Survivor Song(8)
She thinks about what tomorrow will be like at the hospital and her head spins through worst-case scenarios. She closes her eyes and focuses on breathing deeply. She visualizes getting in her car, driving to either Logan or T. F. Green Airport and somehow boarding.
Returning to England has been Ramola’s oh-I-give-up plan for as long as she’s lived in the United States. She daydreamed about going home when she was stressed about her classes as an undergraduate and medical student, when she was a resident working eighty-hour weeks and came home too tired to even cry, during the fourteen months of her ill-fated cohabitation (his word) with Cedric and their tepid but never cantankerous relationship not so much falling apart as eroding under calm but relentless waves and tides, and whenever she was made to feel like an outsider, a foreigner. Ramola has always fought to persevere, to show herself and to show everyone else she can do it, and she has always fought to win (as her mum puts it). However, there is a small but undeniable part of herself that takes comfort in imagining the detailed journey home: landing in Gatwick, a train to Victoria Station, the tube to King’s Cross, another train that rolls through the countryside, small towns, and swelling cities, and eventually to Newcastle, then a forty-minute Metro to South Shields, a two-mile walk (her rolling luggage listing consistently to her left), and it’s warm and sunny even though it is never warm and sunny often enough in northern England, and finally she’s standing before their semidetached home with the brick walls and a white trellis, and she walks through the small garden and through the back door, then to the kitchen to sit with Mum and Dad at their ridiculous little table with the ugly yellow vinyl tablecloth and they both glance over the frames of their reading glasses and smile that wan I-see-you-dear smile. The final scene is so vivid that, as a younger woman, she luxuriated in the idea of her return truly having occurred in an alternate reality. As safe and as reassuring as the returning-home daydream is, it fills her with melancholy; a fear of the inevitability of mortality, as though if she allows the daydream to continue, it will speed into the future too quickly, one in which she and her parents remain rooted at the table, and it’s there they will molder until the three chairs at the table go empty, one by one by one. All of which is why she has resolved to never move back home, financial stresses and everything and anything else be damned.
Ramola clucks her tongue at herself and says, “Now, that’s enough of that,” and picks up her phone. She texts Jacquie and Bobby in an attempt to rally their spirits and hers. It backfires dreadfully.
Text message
Oct 21, 2019, 11:37 A.M.
Ramola Sherman
Go team second tertiary tomorrow morning? I think someone should have tshirts made. A sporting shade of grey, or a lovely shade of blue perhaps.
Jacquie Joyce
Yeah right. Sorry to spread hysteria but this is legit. Just watched the “Personal Protective Equipment Super-Rabies” 15 minutes training vid. Clicked through power point (a fucking power point!!!) This is trained personnel? We need legit Hazmat suits, right Ramola? Plain gowns & boot covers will not protect us.
Ramola Sherman
I’m not comfortable with the level of training either and I’m not comfortable with the conflicting info. Rabies mutation, increased virulence yet still spread via saliva is official word. But saw news speculating a new neurotropic virus? I realise it’s an emergency but we should have proper PPE regardless as a safeguard.
Bobby Pickett
Boston’s 5 major trauma centers struggling to handle it all but we will at shitty little Norwood hospital??? Yeah, right. I’m going to quit. My life is not worth that place. Especially as they don’t even have a plan for us if we get infected.
Jacquie Joyce
I’m with u. feel horrible for two Beverly nurses attacked and infected and the fucking CDC press release saying it’s their fault for not following protocol. Those nurses probably had our shit training! They were cardiac care nurses for fuck sake. Not trained for this.
Bobby Pickett
Always blame the nurse. So typical!!!! They didn’t blame the doctors (no offense Ramola) in Boston who caught it. They were heroes! Are you all going into Norwood H tomorrow?
Jacquie Joyce
Yeah, I’m going. So fucking scared tho. Heard Good Samaritan in Brockton isn’t taking any more patients.
Bobby Pickett
Shit. Norwood will be a zoo. Probably one already.
Jacquie Joyce
We really have cause to not take care of infected pt, we need appropriate gear and training and protection. The sickest ones get violent too right? Jesus fuck. Inf pts should be sent to Emory or Nebraska.
Ramola Sherman
No offense taken, B. Jacquie, you’re right but rather sounds like it’s too late and there are too many pts to transport.
Bobby Pickett
Even your texts have a brit accent, doc!;) I wonder how scared the ICU nurses are. I hope they at least got better training and PPE than us.
Jacquie Joyce
Friend Lisa at Norwood got a call around 9:30 From MICU. “R u trained for super rabies?” Lisa “no why?” MICU “just taking a poll”
Bobby Pickett
Bullshit! I should’ve stayed in New York. Where is our raise, btw? You can get infected but we will die before we get a raise! Ha!
Jacquie Joyce
You should’ve stayed in NY. Maybe we need to refuse as a group until we get right PPE.
Bobby Pickett