The Flattening Of Pandemic Drift
Apr. 28th, 2020 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyThe Flattening Of Pandemic Drift
Others In This Series:
Covid-19 Fanfic | The Flattening of Pandemic Drift – Part II, Now Flatter | Flat As A Pancake - Part III
[This story is inspired by the teaching story 'The Defence of Duffer's Drift.' Like that story, it is fictional... and had better stay so.]
###
There is a joke that starts with someone telling someone, "This is the worst day of my life!"
The joking reply is to correct them, "The worst day of your life _so far_."
I am certain that this is the worst day of my life.
I am much less certain that I will see tomorrow's dawn.
The temperature checker at the hospital entry frowned as she waved me through. I didn't tempt fate by asking. I didn't pause either, because the police officers with rifles had enough problems keeping the path clear from the employee parking lot to the entry.
I report to my work station. I receive passdowns.
"54B just changed to DNR. 60A is mod code. 71B had her last dialysis session yesterday, watch her output and O2 sat." With that he rushes out the door to wash up and either go home for ten hours or hole up in the dorm for ten hours.
I am a critical care nurse. No, I'm not. I'm a former EMT. But having once held a medical license, and able to learn quickly, I am now pulling double duty as a CCN(E) and RT(E).
(E) means Emergency. There's a lot of that going around.
I have twenty-four beds of intensive care patients. Only half are intubated. The 3D printed vents have been a Godsend, when they work. My job is to keep an eye on each patient with machinery I half-understand, and the good old fashioned Mark One eyeball.
I can message the attending. Better that I don't. I can call a code team. That I must. But the code team lead, often enough an RN with no E at the end and a trainee nurse and a security guard who can do chest compressions, often decides to run a cycle and call it. Or not run a cycle and call it.
But the spreadsheet I keep updating in the hospital's chart system is used to make decisions about the twenty four patients under my care. If the trends improve, they get moved to quad rooms with less monitoring and more support. If the trends get worse, they get moved to ... less monitoring and, well, less support. And the next level below mine is the Expectant Ward.
I am diligent and attentive to my duties. But I only half understand much of what I am doing, and know it. My light reading is critical care nursing textbooks and "Healthcare Chemistry."
The alarm beeps for 54B. Low O2 sat. I check the vent. No problems there. I check the O2 flow. Good, but only 15 LPM. Under standing orders I can adjust to 25 LPM if I can get O2 sat above 86 that way. So I turn it up to 20 and metaphorically cross my fingers.
Personal protective equipment - PPE - is heavily rationed on a point system. I save all my points for masks, because I am in a room full of death. That means I do not wear gloves and I do not wear a gown.
71B has not urinated in four hours. I know because I check the bag attached to her catheter.
She's dead. Oh, she's still breathing, and dimly aware that she's in a ward. But her extremities are shutting down. I squeeze her hand. She blinks back at me. Thank you.
Then I go over and enter the notes that will have her moved to Expectant in a half hour.
60A stops breathing and the chime goes off.
He's not vented. Nor is he going to be.
I set off a code.
When the code team arrives, I am bagging him with a disposable BVM that has been deconned and put back into service by Maintenance.
"45 year old male, mod code, lungs full of fluid, O2 sat 64, two minutes down, bagging," I pass down as I keep bagging the once per six seconds.
The real registered nurse checks his fingers and toes. Pedal edema, distal. Then she uses her stethoscope and listens to his heart and lung sounds with the benefit of real clinical training as opposed to my flirtations with YouTube.
"Time of death 1443," she says calmly. I stop bagging. I put the BVM in the 'to decon' basket. I briefly chart the death. Nurse and trainee walk to the next code. Guard pauses to kick brakes off the wheels and roll the corpse out of the room.
Ten minutes later, 60A has a new patient. A downgrade. All my new patients are downgrades. I have never had a patient come back from Expectant. Once in a while, I have one promote.
I live for that.
So do they.
I want to wipe my forehead, and can't. It's my choice to forego gloves and work dirty. That way I am slightly ahead on masks. And I would not have dared bag anyone.
