After he is discharged, he believes he is cured, but the staff privately give him less than a year to live; his cancer cannot be rooted any more than the corruption of the 'apparatchik' class to which he belongs. At the end, Rusanov's wife drops rubbish from her car window, symbolising the carelessness with which the State treated the country. The clinic staff frequently mislead the patients about the severity of their disease, and often discharge patients they cannot help, so the number of dead patients is kept to a minimum.