On a personal level, the last 12 months have unquestionably been the year of doctors for me. And nurses. Medical workers in general. Never in my life had I dealt with them so much. And then—wow. First, doctors saved me as I was dying from chemical weapon poisoning on a plane. Then they saved me a second time, risking their careers to explain to my wife and everyone else that I had to be taken out of the hospital in Omsk immediately, where their malicious colleagues would finish me off (simply by not treating me) on the Kremlin’s orders. Then the doctors at Charité turned me from a vegetable back into a human being. Just recently, a huge number of doctors waged a desperate campaign to make sure I received proper treatment. They were arrested and jailed outside the walls of my penal colony, and they still did not give up. They literally went to jail for me. “Doctor is a noble profession” sounds like a cliché. But now I know that for very many medical workers, it is a guiding principle in life. And I am deeply grateful to them. I want to mention just a few names. There are many more: Anastasia Vasilyeva, Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Alexander Polupan, Andrei Volna, Yulia Azimova, Vsevolod Shurkhai, Alexei Erlikh, Felix Holland. And really, thanks to absolutely everyone. To my prison doctors, the doctors from the FSIN (Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service), too. In the end, I understand that they are simply operating within the limits set for them by their superiors, and for those superiors—by the Kremlin. But what I see now is that people are sincerely trying to help. Just yesterday, for example, I noticed a nurse making a note on her wrist in pen so she would not forget the time when I was supposed to get my next three spoonfuls of oatmeal. A special shout-out to Nurse Tatyana, who puts in IV drips like a goddess. You know, one thought kept coming back to me over these months: I want one of my children to become a doctor. Though my children probably won’t, at this point. So let it be one of my grandchildren instead. 😉