I worked Expectant for three weeks before becoming qualified to work this room.
Then the lights go out.
I have a flashlight. This is not the first time this has happened.
The vents stop. This is going to be busy for a moment while the generators kick in.
About half of the emergency lights kick in. The others have dead batteries.
The generators are not kicking in.
Oh shit.
Twelve of my patients will be dead in four minutes.
Eleven if I drop everyone else and bag just one.
I can't bag more than one person at a time. Even with a tube it takes two hands.
And this is far, far from the only Critical Care Ward. No help will be coming here, I'm it.
Time to gang bag.
This is why only half the room is intubated. Because I can bag, connect, bag, connect, bag connect my way between several patients.
A guard rushes in, horrified.
"How can I help?"
"STAR!" I snarl.
We have an emergency procedure for this. Every patient who can benefit from being bagged is quickly moved into a circle of heads, surrounding me.
I keep bagging as patients are moved.
My star has nine participants.
The guard can check pulses. And no, she doesn't have gloves either.
I would keep an eye on the clock on the wall, but hey, power failure.
"NOW HEAR THIS," the PA system distantly booms. "NOW HEAR THIS. Nurse Blaze report to Ward B. Nurse Blaze report to Ward B."
We don't have a Nurse Blaze. Or a Doctor Armstrong. Or a Janitor Brown.
I drop the bag.
Nine people are dead.
I have to save twelve.
I triage quickly.
Eleven. Shit.
Internal disaster. No code mode.
The guard and I start rolling patients out into the corridor.
As we get to 71B, she croaks a word at me.
"NO," she croaks forcefully.
Our eyes meet. I now recognize her. She was one of the lecturers for my CCN(E) course.
I nod, and keep moving, leaving her in her bed to die.
There is a faint haze of smoke in the corridor. We are pushing the patients down the hall.
The scene becomes chaos. I lose track of my ten charges as I am pushed into orderly work. Get people down the fucking hall.
But only if they have pulses.
I pause for a fit of coughing.
It's not the smoke.
I dimly realize that two firefighters are going past me, one carrying an empty hose pack and the other with a hooligan tool. They are going the wrong way. Away from the smoke. And they are sooty.
A woman wearing the white coat and green vest that say PHYSICIAN stops me.
She presses something into my hands.
A scalpel, capped.
"We've lost the hospital. We don't leave anyone alive behind. But I can't spare anyone to do the thing. And you're sick."
I look at her.
"I know your background. I know you can do the thing. Go do the thing."
There's only the one thing I can do with the scalpel.
The room dims a little. Again, it's not the smoke.
It's me.
I've got it.
This is, near enough as makes no difference, my last day.
And ... I've got this.
I head into the smoke with my scalpel.
I will not be coming out.
###
A hospital is a product of technological civilization. It is an exceedingly complex system prone to multiple failure points. If you overload a hospital, you don't get reduced functionality - you get no functionality.
###
"Transport 7, triaged to a delta response, difficulty breathing, standard precautions. Address to your MDT."
I am driving a cargo van with two folding stretchers and some EMS equipment in the back. My MDT is a cell phone on a mobile mount.
I shouldn't be doing this. My EMT license is expired and I never had a driver certification.
But a lot of things have gone out the window in the last few weeks.
I acknowledge and drive there to do the thing.
This is my seventh such call this morning.
I had to take my temperature twice before I met protocol. And I might have run the bulb under cold water to reset it first.
My partner is a park ranger. Still wearing park ranger uniform under the blue EMS vest.
We pull up to the scene. A single firefighter is there in a utility truck. He is on air - SCBA - for his own safety. He got close enough to see with his own eyes that there's actually a patient, then he's gone.
Protocol is that stable C19 patients be transported prior to full medical evaluation.
We're the transport.
I drive. This leaves my partner to take vitals, decide whether or not to put them on oxygen, etc.
I have to be alert to road conditions. Road rage drivers, abandoned vehicles in the roadway, at one point I have to divert around a structure fire.
