WARNING: This collection contains OFFENSIVE/SENSITIVE/TRIGGERING stuff. If you feel uncomfortable reading DEATH/ANGST, you may stop at any time and not proceed. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Despondency
Standing in the stark white corridor, watching everything in chaotic motion, he felt so helpless.
He had every right to be. He had just graduated with a nursing degree a scant months ago, and despite all the training he had had, nothing could have prepared him for this unprecedented disaster unfurling before his eyes. He was drafted into the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital in Milan when the coronavirus pandemic has started to take its toll on many Italian lives. In fact, the very room he was supposed to spend his ten-to-twelve-hour-shifts in was originally an operation theatre. Due to the rising number of COVID-19 admissions, they were already short of beds, so they had to clear out all available wards and rooms in his hospital to accommodate more patients. Anyone who could not be allocated a proper bed would have to settle for gurneys in the corridors or even wheelchairs for those who could still sit.
Everything happened so fast. Initially, about a handful of cases were reported in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and the virus had since then run amok in towns and villages and finally in cities, infecting anyone it could get its hands on.
Just last evening, the president had extended the regional lockdown to a nation-wide lockdown. He could still recall the news showing footages of people scrambling onto any late-night trains out of the quarantine-zones-to-be, and of kilometres-long queues of cars trying to leave while they still could. This mass exodus might have serious consequences in the coming weeks; people might have been carrying the virus and unknowingly spread to their families and friends in other regions who had yet to see the horrors of the invisible assassin. Nevertheless, he could not care about that right now, as there were more dire matters at hand.
A hand landed on his shoulder, followed by a voice. "Feliciano?"
He finally returned to reality and turned his head to his right. A fellow nurse, his mentor to be exact, clad in white hazmat suit, complete with two face masks, a face shield and nitrile gloves, stood next to him. The only feature Feliciano could recognise from the person was his hazel eyes. The nurse asked, "You alright?"
He nodded hesitantly. He had to be, right? After all, he graduated from one of the nation's most renowned nursing schools, of course he had to be alright and ready.
"OK. Just let me fix your face mask for a bit…" said the nurse, moving to Feliciano's back to adjust the strings. After a few tugs, he patted his back and said, "You're good to go."
Well, as good as he could be since the face mask did feel a bit suffocating, but yes, good to go. "Thanks, Alessandro," replied the brown-haired man. Alessandro gave a thumbs up and then gestured Feliciano to follow him.
"You know your way around here already?" asked Alessandro, who was walking slightly in front.
"… In this hospital? Not really, it's been a few days, but I still get lost," answered Feliciano with an embarrassed chuckle.
Alessandro shook his head lightly with a quiet chuckle and said, "That's fine, every newbie gets lost in the beginning." And then his tone turned a tad serious, "To get to the ICU, we need to pass by the emergency room." Right when his words came out, they arrived at the room in question. They stopped before the doors and the older man took a deep breath. Feliciano instinctively followed suit. He had a knack in observing people's emotions and acting accordingly when he wanted to. Most of the time, he was happy-go-lucky and blissfully oblivious, but the current situation was eating away at his optimism.
One second later, his mentor pushed the door open and they walked into the emergency room. Feliciano had to bite back a panicked gasp, only his eyes widened at the scene. There were people everywhere; patients, doctors, nurses, paramedics… Many were talking at once. Every single one of them had face masks on. Patients were coughing, wheezing and gasping for air; signs of serious respiratory infections. The whole space was literally flooded, there was barely space for them to walk. This chaos was not too different from the one Feliciano witnessed in the corridors earlier. At this rate, they might need to empty more rooms to accommodate these new patients.
After the disquieting trek through the emergency room, they got into a slightly less crowded corridor and the ICU was just at the corner. Again, they paused before the entrance and Alessandro spun around to check up on Feliciano. He was a bit shaken by the scene in the emergency room. It was like a foreboding of what was to come, and he did not like it one bit. However, he sighed softly and nodded again. His mentor took it as a sign that he was ready for their shift and opened the doors.
Although the atmosphere in the ICU was not as chaotic as that in the emergency room, it was nevertheless tense and filled with disturbing sights of patients with bubble helmets, intubations and ventilators. At the centre of the room was the doctors' and nurses' station. Several monitors and keyboards were placed on a desk, surrounded by papers, files and stationery. About eight nurses were going around the beds tending to patients along with doctors. Two doctors and a nurse were staring intently at the monitor screens and the electronic display boards above their worktop.
His mentor stepped ahead and said, "We're here to relieve. How can we help?"
The women at the desk looked at them and then filled them in on the current sit-rep. They have slightly more than fifteen patients to monitor, and some patients might be transferred to their hospital should there be any freed up beds. Over half of the patients lying here were in critical condition and while many were elderly, some were shockingly young. Heck, one of them was only eighteen, the seemingly least possible age to be this hard hit by an infection. They would be helping out in the ICU in this shift and the emergency department in the next, rinse and repeat. Feliciano's job as a "trainee" was to aid his mentor and other nurses and doctors in treating COVID patients.
