PART 3
“Are you seeing this?” Sarah says from the other side of my phone’s receiver.
“Holy shit,” I mutter, looking at the thousands of likes on our video.
A couple of days ago, after my confrontation with Dr. Gray—who is still not speaking to me—Sarah and I got together and made our first video. I thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t. She recorded it on her phone, used some free editor software to piece together what was basically a conversation we had, and stitched it into a narration that fit into the framework for clickbait-type videos.
It was so easy any crackpot could do it.
I’d been called out to my face. He made me feel small. He made me feel like an idiot. He made me feel like my opinion didn’t even matter. I’d had a decision to make, and that conversation made it for me.
It’s war.
“Oh my god, look at the comment from America4eva69. Christ, what a name. Do you see it?” Sarah says.
“Oh yes, I see it.” The comment states: “Finally, someone who gets it. And she’s from the establishment. Hoorah boys, we’ve cracked one of them and brought ’em to our side!”
“There’s another like it responding to it,” I say, skimming the comments. There are hundreds.
“The doctors and nurses are the real heroes, but they’ve been gagged by the government! Spread the word! The lady is taking a big risk telling us the truth!” – Cuddlebaby420.
Another comment, from a lady whose profile picture looks an awful lot like Margaret, says, “So if I take this drug, I don’t have to have that awful taste in my mouth? The doctor gave me something that made my mouth taste terrible.”
There’s a diverse mix of comments if you read through them. Most of them are supportive. A few label what I said as misinformation, so I link them to studies that prove it’s not.
Yeah, I know, Dr. Gray said these studies have flaws. But they are pretty hard to see after how he made me feel. They look solid, and most importantly, say what I want them to say. Even that big one with the people who supposedly make money from these drugs—so what, I make a living off helping sick people too. Big deal. And yeah, okay, the study got delisted and labeled as misinformation. Please, according to who?
“You need to engage with these people,” Sarah told me. “You’re getting a great response. I think you could build a huge following if this keeps up.”
“Yeah, but, what if they look into the research and see that it doesn’t hold up?” Doubts force their way past my anger into consciousness.
“Oh please, you’re a nurse practitioner, practically a doctor yourself. If you say it’s true, then it’s true. No one’s going to read through this stuff and even if they did, I bet they wouldn’t understand it. Like, don’t you guys need to take a bunch of classes to understand those studies? And I bet it’s dry as dirt and you make do with C’s anyway. Who cares, you know it works, you’ve seen it work!”
She’s right. There must be some kind of group dedicated to pushing down this information. I’ve seen it work, it’s worked on me personally, so if the science isn’t supporting it, then that must be because some other group is trying to keep it quiet. Probably for money. It’s always about money, damnit.
The doubt falters.
“Oh hey, look at this one!” I say, referring to another comment. “Willyboy1983’s comment.”
“I just want to say, thank you so much for supporting us. I live in your town, and there’s a huge group of us who were on the fence. We look everywhere for information on what to do if we or the people we care about get sick. I never know who to believe. Thank you for being someone we can trust. You rock! – Willyboy1983,” I read it out loud to Sarah over the phone.
I read and reread the comment over and over again. This person here, whoever you are, Willyboy, they trust me. I must be doing something right. People would see through this if I was wrong.
A lot of these people are local. I recognize a couple of names, a few faces; some of them have been my patients before. They leave comments like, “Cynthia helped me out last year with my sciatica, you can trust her,” and “Cynthia found my tumor, THAT THE DOCTOR MISSED, and saved my life!”
The support drives a stake into the heart of lingering doubts in my chest. In its place sparks the fire of certainty. I’m doing the right thing. I’m making a difference.
I know it.
“Mommy, my throat hurts.” Mikey comes up to me and pulls on my sleeve. It’s early in the morning, 4 am. But when Sarah called and said we went viral, I had to get up and see. Mikey has been feeling pretty lousy for a while now. At first, I thought it was allergies.
But now…
“Hey Tom?” I call out, still reading through the comments while pressing the back of my hand against Mikey’s forehead to check his temperature.
“Yeah, hun?” Tom calls back from the other room.
“Is it done yet?”
“Timer has a couple more minutes,” he calls back.
Tom is the one who pressed for the COVID test. He said that since I had just been sick, it’s pretty reasonable that Mikey got it from me. I tried to remind him that Mikey gets allergies every year, but, a concerned papa, he just wants to be safe. I’m sure it’s fine. I read somewhere that ivermectin makes it harder to spread the disease, so I doubt it’s COVID.
“Sarah, I gotta go. We should make another video soon.” Sarah agrees and hangs up. The video’s been up for just under two weeks but we’re at 350k views already. This is amazing.
“Do you see all these comments, Mikey?” I say and pull my little rugrat onto my lap so he can see the computer screen. “These are all friends mommy is making by helping them when they don’t feel good either.”
