Last Friday I saw The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, a Romanian movie about a 64-year-old widower finding himself on an ambulance ride from Hell. A little bit of the movie hit very close to home for me, and I saw some parallels in some scenes with situations in Olympia.

 

* POSSIBLE SPOILERS *

 

Lazarescu is a pensioner living alone with three cats which he adores. (A fact that immediately drew me to liking him.) He had surgery for an ulcer fourteen years before. The evening of the movie is the fourth that he's been unable to keep food down. He also has an ulcerated leg and a migraine is starting to creep in. He calls an ambulance and is accused of being sick from drinking.

 

He took a pill and immediately threw it up. (This is what hit painfully close to home and guaranteed I'd be sympathetic to the character throughout the movie.)

 

Only when his neighbor gets involved and calls the ambulance for him does one finally arrive. From there Lazarescu is taken from one hospital to the next, being cast off for various reasons while his condition gradually deteriorates. The only person who cares is the ambulance nurse who refuses to abandon him.

 

At the first hospital the doctor diagnoses the problem by smelling his breath. He refuses to do any tests and lectures Lazarescu on the evils of drinking, asking out loud why doctors should bother fixing him if he'll only continue to undo their work.

 

The third hospital was probably the most frustrating. There the doctors and hospital staff were egotistical and rude. When the ambulance nurse (who had this cool Romanian name and which I can't find since IMDB is running slow) tried to offer the CT Scans and preliminary findings from the second hospital, along with her own guess based on 22 years as a nurse, she's told off and dressed down by a first-year resident and a surgeon more interested in taking it easy on a graveyard shift. He insists on getting a verbal authorization to operate from Lazarescu even though at this point he's listless and incoherent.

 

*****

 

When the nurse asked Lazarescu's neighbor if he'd accompany them to the hospital, in order to have him admitted easier, he seemed willing to go until his wife complained about spending another Friday night alone. I saw in that the idea that people want to help, but they won't if it interferes with their good time, even if the good time was only staying home in the apartment with nothing to do but argue.

 

Doctors were more concerned with lecturing Lazarescu instead of saving his life. Doctors were more concerned with snobbing it up to the EMTs instead of saving a man who was literally dying right in front of them. It reminded me of people who want to help with conditions. Who would rather show off their schooling then apply themselves to whatever it was they learned.

 

A dying man needs to be rescued. A sick man needs to be doctored. A starving man needs to eat. It doesn't matter that Lazarescu may have drank himself into liver cancer. He was still a Grandfather who loved his cats.