Wish You Were Here(23)
Finally, I pull out a credit card. “Do you know where there’s an ATM on the island?”
“Oh,” she says, putting my card in one of those old machines that create a carbon copy of it. “There’s no ATM.”
“Not even at the bank?”
“No. And you can’t use a credit card there to get cash.”
I look at the minuscule amount of money I have left, after paying Abuela—thirty-three dollars. Minus ferry fare returning to Santa Cruz … ?as I do the math, my heart starts pounding. What if my cash supply doesn’t last me for another week and a half?
My panic attack is interrupted by the jingle of the bell on the door. In walks another woman in a mask, carrying a toddler. He squirms in her arms, calling out to the shop owner until he is set down on the floor and races toward her, clinging to her leg like a mollusk. She swings him onto her hip.
The woman who carried in the little boy unleashes a torrent of words I cannot understand and then she seems to notice me.
She looks familiar, but I can’t figure out why until she snaps toward the proprietor, and her long, black braid whips behind her. The woman from my hotel, whose name tag read Elena. Who told me they were closed.
“You are still here?” she says.
“I’m staying with … ?Abuela,” I reply. That means grandmother, I know. I’m embarrassed to not know her real name.
“La plena!” Elena scoffs, throws up her hands, and slams out of the store.
“You’re staying in Gabriel Fernandez’s old place?” the shop owner asks, and when I nod, she laughs. “Elena’s just pissed because she wanted to be the one sleeping in his bed.”
I feel my cheeks heat. “I’m not … ?I don’t …” I shake my head. “I have a boyfriend at home.”
“Okay,” she says, shrugging.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I keep checking my phone to see if you’ve texted. I know it isn’t your fault, but I wish I knew for sure you are okay. Plus, I need some good news.
This virus is like a storm that just won’t ease up. You know on some rational level that it can’t stay like this forever. Except, it does. And gets worse.
The easy-to-diagnose Covid patient has fever, chest pain, a cough, a loss of smell and a metallic taste in their mouth, hypoxia, and fear.
The ones that aren’t as obvious arrive with abdominal pain and vomiting.
The ones you get Covid from have no symptoms and go to the ER because they cut their hands slicing a bagel.
My attending said we should assume everyone in the hospital has Covid.
He’s pretty much right.
But weirdly, the ER isn’t very busy. No one’s just walking in anymore, they’re too scared. You never know if the guy with the broken leg sitting next to you in the ER is Covid-positive and asymptomatic. God forbid you cough, even if you have a common cold. You’ll be looked at like you’re a terrorist.
Since no one wants to risk coming to the hospital, most of the patients arrive by ambulance, coming only when they’re unable to breathe.
I’ve been assigned to one of the Covid ICUs. It’s loud AF. There are beeps and alarms that go off any time a vital sign changes. The ventilator makes a noise every time it breathes for a patient. But there are no visitors. It’s weird for there to be no crying wives or family members holding a patient’s hand.
Oh, and every day, treatment changes. Today we’re giving hydroxychloroquine. Tomorrow: whoops, no, we’re not. Today we’re trying remdesivir, but antibiotics are out. One attending is pushing Lipitor, because it lowers inflammation. Another’s trying Lasix, used for heart failure patients, to help remove fluid from around Covid lungs. Some docs think ibuprofen is doing more harm than good, although no one knows why, so they’re giving Tylenol for fever instead. Everyone wants to know if convalescent plasma helps, but we don’t have enough of it to know.
When I’m not with a patient, I’m reading studies to see what other docs are doing in other places, and what clinical trials are available. It’s like we’re throwing shit at a wall to see if anything sticks.
Today, I had a patient who was bleeding through her lungs. Normally, we’d give a thousand milligrams of steroids to stop the hemorrhage, but my attending was waffling, because based on previous flu studies, we’re worried that steroids might make Covid worse. I kept watching him wrestle with a course of action, and all I could think was: does it matter, if she’s dead either way?
But I didn’t say anything. I left the room and did my rounds, listening to lungs that couldn’t push air and hearts that barely were beating, checking vitals and fluid status, hoping that the patients I was checking on could ride out the virus before we run out of beds. There is a thousand-bed Navy ship being sent to NYC but it won’t get here till April; and based on estimates, the hospitals in the city will max out of beds in 45 days.
It’s only been a week.
I decided I’m not listening to the news anymore, because I’m basically living it.
God, I wish you were here.
In 2014, one of the plaster rosettes fell from the ceiling of the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library and shattered on the floor. When the city decided to inspect it, they also inspected the ceiling in the adjacent Blass Catalog Room. The ornate plasterwork of that ceiling was touched up and tested for weight and strength. The 1911 James Wall Finn trompe l’oeil mural of the sky on canvas, however, couldn’t be restored because it was too fragile. Instead, my father spent nearly a year re-creating the image on canvas that would be set in place on the ceiling, and could be easily removed for touch-ups in the future.