It's getting bad out here. We've been shot at, more than once.
I pull into Receiving. A dead eyed police officer and two dead eyed National Guardsmen, all with rifles, are enforcing the DO NOT ENTER sign with the only means that work when courts are closed and law has failed.
I help with loadout and hear the passdown.
"37 year old female, difficulty breathing 7 of 10, 3 days down, respirations 30 and shallow with fluid sounds right side, O2 sat 90 with nasal at 4."
We decon. That's a fancy term for carefully washing our hands.
I drive. She does patient care. The rules are strict and for our safety.
She is my third medic. The last two got sick.
As we pull away, we hear distant gunfire.
In normal times we'd stage for when the law has the scene secured.
No law. No scene. Nothing to secure. Too busy to stage.
At the end of shift, I am very tired. My partner is concerned. I have to wave her back.
"Six feet!" I snarl.
She shakes her head and decons, then goes home.
We're all on different overlapping times due to call volume. So no one is there when I faint.
I wake up, the water is still running over me.
I'm very hot.
Oh damn.
I decide that I'm not calling for transport. I'm not taking a last ride.
I give the fucking rides. I don't take them.
So I need to think.
This had been a fire station before they pulled the apparatus and staged.
There's still fires. More than ever.
That's why I'm here. Doing a job to free up a firefighter.
I'm not going to go lie down in quarters and make someone have to move my body.
So I crawl to the tool room.
Get a shovel and a tarp.
Crawl outside.
Start digging.
I'm tired. I have to rest a lot.
The earth is cool. I am so hot.
I remember to pull the tarp over myself before I pass out.
###
It's not just about the hospitals. It's about a system of care. Systems are made of people, and when people break down, the systems break down too.
###
"Element, DRAW BATON!"
My six guards take out their sticks and hold them in both hands.
"One step forward! On the command! Jab!"
This is not a drill. This is not an exercise.
These are stupid people who have decided to have a fight over something stupid outside the store, blocking the entry.
There are no police. Well, there are but they are too busy running to murders and suicides and domestic violence calls.
Four of the six run away.
One of them reaches for his pocket.
And his wrist is shattered by a baton blow.
The guards pile on.
I should stop them.
I don't.
Once he is completely tuned up, we cut off his clothes, take his handgun, dump him naked in a cart, and send it rolling across the parking lot. From the fact his pupils were no longer equal, round and reactive to light, he's probably a deader anyway.
Having restored order, we allow people to enter the store.
Ration cards. Temperature checks. Your money is no good. You get what you get. You don't get ring up at the register, you get tuned up if you goof.
I try to imagine how it could be worse.
Then I pass out.
#
"I will be your instructor today," I begin, wheezing. "This is the first post-Pandemic law enforcement academy in this county. I will answer this question once. I am on oxygen because I was on a ventilator for three weeks with the C. Obviously I lived. I was not a police officer. I worked for a living. But as all the police are dead, someone has to teach the new police, and since I can talk, I'm one of your instructors. You will address me as..."
###
Fear can be as bad as any disease.
###
I make the rounds of the facility again.
I am a PODS manager.
Points of Distribution System.
A drive-through grocery store. Kind of.
There is a long line that snakes around the block.
Not my problem.
There are four service lanes.
Very much my problem.
Protocols are on signs.
"STAY IN YOUR CAR. STAY IN YOUR CAR. WE WILL SHOOT AND KILL YOU."
"POP YOUR TRUNK. IF YOU CANNOT, ROLL DOWN YOUR RIGHT REAR WINDOW."
"STAY IN YOUR CAR OR END UP LIKE" -> arrow to leaky smelly corpse. Not a photo.
People in vests with masks change gloves in between dropping care packages into people's vehicles.
People are crying. Everyone. It's another new normal. We've been through the worst of it. We think the dying is slowing down.
But so many people are hungry as well as scared.
There is a disturbance up front.
Someone has a passenger.
This is a violation of protocol.
