Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down,
and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.
For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Lk. 6:38
I met an acquaintance after a long lapse and asked her, “Where have did you disappear to?”
“Mama was in the hospital in a pre-stroke state, and I was taking care of her.”
“How did that happen? She’s too young for a stroke.”
“Well, you know... She herself said, ‘It’s God’s punishment.’ A few months ago we borrowed a hundred dollars from our neighbors with interest. It was a mistake to count on that money, though, because the neighbors soon asked for it back. Mama went and gave them the money, but in her thoughts she was wishing, ‘May that money go to medicine!’ Soon afterwards she started having trouble with high blood pressure. No matter what they did, they couldn’t bring it down. That’s how mama ended up in the hospital. Then medicines, doctor bills. We had to borrow money again. Thank God, mama went home from the hospital, and she was amazed most of all by the fact that that very sum, which she had wished would go to her neighbors’ medicine, was what she needed to pay for her medical care.
* * *
Medical care in Georgia today is so expensive, that when a pregnant woman told her husband how much it would cost to give birth in an ordinary hospital he was shocked, and didn’t believe her. Yes, in Russia (and he had just returned home from there) there are private wards--that is if you want special treatment, he said. But that an ordinary hospital would charge so much money? Impossible!
“There should be at least one free hospital,” he tried to convince his wife.
“Do you understand, there aren’t any free ones,” she told him. “Here is something that happened two years ago! One taxi driver, a Kurd, saw a boy on the street, bleeding, and he took him to hospital number nine. They didn’t even want to take him. The nurses were running around, sighing and gasping, but doing nothing. The doctor didn’t even think about coming. What is the point of doing an operation? he said. What if he dies--who will pay me? So he sat in his office, and didn’t even come down to the waiting room.
Then the Kurd took off his gold chain with his cross and said, “Are you human, or what? Here! Get the surgeon!”
While the doctor took his time coming down from his office, the boy died from loss of blood. When the doctor came closer to the dead child, he recognized his own son.