs. She is telling me something. When She is near, my idiotic hallucinations retreat. It feels very good when She is there. Then She goes away and I feel sad, and wait for Her again.
I don’t for a moment doubt there is a scientific explanation for this. Like, you know, I was apprehending the tone of my wife’s voice, my brain secreted dopamine, and I began to feel better. Each visit became literally therapeutic, and the effect of waiting for her enhanced the dopamine reinforcement. But no matter how impressive the scientific and medical explanation sounds, I now know for sure, simply from my own experience, that love heals and brings you back to life.
Yulia, you saved me, and may this be included in the neurobiology textbooks.
…
[Navalny was assassinated in prison in 2024 while serving time as Putin’s political prisoner.]
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