He has his window down.
That's worse.
"She's Sick, I tell you!"
Three strikes.
My first thought is to order "Squad fire" but maybe we can talk him down.
I go to the chain and start dragging the chain across the lane, to keep him from driving into the service lanes.
We want him to divert to Holding One. We have a contingency plan. We will take her out of the car, take her to the mass-cas. He will leave with food, if he is cooperative, empty handed if not, or be shot and his car pushed out of the way for towing to long term decon.
I have made a bad mistake, I realize, when I turn because I hear the engine roar, just in time to see the car bumper hit me and push me into the chains I have just clipped.
Things are blurry.
I am sitting in a sea of warm red.
My legs are over there.
The bumper is here.
And the man is getting out of the car and I hear BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP from the sheriff's submachine gun as he is stitched up.
The worst part is that the chains are still inside my body.
My spine did not snap.
So I can feel everything down to the pelvic line.
I scream one scream then can't take a breath.
The red is warm.
The warm is red.
Warm red ... dead.
It's OK to be glad it's over.
###
People aren't rational. They rationalize. And no matter how many times you tell someone to think, they don't actually think. They make up stories to fit their prejudices.
Some people would rather die than think.
Others would rather kill.
###
I'm bored.
I miss all the things I enjoyed. Restaurants, theaters, live music .. dating.
But I'm not going to risk my life, or the lives of others, for momentary satisfactions.
I'm going to stay home.
I'm going to adapt.
I'm going to be ready, when the time comes, to make a difference. But not too early.
I have the self discipline to delay my pleasures.
But how many men actually wear a condom every time?
###
Isolation is a punishment in every human culture.
People have died because they rushed from a perfectly safe shelter into the horrors of artillery bombardment.
Because they were stressed.
Because they were bored.
Because they thought it was over, just a little too soon.
Shell shock, battle fatigue, post traumatic disorder ... if they make you do something stupid, they are as deadly as shrapnel.
###
"Look! Look at the numbers! Look how few died!"
The man rants,
"THIS WAS ALL TOTALLY UNNECESSARY."
Others In This Series:
Covid-19 Fanfic | The Flattening of Pandemic Drift – Part II, Now Flatter | Flat As A Pancake - Part III
[This story is inspired by the teaching story 'The Defence of Duffer's Drift.' Like that story, it is fictional... and had better stay so.]
###
There is a joke that starts with someone telling someone, "This is the worst day of my life!"
The joking reply is to correct them, "The worst day of your life _so far_."
I am certain that this is the worst day of my life.
I am much less certain that I will see tomorrow's dawn.
The temperature checker at the hospital entry frowned as she waved me through. I didn't tempt fate by asking. I didn't pause either, because the police officers with rifles had enough problems keeping the path clear from the employee parking lot to the entry.
I report to my work station. I receive passdowns.
"54B just changed to DNR. 60A is mod code. 71B had her last dialysis session yesterday, watch her output and O2 sat." With that he rushes out the door to wash up and either go home for ten hours or hole up in the dorm for ten hours.
I am a critical care nurse. No, I'm not. I'm a former EMT. But having once held a medical license, and able to learn quickly, I am now pulling double duty as a CCN(E) and RT(E).
(E) means Emergency. There's a lot of that going around.
I have twenty-four beds of intensive care patients. Only half are intubated. The 3D printed vents have been a Godsend, when they work. My job is to keep an eye on each patient with machinery I half-understand, and the good old fashioned Mark One eyeball.
I can message the attending. Better that I don't. I can call a code team. That I must. But the code team lead, often enough an RN with no E at the end and a trainee nurse and a security guard who can do chest compressions, often decides to run a cycle and call it. Or not run a cycle and call it.
But the spreadsheet I keep updating in the hospital's chart system is used to make decisions about the twenty four patients under my care. If the trends improve, they get moved to quad rooms with less monitoring and more support. If the trends get worse, they get moved to ... less monitoring and, well, less support. And the next level below mine is the Expectant Ward.