He nods sleepily at the screen. It’s too early for him, and he is rather warm.
A few moments later, the timer goes off and I scoop Mikey up to go see his COVID test results. Expecting them to be negative, I’m already trying to think of some way to rub it in Tom’s face and let him know his loving wife is always right.
Two dashes.
I double-check the info card that comes with the test, and sure enough, it’s positive. Annoyed, I take a few breaths to settle myself. The fear I had when I was locked away bites at my heels for a moment, but then, vanishes? This is something I dreaded would happen, but now that it’s here, I… well, I don’t really feel anything at all.
Because I know just what to do.
Tom walks in and looks over my shoulder at the test results. “Oh shit.”
“Am I sick, mommy?” My hot little kiddo grumbles and then plants his face in my shoulder.
“Yeah, hun, but don’t worry, mommy’s going to fix you up,” I say and gently bounce him like I used to when he was extra little.
“Do I need to be worried?” Tom asks, the worry already plain on his face.
“Mommy said she helped all those people on her video,” Mikey says, sleepy, groggy, breathing through a mucus-filled nose with bubbles and gurgles. “I’ll be okay.”
“That’s right, little man. I’m going to fix you up, just like I did all those people on the video.”
My phone buzzes. I’m being called into work. I was really hoping to have the day off to make another video, but being on call is being on call.
“I gotta go in,” I say and hand off Mikey to Tom, who takes him but keeps that worried look on his face.
Before he can ask, “What do I do?” (Tom isn’t the best with medical stuff), I say, “I’m going to put some pills on his nightstand. Ignore the instructions on the label, we’re going to be using this med a little differently than the original prescription, since these ones are dosed for animals.”
Tom gives me a look.
“It’s fine, it’s the same med.”
I walk off to start getting ready and set a bottle of ivermectin on Mikey’s nightstand. Since the pandemic, it’s been hard to find this, and I’d had to settle with a vet friend for a supply.
Tom tucks Mikey back into bed.
“How many should I give him?” Tom asks, opening the child-proof container.
“Give him one-fourth of a pill every six hours. Make sure you measure it precisely, but give him a full pill if he’s not better after the first,” I say while pulling on a pair of scrubs.
Tom, looking confused, says, “How will I know when he’s had enough?”
“Just do what I told you,” I say, more sharply than I meant to, but my head is swimming with what I could say in future videos. I’ll be sure to check in with Tom and Mikey in a couple of hours to reassess, and I can monitor dosing that way.
“What if I give him too much?” Tom asks.
“I’ll check in with you in a couple of hours,” I say,
giving him a reassuring smooch. “Do everything I tell you to, and nothing bad will happen.”
Tom melts, he’s putty in my hand. “Okay, I trust you.”
***
Boom. The doors to the ER swing open. A man on a stretcher coughs and gags as he’s pushed inside to waiting intake nurses. I’m one of them. He’s blue despite the oxygen mask, which he keeps trying to take off. He’s got abrasions on his face from where the EMTs have tried over and over again to put it back on.
“Can’t… breathe,” he chokes out after removing the mask yet again. I grab his hands and restrain him so the EMTs can put it back on. He coughs into the mask and struggles weakly against me to remove it.
“Wife called it in. He’s been like this for two days,” the EMT tells me. He’s got dark marks under his eyes and is only half looking at me, half looking through or past me. “Non-compliant with O2, declined meds, heart rate’s been low—real low. Wasn’t sure we’d get him to you in time.”
The EMT speaks quickly. They always do. We prefer it that way. There’s no time here for a pleasant, hey how you doing, or a good to see you again. Maybe some days. But not today.
I place a pulse ox and order fluids as we wheel the man on the stretcher through the packed ER to one of the last open rooms. I take my phone out to time a heart rate because the clock isn’t working.
Jim sent me some kind of text, something about Mikey, something about a cough. I don’t have time to read it. I clear the message.
It stinks here—a mix of antiseptic from the cleaning team working overtime as we flip beds, and body odor from the staff as much as the patients. My legs have that empty, wobbly feeling that comes on a few hours after they stop burning, replacing that weakness telling you to rest, telling you over and over again until your body just gives up on it.
There’s blood on my scrubs. I don’t think it’s mine.
There’s a crash outside, in one of the other rooms. We all turn our heads. A reflex. But there’s no time to check it out. Myself and the two RNs helping me heft this pale, blue, non-compliant man onto the bed are already borrowing strength from tomorrow. We have to leave it to the others outside so we can manage the patient here.
I ask him his name, address, what year it is, and who’s the president, to check his mental state. He replies with most of the right answers. I type the info into the computer without processing any of it.
Someone screams down the hall. Zombie-like men and women in scrubs rush by in the direction of the sound. I wonder how many patients have come in today. Or is it still yesterday?
I need sleep. I need food. I’m so far past empty I’ve got that runner’s high of adrenaline that lasts long past when your body has stopped asking for what you need and will keep on going until you stop. I think if I sat down I’d never get up again.
