...of a clinic

In came the old surgeon, whom Sambikin was to assist. The old man was ready, and he beckoned to his assistant. Sambikin was not yet allowed to operate on his own; he was twenty-seven years old and this was only the second year of working as an assistant surgeon.
All the sounds in the surgical clinic were scrupulously annihilated, and communication was now effected through coloured light. Three lamps of different colours lit up in the room of the doctor on duty, and a number of actions were then performed almost noiselessly: a low trolley moved on rubber wheels down the cork floor of the corridor and took the patient away to the operating theatre; the electrician switched the electrical light over to the institute's own storage batteries, so that light would not depend upon the chances of the city grid, and then turned on a machine that pumped ozone-enriched air into the theatre; the theatre door opened without a sound, and a cool, fragrant breeze blew from a special apparatus into the sick child's face. This brought the boy sedation and he smiled, freed from the last traces of suffering.

[Happy Moscow, Platonov, A. P.]