KIEV (Reuters) - As a Ukrainian, Viktoria quickly picked up on the subtext of the doctor's words at the Kiev hospital where the 22-year-old had gone for emergency treatment.
It was appendicitis and she needed surgery, he said. Then he added: "You know, us doctors and the hospital are not particularly well off. I am sure you want the operation to go smoothly."
Viktoria got his drift: though medical care in state-run hospitals is theoretically free for Ukrainians, it would need a financial back-hander to ensure she got the treatment she required.
She paid $100 to an anaesthetist for the operation to go ahead. "It took place at night. The next day he (the doctor) kept coming back into the ward to ask about the money we had agreed for the operation. Finally $200 changed hands," she said.
There is corruption at every turn in Ukraine: it pervades the police, the courts, the clinics, the parliament and the corridors of power, education and welfare, urban planning and housing.
A 100 hryvnia (12 dollars) back-hander to the highway police will get you out of a speeding offence. But it will cost you ten times more than that to get a place in the school you want for your child.
"It even costs you money to die," Vitaly Klitschko, the world boxing champion who is campaigning for parliament, said caustically at a rally outside the capital Kiev last Friday. "You have to bribe your way into finding a place in the cemetery now."
What Victoria paid out represents the relatively cheap end of the market. The scale of bribes rises into the hundreds of thousands of dollars when it comes to, say, securing a licence to start a business or getting building permission, foreign business associations say.
Fighting corruption is a drum every party is beating on the campaign trail ahead of a parliamentary election on October 28 when the ruling Party of the Regions expects to hold off a challenge from a divided opposition.
But whatever the outcome in the former Soviet republic next Sunday, few people expect an end to a cancer which hits personal incomes, kills entrepreneurial spirit and deters vitally needed foreign investment.