One of the RNs has an ECG on the patient. I don’t remember asking her to do that. I look down, and the patient is a woman. I know she came in with shortness of breath, coughing, and a positive COVID test. I have no idea what happened to the man I was doing intake on a few minutes ago, but then I remember that was a couple of hours ago and he’d been admitted to the ICU and placed on a vent.
This lady’s not looking much better.
Boom. The doors to the ER swing open, and the same or different EMTs from earlier rush in with another man, early seventies most likely but mid-nineties by the look of him.
“Got this?” I say to Clara—god, I hadn’t even realized it was Clara a moment ago—and she nods. I rush over to the new intake.
“Sixty-year-old man with complaints of chest pain and profuse sweating,” the paramedic says, and before I know it, I’m drawing blood to check troponins and assess for myocardial infarction. You know, good ol’ heart attack.
Everyone is running around the place as hard as I am. I’m not alone. Doctors are yelling out orders to nurses from across rooms. We’re all managing way more patients than can possibly be safe, and we’re all worried about tomorrow, when we realize how many times we fucked up and how bad it’s going to cost us.
You might think, oh man, shouldn’t you call in any and everyone who isn’t working? Yup. We did. That’s how I got here, whenever that was. We’re fully staffed, and I’m not sure it matters. I can feel my own heart skipping beats from stress and exhaustion, all of it building up inside me to make my head little more than jumpy goo and second guesses.
The man in front of me, in the halls lined with so many stretchers we’ve had to shift people around just to get the new ones in—well, this guy is not a hard case. It’s a heart attack. Bread and butter. He’s going to be fine once he gets the right attention. So would a lot of these cases. But there are just so many COVID cases, so many people in the waiting room, and we’ve been going for so long that we all know mistakes are being made. People are going to suffer. It comes down to the sheer number of people in need. It’s frustrating. It’s hard. It didn’t have to be like this, but it is. Just like at the start of the pandemic.
Jim sends me another text. I clear it. My phone tells me it’s dying, and I can’t find my charger.
Suddenly, I’m out on the floor. The walls are spinning around me. It’s like the stretchers are moving through the floors and coming out of rooms pushed by loved ones wearing black. I’m shaking. I’m spinning too. The wrong direction, opposite the walls.
I didn’t sign up for this. It’s all too much. There are too many of them, oh my god, how am I supposed to help this many people? Just breathe, Cynthia. Someone is going to die and it’s all my fault. Just breathe, Cynthia. I can’t even think clearly anymore. Just breathe.
“I need help in here!” someone yells, and my feet, automated past my doubts and fears, carry me into the room. I get back to work. Push away the doubt. Take a big bite out of the chaos, more than I can handle, and I get to chewing.
Patient on stretcher 14 across from room 19. Female. Mid-forties. Status post fall down stairs at home. Cerebral edema suspected. CT scan ordered.
Boom go the doors.
Patient on stretcher 18, placed in the waiting room. Female, early fifties. Roommate reports patient has been babbling nonsense for two hours. Diagnosed with UTI and given IV antibiotics.
Boom.
Patient, stretcher 27, male, mid-sixties. Unresponsive upon arrival. Hypoxic. Brother reports loss of consciousness after severe coughing fit. Brother reports (+) COVID test earlier in the week and progressive decline. Patient pronounced before an opening in ICU becomes available.
Boom.
Patient, room 7, male, 23. Skiing accident. (+) Lachman’s test. DC’d to home with likely ACL rupture and referral to ortho.
Boom.
Patient. Female. COVID. Referred to ICU.
Patient male. COVID. Acute respiratory distress. Referred.
Patient male and female. Gunshot wound. Pronounced in waiting room.
Patient. Male. COVID.
Patient. Male. COVID.
Patient. Female. COVID. Mild symptoms. Discharged to home quarantine.
Patient…
“Help me, someone, please!” A boy walks in, pushing his mother in a wheelchair. “She’s sick.”
“Okay, what happened?” I ask the boy, who sobs.
Boom go the doors.
“I can’t breathe,” says a man pushing through the doors, overweight, older, blue lips, distant eyes. He lurches towards me while I try to assess the woman in the chair.
My heart breaks as I say, “Sit down, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
But he doesn’t have a moment.
Neither does the woman in the chair.
The man falls to the floor, grabbing hold of me. Reflexively I try and hold him up, but instead we both go down. He’s gurgling snot in my face, struggling to breathe, begging me with his eyes because it’s all he has left to tell me he can’t breathe, begging me to help him.
Looking up, I meet the eyes of the woman in the chair. I still don’t know what’s wrong with her, but her posture, head drooped over her chest, her lack of blinking, that faraway stare. She’s already gone.
I can’t even feel how horrified I am. I can’t feel anything but the weight of the man, drowning from the fluid in his lungs on top of me.
