Outbreak

 

For my second trip out of isolation in 47 days, I chose the shortest route to the Emergency Room. [Spoiler alert: all’s well, turns out it there are unfortunate side effects to using your inhaler at full pelt.] But it was the journey that was taken, not any worrying destination, that caught me off guard. Bear with me…the learning is properly juicy.

The chest pain, wonky heart rhythm and dizzy spells had been fairly constant since the onset of the coronavirus breathlessness three weeks previous. Day and (particularly) night.

As it was the heart of Covid-19 peak-week for the NHS, I was loath to call the doctor. Phil had seen me in pain and having to steady myself once too often, and like the logical man he is, insisted I call. The doc took it seriously and so off we went.

The hospital was a hotchpotch of cobbled together precautions. Warning posters on the doors said to go home immediately if coronavirus symptoms were in evidence. Traffic cones (random!) and chevron tape kept visitors far from receptionists. Makeshift signs said ‘Stop! Do not enter!’ in the welcome area (the irony was not lost). All the while, every face was hidden behind a crisp white pleated surgical mask.

It was a like a GCSE version of Outbreak.

Staff were coming over all European. The unfamiliar use of hand gestures for reserved Brits was now in full force to aid everyone’s understanding of the muffled instructions.

I went in alone. For the record, the only other times I’ve entered a hospital alone was to visit my father, (massive heart attack), and my mother (massive stroke). (We don’t do drama by halves in our family). You could say walking hospital corridors alone is not my absolute favourite. Walking hospital corridors that are not actually 2 metres wide when social distancing is enforced, again, not my Top 10.

We were all at a distance. The booking clerk, behind her glass screen. The nurse, attempting to back step through the wall to keep contagen-free. The porter, attempting to move me down to X-ray. Me, a fully functioning ambulant adult now treated as contaminant, in lock down on an enormous shopping trolley of a hospital bed.

The body language on display was straight out of The Nightclub Bouncer’s Bible. Everyone was doing it. Straight arms, palms forward. “Step Back!”, “No further please!”, “Make Way, Coming Through!”. This whole place was unsafe. The enforcement of ‘Safe’ physically distancing, enforced that nothing was safe. We were swilling around in a pool of wild wet toxic danger. The wary look in people’s eyes was utterly unnerving.

It was a first. Total strangers were frightened of me. “Look” their eyes said, “I’m doing my job over here but I’m genuinely concerned you might accidentally kill me.”

Me, a 5ft2 white portly middle-aged woman. Kill them.

That feeling of being labled as lethal was horrifically new. (The leftovers of that experience are properly worth mining later).

The thing was, when it came to killing them, I actually had no idea if I would.

OK, back in the resuss room my glasses were steaming up – face masks have their dark side.

I’d been talking to the newly arrived doctor. Talking as best we could with masks firmly in place. He stood across the room in blue scrubs, gloves, apron, arms folded, leaning on the cubpoard. He didn’t touch me, examine me, or step within the 2 metre radius of me. For the best part of 15 minutes he asked questions, probed possibilities, gathered history. Him in his small corner. I in mine. He had a soothing voice but his presence on the fear side of the room belied his belief in a clear and present danger. Me.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure what he’d brought into the room with him either.

The first round conclusion was that bloods would need to be taken. He gathered all the necessary sharp pointy things from the cupboard, turned, paused, then finally moved to brake the perimeter.

One sharp scratch later the blood was being drawn. I felt the pull. I looked briefly down to my arm and through his thin plastic apron glimpsed his ID badge. I knew the name.

Really, really well.

I looked up and into the eyes of my friend’s husband. A man I’d seen once a week for years. I’d enjoyed dinner with him multiple times, had barbequed in his garden with our family, attended children’s parties together, had prayed with and for him, had sat long over coffee and had talked late about the deep stuff and the fluff of life.

I said his name and his eyes lifted to mine.

“No way! Is that you?”

The flood of connection rushed in, across the white masks, the blue gloves, the apparently contaminated bed, and the strict protocols. Nothing changed in that room, and yet everything did.

Suddenly I wasn’t alone in this weird moment of my life. I was with someone familiar. Someone who understood big chunks of my life, who understood who I was beyond a strange set of presenting symptoms. And I understood chunks of his life and history. We were together in the weirdness, figuring out the next step. Still with the potential to kill each other, but I’d moved in an instant of recognition from powerless, fearful and isolated, to empowered, confident and connected.

It’s a long story for a short but transformative lesson, which is this.

I wonder if finding the common ground with each human being around us actually determines our own sense of confidence in the world.

No-one can make us feel like we belong. That’s our own piece of work. But what if the common ground we find with another person, (especially even in the face of our own fear, prejudice and desire to remain isolated), could be the rickety rope bridge to the unparalleled joy of being known, seen and understood. Truly connected. Maybe even valued.

We’re all different. That’s for sure. We have the capacity to be genuinely dangerous to each other in life, business and friendship. Yet, we also have outrageous capacities to help and heal each other. To protect and restore. To bring comfort and joy.

If I looked hard enough, through your PPE, I might be able see beyond your defences. (Maybe even if you were busy sticking needles in me). I might recognize your fear, your protective measures, your distancing as something that reflects my own. I could, if I was brave, choose to stand on the same patch of earth you and I have been gifted, and face the future together rather than alone.

It’s an option.