Corona onslaught in the NHS # 3

We’re starting to get used to it. Used to open the paper with only one thing to read about. Used to queue up in order to buy a toilet roll. Used to people dying.

My shift wasn’t bad. I mean, it was boring – I miss my awake patients. High on morphine they are praising me while talking about themselves, their lives, ups and downs. Angry and grumpy about delays and pain they challenge me to play out my best cards, work with my voice, eyes and those small gestures in order to improve, move forward, get better, one step closer for them to get well and home. And sometimes, when the manager is gone, I do a small performance. Well, just telling one of many stories, but moving along to it if you know what I mean. In the recovery there’s occasional room for a subtle dance. Or a flirt (among staff of course.)

In the Corona intensive care unit all the patients are deeply asleep. The nurses are awake, but everyone is hidden behind face masks and everyone is wearing gowns so thick and bulky that we basically look the same. And as lots of staff are off sick while the work load is not double but more, every other face, hidden behind the visors in thick plastic, belong to a stranger, a new person who’s never been there before. Not much dancing going on. Or flirting.

Strict technical nursing where it’s all about the results from blood samples and figures on the monitors. The experienced intensive care nurse reads these and implements warranted changes of ventilator settings and fluid choices. The less so, like me, asks the sister first. Spontaneity, personal choices based upon individual assessments; not so much. The nurses here are clever but they are like those kids from school that remembered everything but didn’t necessarily ask questions. It’s all about set pathways. This happens – you do that. That happens – you do this.

I looked on as she slowly and seemingly with great care took out cannulas and drips from the body which now was only a body.

And sometimes things happen and you do fuck all. Like yesterday when my neighbour’s patient died. I walked over briefly and looked up at the monitor. It was full of zeros. I’m still not used to it. That’s why I was standing there, looking. Death in Corona intensive care is a monitor saying zero. Eventually I turn to the patient. Oh, it’s her. I looked after her a week ago. She’s gone now. I tried to think if I ever spoke with her family, that would help me connect, but I couldn’t remember. Soon I was back in my bay leaving my neighbour and colleague alone. From a distance I looked on as she slowly and seemingly with great care took out cannulas and drips from the body which now was only a body.

At home I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t have a drink and I slept nearly the whole night.

Next day was off. Yeah, I only work every other day now because… Well, it’s all these monitors saying zero. And the face mask bruising my nose.

Due to aversion for queuing I haven’t been in a supermarket for weeks but this day I really needed to. I drove into the carpark and took in the sight of a queue snailing itself forward and back, twisting and turning, trying to harbour all the people with their two meters in between. I stopped the car and just watched. No one was smiling. And what’s worse, no one was moving. This queue was standing still.

My foot wanted to rev the engine, my hands to turn that wheel, out of this place from hell.

My foot wanted to rev the engine, my hands to turn that wheel, out of this place from hell. Should I mingle with these zombies? Never in my life. Eventually I had to remind myself that I’m getting slightly old for being a punk. Besides, I needed stuff.

Out of the car, I approached one of the zombies. “Is the queue moving at all?” “Yes,” said the zombie and started moving himself. Only later did it occur to me that he’d been reversing due to me breaking into his two-meter space.

Well inside, after twenty minutes lost forever, I proceeded among the aisles and found my trolley soon completely full despite having no one else to shop for.  It turned out I was buying double or more of everything so as not to have to come back so soon.

And I played mean games. There was this man, full high-tech face mask securely attached to scared face, who’d already been sending me passive aggressive signals in the queue outside. He stood still looking for something on a shelf and I stopped beside him, at a legal distance -just, but then started moving slowly towards him with small shuffled steps while my long zombie arms stretched for an item on the same shelf. Before long the man had abandoned his search and hurried away. Slowly I followed him into next aisle.

But in the hospital the staff, more exposed to the virus than anyone else, don’t practise any social distancing. We eat and talk inches rather than metres from each other.

Corona has turned the staff room into a refuge of normality. And me into a vicious hoarder.

I’ll have that drink now.