“What did I do?”: A 68-year-old nurse rescued 26 patients from a drug treatment department from a fire

The drug treatment department at the regional hospital in Novouralsk opened in 1975. Nurse Olga Alekseevna Lebedeva has been working there almost since the opening. For more than 40 years now, she has been at her medical post. Lately, her post has been located closer to the wards with the most difficult patients – “new ones” who have just been taken to the hospital, usually in the acute phase of alcohol or drug intoxication.

Patients, as a rule, do not control themselves, so they can throw out anything, violating hospital rules. The fire in the department, according to an unofficial version, started precisely because of a violation of the stay rules. Late at night, one of the “new girls” lit a cigarette in bed. Matches, lighters, cigarettes, as well as alcohol, are prohibited from being brought into the department, but the hospital is not a prison. Doctors do not have the right to search, although the search is quite strict. One patient was still able to smuggle a smoke.

On the night of the fire, a 68-year-old nurse was on duty.

– In the evening after the injections there was a round, we walked through the wards. One girl, a patient of about 30 years old, was alarmed: she was nervous, quarreled with her neighbor – apparently, the psychosis had not yet completely recovered. Then everyone calmed down,” recalls Olga Alekseevna.

It calmed down, but not entirely. At two o’clock in the morning the sounds of a fire alarm were heard. Lebedeva immediately rushed to the next post and gave orders to her partner: to lift the sick from her wing, the rehabilitation wing. And she rushed to her “heavy ones.” I entered the room, and there was already fire.

– One bed has already started to burn: a blanket, a mattress. The patient screams, lies, does not understand anything. The other two are sleeping,” Olga Alekseevna continues.

The nurse woke up and pushed out the woman whose bed was closer to the exit. I tried to lift another woman, but it didn’t work. The patient was already engulfed in fire. She rushed to the third resident, who was sleeping. She shook me, tried to wake her up. And the fire spread instantly: across old mattresses, across linoleum. The patient continued to sleep as if nothing had happened.

“I managed to drag her onto the floor from the bed,” says Olga Alekseevna. “I started dragging her by the legs towards the exit as best I could.” I shout to the third neighbor in the ward, who is already standing in the corridor: “Help!” She opened her mouth and looked.

As the nurse later realized, the patient had inhaled carbon monoxide and was therefore unconscious. The 68-year-old woman was unable to pull it out alone. The fire reached her at this time. Olga Alekseevna’s clothes caught fire on her back and arms, and her hair caught fire. She ran out into the corridor. There she knocked off the fire and again rushed through the wards.

– So what to do? We need to save others. It’s good that there was one patient, his name is Maxim, young, about thirty. He’s a great guy, he started helping me. They looked at the chambers with him: maybe someone was hiding under the bed or sleeping. We looked into the toilets. It was necessary to get everyone out,” recalls Olga Alekseevna.

The patients walked out into the corridor. And then, as Lebedeva recalls, she screamed so that she didn’t recognize her voice: “Hold hands and follow me.” So, in single file, we went from the fourth floor to the third. Once in a place that was safe for now, Olga counted the patients. I realized with horror that two were missing. Luckily, the firefighters had already arrived. They pulled the remaining patients out of the rooms. Olga again counted the rescued. And again, one was missing. She ran after him.

That patient was the oldest, about 80 years old. Olga Alekseevna found him in the vestibule of the department. To celebrate, he grabbed the nurse with a death grip. And that one’s body was already burned.

“It hurts, let go,” I say. But he doesn’t listen, he hangs on me,” says the woman.

Olga pulled out another patient on herself. I counted it again. Instead of 28 – 26. Two were never saved. She ran, but they stopped her and almost forcibly placed her in an ambulance. There the woman lost consciousness.

The woman was taken from Novouralsk to the burn center in Yekaterinburg. Doctors diagnosed 25 percent burns to the body.

– When I looked in the mirror for the first time, I cried. The doctors reassured me: don’t worry, we’ll heal you and polish off the scars,” says Olga Alekseevna.

After being discharged from the burn center, Lebedeva was taken to her home hospital for further treatment. And now she is undergoing rehabilitation in a private center. Here her skin is restored by transplanting her own donor material. The treatment is paid for by the social fund.

– The operation went well. Our patient will need another two weeks for rehabilitation,” Irina Volkova, head of the Novouralsk clinic, told MK. – She is a great fellow. We are all proud of her. A true example of the dedication of a healthcare professional.

The only thing Olga Alekseevna regrets is that she did not save her two patients.

– I know one of them. She was already in our hospital. She broke again and came voluntarily. The next day she was supposed to move to a paid ward. If this had happened, she would have remained alive, the nurse regrets.

Olga Alekseevna complains that many of her friends do not understand her. They say you babysit your drunks and drug addicts. How else? – the nurse doesn’t understand.

– People pull a drowning dog out of the water, they can’t pass by. And here is a man who is screaming, calling for help. I just don’t believe that anyone could behave differently,” says Lebedeva.

Olga Alekseevna is sure that there are no incorrigible people. And to prove it, he tells a story about drug addicts from the 90s.

– When the department first opened, we had no drug addict patients. They were only in bed with alcoholism. And in the 90s they went: drug addicts, substance abusers. I remember in the 90s a group of drug addicts came to us; they were probably 20 years old at the time. I didn’t know what happened to them later, after treatment. I often thought about them and worried: maybe they were no longer alive if they couldn’t quit drugs. And after the fire I was in intensive care. They bring me a package. The nurse says: “They told me to tell you that it’s from drug addicts.” I think what kind of drug addicts are they? I ask the nurse: she says they are decent guys, well dressed. At first we refused to accept the transfer from them. And they laughed and said that we are Olga Alekseevna’s patients. When they learned about the fire and the heroic nurse, they immediately realized it was her.

The nurse said that “drug addicts” brought her packages for a whole month while she was in intensive care.

“At such moments you understand that nothing is in vain,” says the heroine.

After rehabilitation, Olga Alekseevna is going to return to her favorite job. “I can’t leave them,” the nurse justifies her decision.