Train for the Forgotten

The ailing and the injured await the train at every stop. In Khani, a village of 742 people wedged between the snowy peaks of the Stanovoy Mountains, patients emerge from concrete buildings and gather along the tracks. They all seek medical treatment. One man fell down a staircase while drunk and broke both of his ankles. A teacher at the only school in town wants a checkup for her 14-year-old daughter, who came down with appendicitis a month earlier and was, quite luckily, evacuated on a cargo train. She had her appendix removed in Chara, three anguished hours away. These and other patients are waiting now to board the Matvei Mudrov medical train.