Russian man stabbed by knife insists on smoking a cigarette before treatment

Original article from Daily Mail UK.

An almost naked man with a knife embedded deep in his back walked out of a hospital’s accident and emergency department – to have a cigarette.

The patient, Vladimir, 34, is bleeding from his wound and only returns inside when he is warned he is risking his life and told: ‘You are about to die’.

He then walks back inside to the treatment room at the hospital in the Russian city of Kazan.

A nurse filmed the man’s extraordinary mission for a smoke – in only his underwear – as shocked staff tried to reason with him.

The man got wounded in a ‘drunken fight’ but the exact details are not known.

The knife was plunged so deep that only the handle was visible.

Ambulance staff who rushed to the scene managed to put a dressing around the wound without risking taking out the knife.

Hospital staff were undressing him when he told them he had ‘something to do’ and he started his walk.

A female nurse is heard on the video asking him: ‘Vladimir, are you mad?’

As he walks through the hospital – stooping from pain and at one point clutching a railing for support – she asks him: ‘How far are you going?

‘It is winter outside. Come back’

He turns and tells her he is going ‘for a smoke’.

She points out he has no cigarettes and calls him a ‘fool’ – but despite this he continues outside where snow is seen on the ground and the temperature was around minus 10C.

Then a male doctor sternly warns Vladimir: ‘Young man, you are going to die now.’

The medic says: ‘Let’s go, have an injection and you go home.’

He evidently hoped to get a cigarette from another smoker outside the hospital’s door – but in vain.

As the knife victim gives up and decides to go back inside, the nurse says: ‘Yes, we’ll make one injection and let you go home.

‘Come on, come with me. Go, go. Keep going. Go and lie down!’

The regional health authority in Tatarstan said the man had been admitted to Zelenodolsk District Hospital.

A spokesman confirmed Vladimir had undergone surgery to remove the knife and was in a ‘stable’ condition.