I am diligent and attentive to my duties. But I only half understand much of what I am doing, and know it. My light reading is critical care nursing textbooks and "Healthcare Chemistry."
The alarm beeps for 54B. Low O2 sat. I check the vent. No problems there. I check the O2 flow. Good, but only 15 LPM. Under standing orders I can adjust to 25 LPM if I can get O2 sat above 86 that way. So I turn it up to 20 and metaphorically cross my fingers.
Personal protective equipment - PPE - is heavily rationed on a point system. I save all my points for masks, because I am in a room full of death. That means I do not wear gloves and I do not wear a gown.
71B has not urinated in four hours. I know because I check the bag attached to her catheter.
She's dead. Oh, she's still breathing, and dimly aware that she's in a ward. But her extremities are shutting down. I squeeze her hand. She blinks back at me. Thank you.
Then I go over and enter the notes that will have her moved to Expectant in a half hour.
60A stops breathing and the chime goes off.
He's not vented. Nor is he going to be.
I set off a code.
When the code team arrives, I am bagging him with a disposable BVM that has been deconned and put back into service by Maintenance.
"45 year old male, mod code, lungs full of fluid, O2 sat 64, two minutes down, bagging," I pass down as I keep bagging the once per six seconds.
The real registered nurse checks his fingers and toes. Pedal edema, distal. Then she uses her stethoscope and listens to his heart and lung sounds with the benefit of real clinical training as opposed to my flirtations with YouTube.
"Time of death 1443," she says calmly. I stop bagging. I put the BVM in the 'to decon' basket. I briefly chart the death. Nurse and trainee walk to the next code. Guard pauses to kick brakes off the wheels and roll the corpse out of the room.
Ten minutes later, 60A has a new patient. A downgrade. All my new patients are downgrades. I have never had a patient come back from Expectant. Once in a while, I have one promote.
I live for that.
So do they.
I want to wipe my forehead, and can't. It's my choice to forego gloves and work dirty. That way I am slightly ahead on masks. And I would not have dared bag anyone.
I worked Expectant for three weeks before becoming qualified to work this room.
Then the lights go out.
I have a flashlight. This is not the first time this has happened.
The vents stop. This is going to be busy for a moment while the generators kick in.
About half of the emergency lights kick in. The others have dead batteries.
The generators are not kicking in.
Oh shit.
Twelve of my patients will be dead in four minutes.
Eleven if I drop everyone else and bag just one.
I can't bag more than one person at a time. Even with a tube it takes two hands.
And this is far, far from the only Critical Care Ward. No help will be coming here, I'm it.
Time to gang bag.
This is why only half the room is intubated. Because I can bag, connect, bag, connect, bag connect my way between several patients.
A guard rushes in, horrified.
"How can I help?"
"STAR!" I snarl.
We have an emergency procedure for this. Every patient who can benefit from being bagged is quickly moved into a circle of heads, surrounding me.
I keep bagging as patients are moved.
My star has nine participants.
The guard can check pulses. And no, she doesn't have gloves either.
I would keep an eye on the clock on the wall, but hey, power failure.
"NOW HEAR THIS," the PA system distantly booms. "NOW HEAR THIS. Nurse Blaze report to Ward B. Nurse Blaze report to Ward B."
We don't have a Nurse Blaze. Or a Doctor Armstrong. Or a Janitor Brown.
I drop the bag.
Nine people are dead.
I have to save twelve.
I triage quickly.
Eleven. Shit.
Internal disaster. No code mode.
The guard and I start rolling patients out into the corridor.
As we get to 71B, she croaks a word at me.
"NO," she croaks forcefully.
Our eyes meet. I now recognize her. She was one of the lecturers for my CCN(E) course.
I nod, and keep moving, leaving her in her bed to die.
There is a faint haze of smoke in the corridor. We are pushing the patients down the hall.
The scene becomes chaos. I lose track of my ten charges as I am pushed into orderly work. Get people down the fucking hall.
But only if they have pulses.
I pause for a fit of coughing.
