Going Home

As the outbreaks are still, ongoing, these are the men AND women, working their quintuple (as triple, double, or quadruple ain’t no longer, enough???) OVERTIME to keep us all safe, translated…

“I won’t do it again, I will change, can I please, come back home?”  “I shouldn’t have wandered around, should’ve just, stayed put, I’m the one responsible, for causing every one of you to be quarantined”, these words, were the elderly 91-year-old man I was taking care of had spoken, before he’d, died.

And, grandpa’s wish of going home, eventually, went, bust.  Going home, for the hospital staffs, is something that we’d all, longed for, but, something that we can’t have.

My older brother and I worked in the specialty wards on in the north, the other, in the south, and to protect our own loved ones, we’d, selected, to not head home for now.  The times we’d spent away from home, my cell phone started vibrating nonstop when I was working, I’d redialed back nine hours later, on the other end was my mother’s worried voice, “are you fatigued from working?  Did you take all the needed precautionary measures?”  “I’m okay, why are you so worried?” I can only, steady my own, shaking voice, to say those words that’ll, make her feel more at ease, as for the imprint from the mask on my face, along with the tears circling in my eyes, I’d, hidden from her.

the writer, taking off his protective hospital clothes, photo courtesy of UDN.com

Only by showing that relaxed attitude, will I be able to save my loved ones from worries.  Even if the clothes I have underneath the hazmat suits got drenched in sweat, dried up, drenched, and dried back up again, even as on the press conferences, the confirmed diagnoses rose up sharply on the charts, with the overloading of the hospitals’ capacities, I can only keep on pretending, that I don’t miss, going home.

Until one day, as the epidemic slowed down, then, I shall, take off these, heavy gears, without any worries, and head home.  And on that very day, I shall, stand, in front of my house, to see which walls had the brand new cracks on them, seeing if my loved ones’ had the extra strands of white hairs, and, take that deep inhale, of the scent that is, home to me.

And so, these are, trying times, for the medical workers, who are, putting in EVERYTHING that they got, to help the patients best as they could, and yet, the world became discriminatory toward them, because, they are, the soldiers, fighting on the FRONTLINES of this war, of invisible enemies, and, we are discriminating them, because of how the virus can be, anywhere on them…