It’s been one month since I started this blog. It’s been one week since I attempted to look for an apartment in a city under lockdown. It’s been one day since I angrily brushed away the tears swelling in my eyes watching the evening news over dinner.
Time has become a bit of an abstract construct. In what seems like a few months and a few minutes ago simultaneously, I said I’d make my father a German chocolate cake for this birthday. That’s today. And I had to scramble out of bed last minute yesterday to text the ingredients for his own cake to my dad who’s been trooping to the store to our family.
I had a rather unique conversation with my dad a couple weeks back. The curves in New Jersey and New York were still steep at the time, with cases and hospitalizations doubled every day, and the death tolls coming from Italy were more heartbreaking each day. It was late at night for us, which is not truly that late, but nearing bedtime. The next evening, I was scheduled to have a Class of 2020 virtual web conference, focusing on many topics but at the top of all our minds was early graduation.
Medical schools in New York were already committing to graduating their fourth year students early to place them into their residency positions before the official July 1 start date. I knew my school’s administration would take the time in the coming evening’s meeting to go through that possibility. (As it turns out, it’s incredibly hard logistically and bureaucratically to join your residency place early, but that is not the focus here.) Mom had already gone to bed when my dad and I huddled near in the kitchen, dropping our nighttime coffee cups into the sink.
I am my father’s Mini-Me. It’s actually rather uncanny. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that he had me pegged from the start. “You’re going early if you can, aren’t you?” As in, not waiting for July 1. As in, starting before the curve had any opportunity to flatten.
“Yeah. I would.” And then I paused. “I have to if they’ll have me.” He heard everything unsaid in that: it’s my moral duty, I want to, I’ve promised to fulfill my place on this earth to take care of my fellow mankind. Because I knew he would understand.
A police officer for 26 years in our hometown, he served our neighbors through some of the darkest moments of our society as the Columbine school shooting and the 9/11 attacks changed the world around us. He walked out the front door, away from my mother, my younger brother and I, with the full understanding he may not come back. And he did it every day.
“Well, as a father, it wouldn’t be what I want. But I get it.” Because when your community calls you to answer your innate sense of purpose to help them, there is no debate.
Nowadays, the first ten minutes of the evening news is an exercise in the fight or flight response. Ten solid minutes of stories from the frontlines. Stories of battles waged and members of the community lost in the trenches. Stories of doctors and nurses risking their lives, making ultimate sacrifices. The vocabulary is one of a profession- a nation, a world- at war.
When the news is on, I actually feel an adrenaline spike. It’s been happening for a while but it’s taken time to identify it. My back tightens across my shoulders as if I’m bracing for impact; I started wondering why my teeth were suddenly aching and realize I’ve been unconsciously clenching my jaw; I get incredibly nauseous while feeling hollow in my chest.
I’m not a soldier. I’m not brave enough for that. I could never do what my father did for over 25 years. I’m a healer, unafraid of hard work, devotion and getting my hands dirty to help, but never envisioning I would risk my life to do so. I’m scared. Because it is painfully obvious I’m going off to war. And it’s a war that doesn’t end with this virus.
The news each night is story after story of how the viral pandemic has laid bare every other underlying epidemic already existing in this country. Americans didn’t start going hungry when the virus hit; they already were. Americans of color didn’t start having worse health outcomes when the virus hit; they already were. American workers didn’t start living paycheck to paycheck with no social safety net when the virus hit; they already were.
When I titled this blog “Matched Into a Pandemic,” it might have sounded situational and temporary. It’s not. We are seeing the battle zones and pandemics people fight every day exposed by the simple fact that we are all inherently vulnerable to an enemy too small to see with our eyes, but not small enough to not see coming.
I may not like the war analogies that are commonplace nowadays, but it doesn’t mean they’re any less true. At some point, our scientific strength will overtake the current battle. With time, we will crack this virus, understand how it works, how to vaccinate against it, predict its next steps in much the same way we anticipate upcoming flu strains now. But in the meantime, if I’m the last thing standing between your family and this virus, hunger, disparities in health outcomes, and knowing someone cares about you making your rent and paying your pills, I’ll be there on the frontline.
I’m still scared. And I’m still going.