MY FRIEND COVID AND THE THREE DEATHS OF AUGUST
THE ARRIVAL OF COVIDIAN
When I met up with the Covidian, it was August 2021, second year of our world under plague. First, I didn’t know who this apparition was. A dark traveler of the Multiverse, no doubt, but from which reality? A transient Flash-Through or a new bona-fide Arrival with an agenda? A Him or a Her? His projected image was fluid, amoeba-like, changing shape and color, pushing through clearly then fading out again, alternating flashes of bright colors with a fade to grey, as if not sure how to assume form or even what form to disclose. A lurker or visitor? Someone I would have to engage with or someone I could ignore? Ignoring him proved unsuccessful. He persisted with his insertion of his presence and actions into my personal reality.
DESCRIPTION OF COVIDIAN
As I tried to get a bead on him, he not only changed genders, sometimes presenting as a hard-nosed, desiccated older man, but without the archetypical black cloak and scythe, a shabby professor with thinning hair in a worn argyle sweater and old cords, other times as a coarse flabby woman, caked-on makeup layered over a mean bulldog face, not quite fully female but attempting to present as such, expecting proper respect and acknowledgement of the clumsy garish female valence. The only constant was the fear and loathing I felt in response to the cloud of menace and ill will that surrounded the he-she like an invisible microbiome of burning finely shredded fiberglass.
ACTIONS OF COVIDIAN IN MY PERSONAL SPACE
For a week he/she remained pretty much invisible. All I felt was Covid’s entrance spoor. My nose was dripping slightly but incessantly with a clear liquid like tears. I thought I just was in for another pesky cold like so many before. But it was my body trying to tell me I had a Passenger and how he got in: Through my sinuses and air passages. I had no other signs of his arrival. My body was eerily silent and so was he. Pure stealth. I went about my business of living, not knowing that he was already inside me, getting on with his business of taking lives. He marshalled his forces in silence and explored the territory of my body minutely for weaknesses taking inventory with his intimate ghost fingers. That took some time. I was oblivious. or trying to be. Here be dragons.
Then I got bitten by a snake while feeding homeless cats in wild-growth areas. My hand blew up like a bright red balloon animal and a I watched incredulously as a wide red streak moved up my arm into my armpit. Not good. I went to an emergency clinic and got massive shots of antibiotics plus a two-week supply of huge white antibiotic pills. Just because I was there, and the waiting room full of potential Covidians reminded me, I told the doctor to administer a Covid test. Then I went home and watched my hand and arm go from red to deep purple over the next two days. I should have told the doctor the snake sent me for a Covid test.
On the third day, a young girl called from the clinic. With a deliberately impersonal voice she told me I had tested positive for Covid. I was surprised. Silly me. There’s a world plague killing people and I was trying to just duck down and live my life. I did not look at the dragons.
Backstory here: I was in a car accident the week before my nose started telling me something was up. Head-on collision with full deployment of seat belt and airbag. The giant steel fist of the Terminator punched me in the chest and face knocking me into another dimension. As I was trying to regain consciousness, I heard the sizzling of wires and smelled acrid electrical fumes. My car started sparking and smoking and caught fire. That brought me to. No time to remain limp. My car’s name is Cherry after Chariot. And because it is cherry red. With a Salt Life and Girly Girl racing sticker. I love my car and it loves me. It loved me more than I knew.
Cherry saved my life. She did not crunch in on the front driver's side enough to jam my door shut and encase me in a burning metal box. The right front door was shut forever. I was knocked out but somehow, I managed a slomo move raising my arm, turning off the ignition, finding the door handle and rolling myself out into the street. I thought I was already on the Other Side and marveled how similar to my former reality this dimension was. Similar - but different somehow. More transparent. Lines across the scene flickering like a TV screen.
A girl in some sort of uniform dragged me to the curb and I found myself in an ambulance having my body examined by two extremely friendly attendants, one said girl who dragged me out of the street and a man who kept calling me “Dear”. They were extremely nice as they checked me for broken bones and chatted soothingly, while hoping my blood pressure would come back down from the stratosphere. She said they were two cars behind me on the way to another accident but they took care of me instead. What was the chance of that? I was told by the female ambulance medic I had the “best possible outcome” i.e., being alive and without broken bones. God knows how, I sure don’t. All I remember is the giant iron first of the Terminator taking me out.
Now back to my Covid story: After isolating for a year and a half I now had to go to physical therapy several times a week because of the accident. I am pretty sure that’s where Mr. Covid picked me up. It was too easy. I laid down like a patsy on much-used greasy chiropractic tables and sat in chairs occupied by dozens of people every day, having staff and patients jostling me as I came and went. I was joking with my daughter about how bad things come in threes after the accident and the snake bite, but she was not amused. She got furious with me. She cares if I live or die.
Then Covid came home with me. That’s three. He stayed a month. He lingered a bit, then eventually left without me, to my great surprise. There was a time during that month I thought we were going to be together forever. “Everything’s Eventual”, like Stephen writes. More about Mr. Covid’s stay, my physical makeover by his intrusive hand, our intimate conversations and unlikely friendship to follow in “My Friend Covid and the Three Deaths of August, Part Deux”.
Just Another Covidian
