This - is the Covid ward. The halls are barren. The din of traffic, light, LIFE, is remote, distant, almost imperceptible. The quiet and stillness is unnerving.The room I enter is cold. Silent. 1/

This - is the Covid ward. The bed raised to its customary height once a patient has been "discharged", bed sheets folded perfectly. A pillow untouched. Monitor blank. My skin tingles in a moment of sobriety. It’s over. Just like that. 2/

This is the Covid ward, where no promise is real, where LIVES are suspended like precarious feet on a high wire, an act no less arduous than agonizing. This is where answers to suffering are feeble, questions why endless, never to be reconciled 3/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where solitude is neither refuge nor comfort. It is a cruel ugliness. A canvas painted of extreme caution intended to protect and shelter becomes one of crippling isolation, a stigma of the most necessary but painful sort. 4/

This - is the Covid ward. That those who are most frail, vulnerable are deprived of experiencing the love and comfort of those who count most is an irony of the most wicked proportions. 5/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where a fleeting visit to check vital signs or adjust a catheter or clear a half eaten lunch tray is the singular form of human contact each day. 6/

This - is the Covid ward. A LIFE now reduced to a series of arbitrary moments of the most mundane variety, each one more pressing than the one before, a wilting violet in search of the slightest hint of water, the faintest glimmer of light. 7/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where eyes meet through the sterile veneer of face shields and goggles in a moment of closeness no hand shake could ever match.
8/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where tiny smiles peek around the corners of an N95 respirator when you want them to and are returned in kind with a grace that is unimaginably perfect. 9/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where art, history, religion, philosophy and humanity are explained, simplified, unmistakably understood. This is where nothing matters but each other, a shockingly beautiful standard of humility. Here. 10/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where respiratory distress is a witnessed form of torture for anyone seeking to offer comfort. This is where awkward gasps of air hit like body blows, ruthlessly willed to torment LIFE that flails in toxic futility. 11/

This - is the Covid ward. This is where the once tight clasp of a hand fades in your own, a desperately determined plea for survival slowly released, fading into the hollow softness of your palm. 12/

This is where eyes close. This is where “I am sorry” means everything and absolutely nothing at all.

This - is the Covid ward

#CovidLives #FacesofCovid End 13/