In the following hours, Feliciano had been running around helping out wherever he could. It was not entirely practical for Alessandro to guide him exactly as per his training specifications, so he had to keep himself on his toes and learn whatever was thrown at him. They had to intubate patients, perform bronchoscopy and CT scans, operate ventilators (he had a crash course with just a manual a few nights prior), monitor patients' vitals, analyse test results and decide a treatment plan. There were also ophthalmologists, urologists and gynaecologists who were shoved into the roster due to staffing issues; an alarmingly high percentage of COVID patients were healthcare workers and they either had to be quarantined at home or treated at hospitals to prevent transmission of the virus to other colleagues and non-COVID patients. ICU doctors and nurses had to guide these newcomers on how to operate the machines and their workflow, in which Feliciano got to participate.
In the emergency department though, one might say this was where the gruesome test on humanity was at. Resources were scarce, medical staff was insufficient, so tough decisions would have to be made. The first come, first served basis was effectively abolished. They had to make the hard decision in dictating who should be treated. Generally, older patients or those with long-term comorbidities were deemed unlikely to make a full recovery and would be placed low in their priority list. It sounded awful, inhumane even, but with inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and healthcare workers, and surging COVID-19 cases plaguing all medical frontline staff, saving more lives with limited resources was not an option but a necessity.
Feliciano felt especially helpless and useless. Since he was a newbie, he possessed minimal practical experience compared to his seniors and had many situations in which he was at a total loss. Furthermore, there was a high possibility that he would be left to fend for himself if the burning issue of medical staff laying off work due to being infected kept closing in on them. He often had to call for help when things started to get overwhelming (there was once where a patient had a cardiac arrest and he suddenly forgot how to do CPR). He felt as if he was placed in fight-or-flight situations and his instinct was always choosing the latter. Others had not said anything; they were somewhat sympathetic, but he could not help but feel powerless and guilty due to his incompetency and helplessness.
Today was one of those taxing days. Feliciano was going around like a madman conducting swab tests and sending them for analysis. And then he had to help taking patients to their designated beds for further treatment. By now, he had gone six hours without eating and drinking so as not to waste his precious PPE; he spent at least twenty minutes donning it and it was his only armour in this gruelling battle against something so ridiculously small yet deadly. One of the patients he was helping was a woman in her early thirties. After a brief exchange of greetings and Feliciano's self-introduction, he was now wheeling her to her stretcher.
"So… Mr Vargas?" asked the lady in the wheelchair while they were in the rising elevator.
"Oh, you can just call me Feliciano, or Feli if you want," he replied, managing a small smile which none of them could see.
"… Feliciano. Tell me something… the truth actually. Is my condition serious?"
He did not expect such frankness. Seconds later, he probed, "May I know what did the doctor say?"
"She said something about this bilateral interstitial pneumonia… so I guess it means I've got the virus? Is it serious?"
He had heard and seen that term over and over again ever since he started working in this hospital, so it was a good guess. "Yeah…"
"I have two boys and a girl," the lady continued, her expression was faraway.
"Oh… How old are they?" Feliciano kept the small talk rolling.
"The boys are twins, both ten. The girl is three," she sighed, "She always wants me to tell her a bedtime story before going to bed. It's past her bedtime now…"
They were silent for a moment. And then the woman sighed again, "She can't live without me though…"
Feliciano said nothing to that until they exited the elevator and reached her gurney on the sixth floor. After helping her onto it, he said, "I'll get you some water to drink, yeah?" She nodded and thanked him. And then, Feliciano slipped away to the nearest pantry to pick up a bottle of mineral water.
The woman laid still for a while. About twenty seconds later, she fished out her phone and dialled her husband's number. "Hello? Dear? Yeah, I just saw the doctor… Are the kids asleep? Go to our room, don't let them overhear…"
She shifted a bit and added, "She said it isn't looking very good. I don't know how long I would be in here, but from what she saw, it's not very pretty…"
She sat up slowly, sucked in a shaky breath and let out a series of light coughs. After adjusting her face mask, her voice started to crack. "I don't know… I can't do this…" she whimpered quietly, supporting her forehead with her free hand. She hastily wiped any surfacing tears from her eyes and added, "I'm scared…"
Unbeknownst to her, Feliciano was only steps away behind her and heard everything. He felt a small lump in his throat as he listened on. He knew he should not have done that, invading privacy and all, but he was glued to his spot the moment he heard her breaking down. He did not say anything but waited until the woman had calmed down a bit and then handed her the water he promised. He then left quietly after whispering goodnight to her.
Now, at a patient's gurney in another corridor, Feliciano was tending to an old man. It was late at night and his mentor was busy helping other patients, so he was left alone. He was over eighty and had a cardiovascular disease; automatic exclusion from admission. Even if they tried saving him, he was too fragile to tolerate ICU treatment. To put it bluntly, he was left to die, but Feliciano just could not leave him be. The least he could do was to keep the poor elderly man company. Despite the reservoir mask they put on him, the old man's breathing pattern was erratic and uncomfortable to watch. "Young man…" he wheezed. From his chair, Feliciano grasped his hands and asked, "Yes, sir?"
