How Quickly // 22/03/15

It’s just a normal Sunday, so of course you go to the soup kitchen. Walking through the city, you pass any number of people smoking cigarettes. Their smell taunts you. The Chantix was like a cure when you started it a year ago. But not now.

When you find yourself flicking your pen between your fingers, you’re at once surprised by the gesture and then surprised at your surprise. But you’re an adult, you’ve got priorities.

You know how that story goes, especially after April. COVID in Manhattan. The intubations and the broken ribs, the codings and then the hoisting, flopping, of limp bodies onto their stomachs. Relieve the lungs of as much weight as possible. Steroids, unless they’d cause more harm than good.

It starts with one hospital wing. Since the sanitizing process was so thorough in the beginning, you need to keep other wings as far away as possible. For efficiency — contain the problem, treat it, and minimize impact elsewhere. But then another wing is repurposed. The elective surgeries stop. The non-electives are deferred. Each wing mutates gradually into a COVID wings, a designator now meaningless. The masks and the gloves and the layers of skin you lose. Sanitized iPads in short supply. There are never enough translators. Families ignore the urgency in your voice, they’ll stop by tomorrow. Tomorrow comes. The numbers double. Someone is too late.

You know how to help the body pick itself up, and you know how quickly it falls apart. So you quit those things. You’d rather stick around.

You give back, help nourish the body with food in the same way you help it heal with care. Years of this COVID shit haven’t taken you down. And so you give a little more, because you have more to give. That’s how you’ve always been. A few hours of your day, a meal for a couple dozen. You exit through the rear, and feel a light breeze on your face.

You see the notifications.

It’s just a normal Saturday, so of course no one should be messaging you.

It was supposed to have been contained

The phone vibrates again. You pick up.

You know how quickly it falls apart.

Tears slide sideways across your cheek. The breeze has returned, and it’s taking your tears with it.

With Love to GL and MM