Furthermore- the county health
department was dictating that we remove the patient from isolation. (She was in
an isolation room.) In order to get to the patient I had to pass through one
door- close it- then- pass through a second door. Negative pressure. There was a
closet sized room in between the first and second door. Inside there was a sink
and boxes of masks. N95 masks, specifically. The family came to visit
frequently. And- each family member dutifully donned one of the masks prior to
seeing the patient. One family member's mask was tilted slightly- providing no
real protection. Open at the top, open at the bottom. The nurse was wearing a
PAPR- one of very few in the hospital. "I think I'm going to cry," she said,
emerging from the room. She was trying to get the family to stop poking at the
patient. The trash can in the small in-between room was overflowing with used
N95 masks.
I'd read a post on my Facebook group November 2019. Someone's husband
was an epidemiologist and he had issued dire warnings. "He said it's going to be
like the movie Outbreak."
I'd been sick that January- I medicated my 102.1
degree fever, I'd put on a mask, and I'd dutifully gone to work. My eyes were
red- like I'd been crying. "A bad cold," I thought. Nurses gave me a wide berth.
Nobody sat near me when I stopped to pound out my notes at one computer terminal
or another. This was par for the course- doctors didn't take sick days. My "bad
cold" had resolved when I saw the aforementioned patient. My husband had proudly
shown me the dining room table- in early February of 2020. There were paper
towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, hand sanitizer, bottles of sanitizing spray. A
giant, shapeless mound of cleaning products. I'd walked past- thinking that we
were set for the next decade.
My "bad cold," the mystery patient, the pile of cleaning products, the Facebook post- looking back- this was The Beginning
