 He praises his arrogant daughter, but severely criticizes his son for showing stirrings of humanity.When 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 out 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 regime treated the country.