WASHINGTON – Lyudmila Sukhanov has spent the past seven years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a patient and a prisoner of sorts. The 26-year-old from Kyrgyzstan has no home, no family, no place to go. Her medical prognosis is as uncertain as her legal status.

Since she was a teenager, she has lived amid the constant hum of fluorescent lights and the ever-present odor of disinfectant.

“The longer I am here, the harder it is to take,” she says. “I want to live like everyone else. I want a place (I can) call home. Maybe have a cat or dog, cook for myself, have a bed where I can sleep, and there’s no one laughing or screaming at nighttime.”

After an appendectomy gone wrong and a series of botched operations, Sukhanov was near death in her native land. An accident of international politics saved her, as American diplomats and generals eager to please an ally arranged for her to be brought to Walter Reed.

Sukhanov is thankful to the many people who came to her aid. But now she is 6,500 miles from home, and although she has survived longer than anyone, herself included, expected, neither she nor the U.S. military sees an escape from Room 621. She’s grateful to be alive, but this is no way to live.

Stable yet stuck

When she arrived at Walter Reed, she had been through 18 major operations in less than a year and was unfit for further surgery. The only word of English she knew was “pain.”

She languished in intensive care for a year. At one point, a priest was called in to administer last rites.

In 2005, doctors finally deemed her healthy enough for an operation that stabilized her but left her with only 6 inches of intestine – too little to absorb enough nutrients to keep her alive. She would have to be fed through a process called total parenteral nutrition, or TPN, an intravenous delivery of the salts, glucose, vitamins, amino acids and lipids she needed to live.

At first, she was tethered to an IV 24 hours a day. Gradually, she was able to eat more solid food and put on weight.

As long as she can maintain her weight at 110 pounds, she gets decent stretches of time to leave the Walter Reed campus. She is still painfully thin, but with her colostomy bag hidden beneath her clothes, her blond hair brushed and her face made up, she can walk into a restaurant without drawing attention.

These days, her treatments are down to three nights a week, 12 hours per infusion, leaving her free to wander on the other days.

She’ll pass a couple of hours sitting at Charlie’s, a bar across Georgia Avenue, watching people dance. She has even spent some weekends at her boyfriend’s house, cooking lentil soup and watching John Travolta movies. For a few hours at least, she can feel normal.

But on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, she must be back in Room 621 by 9 p.m. On those nights, a nurse takes the catheter that dangles below her collarbone and hooks it up to an IV bag, and Sukhanov flips on “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” on the Disney Channel and tries to sleep.

Making herself at home

Some nurses resent Sukhanov for taking up a bed. Her care has cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Yet there is no easy solution for her predicament.

She can administer her own infusion and change her colostomy bag, which gives her confidence that she could live outside the hospital. But given her history, doctors aren’t so sure. To receive nutrition or medication, she must have a catheter inserted into a major vein, and she is running out of places to put it.

Returning to Kyrgyzstan is no option, hospital officials say. Sukhanov would probably lose access to her IV nutrition and die. And she has no family to return to. Her mother died when she was 17; her father died a few years ago, leaving her four siblings on shaky financial footing.

So Walter Reed is home. She has tried to make her side of the room less sterile by hanging stuffed frogs on her IV stand and putting up posters of puppies, dolphins and flowers. She shares her bed with a stuffed brown bear that sports a purple hospital band.

The few outfits in her closet are gifts from her church. The pastor’s wife gave her a cellphone.

Sometimes, her church gives her some spending money.

When she is broke, she stays on the grounds, passing much of the day indoors, reading Russian cookbooks, playing a portable Nintendo or watching TV. She learned English mostly by watching Disney Channel shows.

Sleep is often elusive. People are always talking in the hallway. Doctors, nurses and orderlies enter without knocking. She shares her room with a constantly changing assortment of patients.

“I can’t stand it when they complain after two days, ‘I can’t take it in here,’ ” Sukhanov says. “Look at me – seven years!”

Trips caused trouble

Early last summer, an Army nurse, 1st Lt. Lionelle Trofort, arranged to take Sukhanov for a weekend in New York, where she was delighted to visit the heavily Russian enclave of Brighton Beach.

“I’m just dreaming to see it again,” Sukhanov says. “It seemed like I’m like everybody else.”

A few weeks later, Tatiana Baker, a civilian nurse, took Sukhanov to the Breezy Point beach on the Chesapeake Bay.

“She was just in awe,” Baker says. “She just sat there contemplating it all.”

After the New York trip, Trofort was threatened with court-martial, accused of mishandling medication prescribed for the outing. Rather than face conviction, she resigned her post and gave up her benefits, ending a 16-year career in the Army.

Baker, meanwhile, noticed that Sukhanov’s health improved, physically and psychologically, once she started leaving the hospital more. She started bringing Sukhanov to her house for a few hours at a time and, later, for the weekend.

Her doctors took no issue with her adventures. But Baker said she was suspended for mishandling medications prescribed for the bay trip. She protested her suspension and then quit.

“I was told it was inappropriate for me to befriend her as a nurse,” Baker says. “That’s not why I became a nurse. I said to hell with that. You can’t keep her prisoner.”

Thoughts of a new life

Last summer, Baker lined up a catering job for Sukhanov, cooking meals once a week. The work tested her physically, but she loved it, and the money let her go out.

“I like to be in (a) club, in a crowded place, and look at healthy people leading normal life,” she says.

Sukhanov wants to stay in the United States permanently but faces legal hurdles. She holds a special visa issued for medical emergencies, and it protects her from deportation. But her time here does not count toward residency or citizenship.

She could get a green card if she were to marry a U.S. citizen. Her boyfriend since last summer, Hope Rochester, whom she met through the cooking job, says they haven’t discussed marriage.

Looming even larger than the legal obstacle is uncertainty over her health. A few months ago, she started having pain again in her abdomen. Doctors have been running tests but haven’t figured out what’s wrong. She has stopped eating meat and is sticking with soft foods and liquids.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Rochester stopped by her room, as he does most weekdays. When it was time for him to go, she walked him to the exit gate, where she saw passers-by sporting sparkly green hats.

“Damn people,” she says. “You don’t know how happy you are.”