Leg XXII

Three long-term patients are staying in the diagnostic ward at Vytoň Hospital. Moucha, an unsuccessful businessman; Kouřil, an unsuccessful teacher; and Nepil, a successful member of the security service. Despite their different educational backgrounds, professions, and interests, they are constantly engaged in nonsensical debates, tackling all the world's problems—from their own prostate issues to the challenges of American genetic engineering and the problems in Japanese healthcare. Our three patients, with their completely different personalities, share several common traits: a pathological laziness, a hostile attitude towards the market economy, a weakness for young women despite their advanced age, and a negative relationship with their elderly wives. Everyone who enters their room gradually gets entangled in their debates and various comical situations—nurses, doctors, visitors, random patients, insurance agents, and police officers. The terror of the patients, nurses, and visitors is a brutish orderly and Dr Jevtušenko, the son of the surgeon who unnecessarily amputated the legs of the Soviet pilot Meresjev. Jevtušenko is nicknamed 'Leg 22' in the hospital because he constantly boasts that, as a surgeon at Střešovice Hospital, he has amputated twenty-two legs. And apparently, that's not even counting the halves.