Post by Nifty on Feb 13, 2022 10:11:12 GMT 1
I head for a new doctor who has made the fatal mistake of sitting down at the nurses’ station,
I describe to her the patient presenting with loss of smell, and trouble with respiration.
She looks up sharply, adjusting the mask that’s sitting new and uncomfortably on her face,
Her tired mind now whirring, wondering if this would be her first coronavirus case.
Patients filled wards, days became weeks, and our sense of normality seemed in jeopardy,
So much of the time is blurred, hazy, but some moments stay painfully etched in memory.
Stood at the ambulance entrance, telling a husband he can’t visit his wife of sixty years,
It’s easier if they shout at you, but he calmly says he understands, through a face stained with his tears.
A ninety-year-old woman restlessly moving a single flower from one hand to another.
The final gift from a distraught son who knew daisies brought joy to his mother.
The moment when I forgot how I used to derive such happiness from my once beloved occupation.
The sad realisation that the most likely conclusion, would be my premature resignation.
Wondering if I’d fallen into a post-apocalyptic dream as I’d walk home through the deserted streets of Leeds.
Sirens and lights flash past - as an ambulance races to see to yet another victims’ needs.
I turn and stare into the darkened window of a café that stands painfully empty,
My eyes focus on my tired reflection in the window. No apocalypse, just England, April, 2020.
Despite government assurances, the numbers grew exponentially into hundreds of thousands of cases.
The virus followed in the Tories footsteps, by disproportionally affecting those from minority races.
Covid increased whilst parliament reluctantly deliberated on exactly which hungry children to feed.
Unlike the government guidelines, the pandemic made no distinction between Christmas and the festival of Eid.
During winter it carved a path of destruction through care homes with no mercy, clemency or charity.
Dividing the nation by slicing open old wounds formed by years of relentless austerity.
A year on, another positive patient brought in after struggling to cope alone in solitary confinement.
He’ll likely need admission - he’s pale, exhausted, and suddenly has a new oxygen requirement.
There are now thousands like him, struggling for every breath across all parts of our nation.
I can still hear his dry cough as I find the doctor and tell her of this new deterioration.
She looks up, with eyes now so familiar it seems strange I’ve never seen her unmasked face,
She wearily admits him to a ward who simply don’t have capacity, for yet another coronavirus case.
C. L. Rix