We Are the Virus
Time’s real soliloquy — What it means to care for a loved one during COVID-19, by Shambhavi Ramanathan, Planning Director
Trigger warning: If you are feeling overwhelmed already, this isn’t for you. Disclaimer: This is not about or by a patient of COVID-19.
Being a caregiver of a relative in a hospital, during the gut-wrenching lockdown, while watching a continuously multiplying number of COVID-positive cases, has taught me lessons in health, life, and love. I hope this offers perspective to all those out there, who feel they are in an unending misery being away from life and routine.
48 hours into being in a hospital, you learn something you would never have — on social media, on news, or from anecdotes from near and dear ones.
In the first one hour, you thank your stars that you are in the only non-COVID wing of the hospital.
In the second hour, you start to see what life looks like for those in shielded plastic for over 18-hour shifts.
In the third hour, you reach for water. And then, it hits you. Drinking water out of a straw teaches you something so fundamental, that you will never be the same again. It teaches you that life is so fragile, hanging by a thin thread, ephemeral as-ever. One breath out of sync, one-touch out of radar and one step out of bounds spells doom. For you, for those around you, and for those around them. Suddenly you realize that in your hands lie — the fate of your life and those around you.
In the fourth hour, you tune yourself into the rhythmic flow of an isolated ward. Suddenly the pops of alcohol, the mechanical change of plastic, and the piercing rules don’t seem that bad after all. Now, you are a part of this family, and you stay together and do together.
In the fifth hour, you start to itch. The layers, the alcohol, the air-con, the lack of sound, the glass. You don’t know what your skin feels like anymore. You don’t know what your tongue tastes anymore. All you have is a memory of it. All you can do is close your eyes and imagine life outside.
In the sixth hour, when you are offered a breather, you step outside thinking it will recharge you. A smoker’s paradise — unprotected contact with air, sans mask. And then you take a call or two. Walk a few steps near civilization only to learn the dull humdrum of solitude. Without much ado, you ask to be let back inside. At least inside, you have a role to play.
By the time the eighth hour reaches you, you start through the layers. Peering through the impenetrable barrier, you see their eyes smiling, feel their hands showing care, and hear mouths offering words of comfort — doctors, nurses, staff all in the same language. No subtitles needed.
And then you sit back, letting go.
No more does an IVR sounding urgency on breathing symptoms, panic you. No more does the reeling spread of coronavirus messages stutter you. In the epicenter of this, the strongest virus had somehow brought us closer together. Social distancing is the unsaid force between two people now — regardless of caste, creed, religion, political affiliation, race, orientation, that has kept us apart for eons. The religion of masks, the caste of safe-touch, and the creed of distance have, once and for all, replaced injuries that years of cultural conditioning left on India and the world. Almost as if 2020 has wiped the dirt off the history of man.
It is now clear to me that the virus that did the unthinkable to man also undid a lot for him.
Dear virus, you killed us and healed us — all in one breath. Maybe we will finally learn.