It's not the smoke.
I dimly realize that two firefighters are going past me, one carrying an empty hose pack and the other with a hooligan tool. They are going the wrong way. Away from the smoke. And they are sooty.
A woman wearing the white coat and green vest that say PHYSICIAN stops me.
She presses something into my hands.
A scalpel, capped.
"We've lost the hospital. We don't leave anyone alive behind. But I can't spare anyone to do the thing. And you're sick."
I look at her.
"I know your background. I know you can do the thing. Go do the thing."
There's only the one thing I can do with the scalpel.
The room dims a little. Again, it's not the smoke.
It's me.
I've got it.
This is, near enough as makes no difference, my last day.
And ... I've got this.
I head into the smoke with my scalpel.
I will not be coming out.
###
A hospital is a product of technological civilization. It is an exceedingly complex system prone to multiple failure points. If you overload a hospital, you don't get reduced functionality - you get no functionality.
###
"Transport 7, triaged to a delta response, difficulty breathing, standard precautions. Address to your MDT."
I am driving a cargo van with two folding stretchers and some EMS equipment in the back. My MDT is a cell phone on a mobile mount.
I shouldn't be doing this. My EMT license is expired and I never had a driver certification.
But a lot of things have gone out the window in the last few weeks.
I acknowledge and drive there to do the thing.
This is my seventh such call this morning.
I had to take my temperature twice before I met protocol. And I might have run the bulb under cold water to reset it first.
My partner is a park ranger. Still wearing park ranger uniform under the blue EMS vest.
We pull up to the scene. A single firefighter is there in a utility truck. He is on air - SCBA - for his own safety. He got close enough to see with his own eyes that there's actually a patient, then he's gone.
Protocol is that stable C19 patients be transported prior to full medical evaluation.
We're the transport.
I drive. This leaves my partner to take vitals, decide whether or not to put them on oxygen, etc.
I have to be alert to road conditions. Road rage drivers, abandoned vehicles in the roadway, at one point I have to divert around a structure fire.
It's getting bad out here. We've been shot at, more than once.
I pull into Receiving. A dead eyed police officer and two dead eyed National Guardsmen, all with rifles, are enforcing the DO NOT ENTER sign with the only means that work when courts are closed and law has failed.
I help with loadout and hear the passdown.
"37 year old female, difficulty breathing 7 of 10, 3 days down, respirations 30 and shallow with fluid sounds right side, O2 sat 90 with nasal at 4."
We decon. That's a fancy term for carefully washing our hands.
I drive. She does patient care. The rules are strict and for our safety.
She is my third medic. The last two got sick.
As we pull away, we hear distant gunfire.
In normal times we'd stage for when the law has the scene secured.
No law. No scene. Nothing to secure. Too busy to stage.
At the end of shift, I am very tired. My partner is concerned. I have to wave her back.
"Six feet!" I snarl.
She shakes her head and decons, then goes home.
We're all on different overlapping times due to call volume. So no one is there when I faint.
I wake up, the water is still running over me.
I'm very hot.
Oh damn.
I decide that I'm not calling for transport. I'm not taking a last ride.
I give the fucking rides. I don't take them.
So I need to think.
This had been a fire station before they pulled the apparatus and staged.
There's still fires. More than ever.
That's why I'm here. Doing a job to free up a firefighter.
I'm not going to go lie down in quarters and make someone have to move my body.
So I crawl to the tool room.
Get a shovel and a tarp.
Crawl outside.
Start digging.
I'm tired. I have to rest a lot.
The earth is cool. I am so hot.
I remember to pull the tarp over myself before I pass out.
###
It's not just about the hospitals. It's about a system of care. Systems are made of people, and when people break down, the systems break down too.
###
"Element, DRAW BATON!"
My six guards take out their sticks and hold them in both hands.
"One step forward! On the command! Jab!"
This is not a drill. This is not an exercise.
These are stupid people who have decided to have a fight over something stupid outside the store, blocking the entry.
There are no police. Well, there are but they are too busy running to murders and suicides and domestic violence calls.
