Thread by @TheRealDoctorT

Every day I see the same cook in the hospital cafeteria.

I say hello, and ask him the same question.

“How’s it going?”

He always smiles and shrugs, “Eh, not bad for a Monday.”

Except he says “not bad for a Monday” every day of the week.

Finally I ask him about it. 1/

“Look doc, any day you gotta wake up early and go work, heck, that’s a Monday in my book.”

“So, a work week is five Mondays?”

“Yeah!” He laughs.

Another cook stands beside him. She shakes her head, “Don’t listen to him, doc.”

I offer her a grin, as she continues. 2/

“I’ve been real sick in my life. I know how sick people are in this place. Every day isn’t a Monday, it’s a Friday, because every day is a blessing and you look forward to the next one. For me, every day is a day I wasn’t guaranteed. A second chance.”

I nod, and smile. 3/

I’m still thinking about that conversation as I get on the elevator later in the day.

There are four of us in here. We each stand in one corner, saying nothing, face shields and masks on.

We all know where we are going.

We’ve been here before.

This place that haunts us. 4/

I talk to my friend, the Intensivist, at our usual meeting place in the ICU dictation room.

“How’s the COVID situation?”

“Bad. Intubated four people today. Trachs coming up for another four. It’s... bad.”

She rests her forehead on her palm as she talks to me.

Exhausted. 5/

She has finished rounding, now she sits at her workstation and makes her day’s phone calls, to all the family members who can’t be there.

I listen.

I make my fair share of these calls too. They never get any easier.

Her voice is gentle, “I’m sorry.”

Her gaze is far away. 6/

Later in the day I enter one of the COVID ICUs.

What was once foreign and chilling to witness, has become cruelly routine.

The sight of humans on their bellies on ventilators, glimpsed through many layers of glass and plastic, doesn’t affect me anymore.

Not like it used to. 7/

Every now and then I see something that jolts me. That reminds me of the stakes. That puts human beings into context.

But mostly my emotion has been stripped away.

I exist here and now in this netherworld, where we once were and where we are once again.

I hate this place. 8/

Our numbers are climbing inevitably upwards. Thousands more will die, even as we are on the cusp of a vaccine roll-out.

I think of a photo Marina Amaral shared here, of a soldier killed in World War I, just days before the armistice.

All this needless death, in the dusk. 9/

At the end of the day I’m heading to the parking garage via the basement of the hospital.

As I walk down a hallway, I pass by a man pushing a stretcher. It is covered in a heavy embroidered black drape.

I know what it means.

I say a silent prayer.

God help us all. 10/

Sitting in my car, I exhale deeply.

I look at my hands gripping the steering wheel, something I can control, knuckles turning white.

Was today a Monday or a Friday?

A blessing? Or just another damn day?

Tears threaten my vision.

It’s a long road back.

I drive.