The man was having obvious trouble breathing and talking normally, but he seemed like he had something to say and could not wait till later. "Can… Can I have… my phone?" Feliciano was taken aback by this request, but he complied anyways. With shaky fingers, the old man tapped on the phone screen. He said, "I would like… to do a… v-video call with my… family… can y-you help me…?"
Minutes after setting up the phone, a young woman's face popped up on the screen. Feliciano figured that out from the voice emitting from the phone, as he was holding the phone for the old man from the side. "Laura…! My girl… how are… you doing?"
A somewhat emotional conversation ensued, with the old man trying to wheeze out his words and his family members taking turns talking to him on the phone. They were worried about him as they were not allowed to visit, but Feliciano was sure that the old man's pallor probably did nothing to ease their minds. It took about ten minutes before the old man decided to call it a day. After saying their goodbyes, the call ended with a beep. Feliciano kept quiet throughout. He had a lot on his mind. They had never met before, but this old man definitely reminded him of his cheery grandfather living alone in Rome, who would always welcome him with good food and warm hugs whenever he visited him. Technically, he was at risk of getting infected too…
"Young man…" the old man coughed, catching his attention again. Feliciano looked at him and blurted, "Sorry… Anything I can help you with?" The old man managed a small chuckle and said, "Thank you… for your help. It had been ages since… I had talked to m-my family… or… saw them…" The young Italian could tell he missed them a lot, and fighting a serious infection alone probably frightened him. Feliciano nodded and said, "No problem, sir."
The old man coughed again and wheezed, "It feels… feels great to… see them one… more time… before I die…" Frowning, Feliciano shook his head and feebly argued, "Don't say that. You'll get better. I'm sure…" Sure? Ha, his tone betrayed him. He and his colleagues had a tacit agreement that he was too weak to recover from the get-go. They could not save him but could only provide a reservoir mask with some oxygen; a pathetic attempt to buy the poor soul some time.
The young man felt disgusted and guilty. Worse yet? The old man could see it. With a somewhat ghastly wheeze, he said, "Don't hide… the truth from m-me… I know I'm not… going t-to s-survive… You know that t-too…" Then he started coughing up a storm. Scared, Feliciano grabbed his hands and tried to ease the other's violent coughs. "Sorry…" he whispered.
"Don't be… you all did… your… your b-best… Better… to save t-that child… than me…" He meant the still unconscious eighteen-year-old lying in the room opposite of him.
Feliciano shook his head in denial, still holding the man's hands. His tears were already gathering in his honey-brown eyes. He gritted his teeth and tried to stifle bubbling whimpers. The old man took a few laboured breaths and fell silent for a few seconds. And then, he asked, "Tell me… What is… your name?" "… F-Feliciano."
A weak smile appeared on his pale wrinkly face. "Same… name as my… grandson… How o-old… are you?" he whispered; all those coughs took away what little strength he had left. Feliciano was quivering at this point, but he managed to answer, "Twenty-two."
"So young…" The old man paused for a while before whispering, "Living for… eighty-three years… It's l-long enough… for me. These machines…" He gestured at the whirring and hissing metal device inside the opposite room and continued, "Expensive… and not… e-enough… Save it for… some… someone else…"
Feliciano could feel his grip tightening around the old man's unsettlingly cold palms before him. His frown deepened and tears were flowing freely out of his eyes. The man took one last look at him with a warm smile, whispering, "I'm scared… but… I'm… not alone… Thank you…" And then he drew a shallow breath-
The tremor stopped.
It was as if Feliciano was awakened from a long nightmare. "No… no, no, no, no…" Eyes wide, he frantically jerked up from his seat, overturning his chair. Everything entered a slow-motion state. His screams for the old man had attracted nearby staff and soon Feliciano was surrounded by nurses and doctors. His whole body fell into a state of arrest, tense and stiff, and he had to be pulled aside. Blurry motions flashed before his eyes…
Feliciano was now sitting on a bench in the locker room, having long taken off his PPE. He had been crying for the last hour and there seemed to be no end to his sobs. He refused to witness the old man's corpse being bagged and put in the makeshift transit area in the hospital basement with the other corpses for the funeral home people to take him away. None of his family members could send him off too. Alessandro walked into the room and Feliciano looked up. Without thinking, he latched onto the older man and continued bawling like a baby. Only these words were repeated by the young devastated nurse.
"I'm so… useless… I-I'm sorry…"
His mentor quietly reassured him that he did his best and there was nothing else he could have done, nor could they have. No one should be left behind, but they were sadly not in a position to save everyone. Deep down, Feliciano still thought he himself had sentenced the old man to death, indirectly or not.
He saw that his hands were stained by the blood of a life undeserved to die but with no hope of salvation either.