Four of the six run away.
One of them reaches for his pocket.
And his wrist is shattered by a baton blow.
The guards pile on.
I should stop them.
I don't.
Once he is completely tuned up, we cut off his clothes, take his handgun, dump him naked in a cart, and send it rolling across the parking lot. From the fact his pupils were no longer equal, round and reactive to light, he's probably a deader anyway.
Having restored order, we allow people to enter the store.
Ration cards. Temperature checks. Your money is no good. You get what you get. You don't get ring up at the register, you get tuned up if you goof.
I try to imagine how it could be worse.
Then I pass out.
#
"I will be your instructor today," I begin, wheezing. "This is the first post-Pandemic law enforcement academy in this county. I will answer this question once. I am on oxygen because I was on a ventilator for three weeks with the C. Obviously I lived. I was not a police officer. I worked for a living. But as all the police are dead, someone has to teach the new police, and since I can talk, I'm one of your instructors. You will address me as..."
###
Fear can be as bad as any disease.
###
I make the rounds of the facility again.
I am a PODS manager.
Points of Distribution System.
A drive-through grocery store. Kind of.
There is a long line that snakes around the block.
Not my problem.
There are four service lanes.
Very much my problem.
Protocols are on signs.
"STAY IN YOUR CAR. STAY IN YOUR CAR. WE WILL SHOOT AND KILL YOU."
"POP YOUR TRUNK. IF YOU CANNOT, ROLL DOWN YOUR RIGHT REAR WINDOW."
"STAY IN YOUR CAR OR END UP LIKE" -> arrow to leaky smelly corpse. Not a photo.
People in vests with masks change gloves in between dropping care packages into people's vehicles.
People are crying. Everyone. It's another new normal. We've been through the worst of it. We think the dying is slowing down.
But so many people are hungry as well as scared.
There is a disturbance up front.
Someone has a passenger.
This is a violation of protocol.
He has his window down.
That's worse.
"She's Sick, I tell you!"
Three strikes.
My first thought is to order "Squad fire" but maybe we can talk him down.
I go to the chain and start dragging the chain across the lane, to keep him from driving into the service lanes.
We want him to divert to Holding One. We have a contingency plan. We will take her out of the car, take her to the mass-cas. He will leave with food, if he is cooperative, empty handed if not, or be shot and his car pushed out of the way for towing to long term decon.
I have made a bad mistake, I realize, when I turn because I hear the engine roar, just in time to see the car bumper hit me and push me into the chains I have just clipped.
Things are blurry.
I am sitting in a sea of warm red.
My legs are over there.
The bumper is here.
And the man is getting out of the car and I hear BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP BRAP from the sheriff's submachine gun as he is stitched up.
The worst part is that the chains are still inside my body.
My spine did not snap.
So I can feel everything down to the pelvic line.
I scream one scream then can't take a breath.
The red is warm.
The warm is red.
Warm red ... dead.
It's OK to be glad it's over.
###
People aren't rational. They rationalize. And no matter how many times you tell someone to think, they don't actually think. They make up stories to fit their prejudices.
Some people would rather die than think.
Others would rather kill.
###
I'm bored.
I miss all the things I enjoyed. Restaurants, theaters, live music .. dating.
But I'm not going to risk my life, or the lives of others, for momentary satisfactions.
I'm going to stay home.
I'm going to adapt.
I'm going to be ready, when the time comes, to make a difference. But not too early.
I have the self discipline to delay my pleasures.
But how many men actually wear a condom every time?
###
Isolation is a punishment in every human culture.
People have died because they rushed from a perfectly safe shelter into the horrors of artillery bombardment.
Because they were stressed.
Because they were bored.
Because they thought it was over, just a little too soon.
Shell shock, battle fatigue, post traumatic disorder ... if they make you do something stupid, they are as deadly as shrapnel.
###
"Look! Look at the numbers! Look how few died!"
The man rants,
"THIS WAS ALL TOTALLY UNNECESSARY."
