Massive heart attack is the cause of the death of Assoc. Prof. Zlatan Tsonchev, who died suddenly during a night shift in the intensive COVID ward at the University Hospital “Ts. Joanna – ISUL” headed by him. This was shared by his crushed friend and classmate Kalin Terziiski.
Here is what the writer and doctor wrote on the social network today:
“THE GREAT GOLDEN
Emo Yotovski called me and said: Kayo, get ready … Very bad news.
I prepared in half a second – at fifty the news is often very bad and you have to be ready at any moment. And of course – you never are. And Emo said: Zlatan died tonight. Massive heart attack. He was on duty in the covid ward in ISUL. And there…
Somehow I was not surprised. I do not know why. If I had to try to compare the feeling that overwhelmed me, it was like a soldier at the front hearing about the death of a comrade-in-arms. But I immediately realized that I was not at the front. And that I’m just trying to get used to death. Or maybe not. This, for our attitude to death, I told myself, is a very large and complex subject. Now is not the time …
The reason for the sudden death of the head of the covid-ward in ISUL became clear
Ex. – That’s all I could say in the first moment. – Eh.
God forgive the good man!
And then Emo and I said the usual things: that it’s not time for a person to die at 50, that he leaves a lot of unfinished things, that life is ahead of him, that it’s good, after all, that it happened suddenly, because it’s awful to struggle and dragging on for months and years … And I felt damn uncomfortable. This is exactly the word – “uncomfortable”. And she goes with the question: Why does this wonderful man die, and I stay here? What is my right to stay alive? Injustice, some …
And of course – shame: the hero dies, and I – the writer who lives freely and uninvolved, just like a parasite – with ease and in the midst of the beauty of boundless art … I stay alive. Why? Maybe to make sense of these things? Things like self-sacrifice and the injustice of death … or the justice of death?
We were friends from children, my God!
We met at NPMG / National High School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics – editor’s note /. The greatest high school! It was entered without connections. Because it was impossible to get her out if you were just some kind of settled liaison. There was so much pressure from teachers and students that you would break if you weren’t smart, talented and knowledgeable enough.
The other elite high schools may have been for the party league of some party or God knows what elite, I don’t know them – but ours was like a school for astronauts. Either you get up – or you don’t.
And even in it there were haimans. For example, I was one of them. You are both an excellent student and one of those who smoke cigarettes behind the teacher. And there I met, of course, Zlatko. Ex. We smoked. And we talked about music. He was heavy metal. I am a hippie. So – we had some differences. But that only strengthened the friendship.
God, there were only jeans painted with Iron Maiden! And when he smoked, he very skillfully removed the ashes with the index finger of the same hand with which he held the cigarette. It’s like a crane operator or a bulldozer, my God, very baked! – that’s what I said to myself then and I admired him.
Then once we found five levs under a bench, bought eight beers, went to his apartment somewhere in Lozenets, he released some crazy heavy metal, pointed a red lamp to the floor (to make it like a bar) and drank the beers. Since we were 16 we got drunk like Cossacks. In a sense – quietly and meekly. He doesn’t seem to. He just carried a lot of drinking. But I went home for a long time, seeing the world of some strange shots.
At the end of 11th grade we were on a brigade. Only the two of us had somehow stayed – as if the others had evaporated, it was – from friends. Or maybe they were there, I don’t remember. It was hot, incredibly hot, in Ruse, in a cannery, we looked like the hippies (even he) from Woodstock – with grown hair, with bushy beards, with terribly worn tight jeans – thin and muscular, beautiful as young animals.
We drank plum brandy from one hundred grams and felt both young and old. The barracks, the future, and things like that were looming before us. It was magnificent. From time to time Bai Zlatan took the guitar, there, behind one of the barracks, drank from the plum tree and began to sing “Na Dragieva Cheshma”. In view of his heavy metal, this song sounded especially cheerful and funny. We laughed and sang, and life was more than wonderful. And we were sad, as we always are when it’s wonderful.
Then we started studying medicine, we met at morgues and hospitals. We were serious and cheerful, happy with our seriousness, important and funny. We called each other a “colleague” (or we made fun of those who have been calling each other a “colleague” for so long). Go a little lateral, colleague, I don’t see this chick with the long legs from you! That’s what we called each other.
We were sitting in front of the Hole, on Zdrave Street, where Pathoanatomy is, and we all knew each other. Give her one “cube-libre” for everyone! someone shouted and we laughed. A lush Heidelberg student breed. We felt as gentle and wild as the Heidelberg man – this one, the prehistoric one – young doctors in love – we were in love with the world, with each other, with the future and with our past. The world was tempting before us, and the Nineties were thundering all around!
We all, of course, thought about our careers. But also for the times. Times have made career thinking meaningless. The times were such that they encouraged young men and women of our generation to think primarily of survival. Where to go, where to find a place, a job of some kind – to make money for bread. And for a videotape for rent with the concert of Black Sabbath from the 96th. Because besides bread, you also need something to live for. Something More than bread. For example – art.
And most went to the West. For example, Yavkata went to her native Pernik. And there he became a TB doctor. That is, they started to treat tuberculosis. Emo Yotovski and I worked as doctors and gave up. We became screenwriters, we got into television. Then came literature, and it is a big wave and can immerse you for centuries. And Zlatan worked in Bulgaria as a Bulgarian doctor. We didn’t see each other very often. Because he was a resuscitator and anesthesiologist.
And anesthesiologists, as we know, you never see them – they work on you while you sleep. Not to mention the resuscitators. They most often send you. But just as often they return it. From that world. Zlatan brought back a lot of people. Or accompanied them in their sleep. Anesthesiologist. Master of sleep without pain.
At the funeral of Associate Professor Zlatan Tsonchev we were all our own people. Many doctors. Everyone stumbled. It was also raining. Very cold rain. It is said that it rains when a good man is sent. It was raining too much now. And I nodded and said to myself: normal, he was very good.
Zlatan also went to England, some time ago, he worked there. But he couldn’t stand it there. It was cold and inhuman. At least that’s how you imagined it. He was a warm man, kind as bread and like a bottle full of Karlovo wine. Not a musket, but a kind of red, he was dark, dark-skinned, full-blooded. And he was from Karlovo, so he said many of the words with a full article “the city, the world, the man.”
It was kind of Renaissance, cute, old-fashioned. And Zlatan was also a computer master. Don’t hope for him. Such a one – kind and singing songs with the guitar, and of course from computers – what diversity there is in the human soul! And now this soul is in heaven and …
And I very much hope that there will be a sky, because if there isn’t – where will I meet Zlatan again?
Proycho, Dr. Proevski, from his class, Zlatan from the class, sees me, we hug, no matter that the colleagues only talk about kovid, we hug – and with him and the professors and the associate professors, we hug all the old doctors – so so – Proycho hugs me and I shout: They say that he was getting tired, he was getting tired in this kovid ward … he was also the head of this kovid ward … and he was getting terribly tired, to the point of exhaustion!
And Proycho looks at me somehow meekly and sadly and says: no … he didn’t get tired to exhaustion … no …- and he sighs – to death. He was tired to death.
We both nod.
Then we say goodbye to his body. I hope there is heaven for us to see each other, Zlatko – I say to myself, in fact – I tell God to hear me.
And we send the ark under the icy rain, and it is sad and majestic. And he, that’s for sure, will continue to live. While we are alive, “wrote his colleague and friend Kalin Terziiski.
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