Amsterdam 2012 (28 page)

At first there were rumors terrorists had released the virus as a biological weapon, but there’s no evidence of that.
 
The evening news reported the CDC now suspects the virus originated in Thailand, and they’re calling it the Thai Flu.
 
The first U.S. cases were reported in San Pedro and Long Beach, both major shipping ports in Southern California.
 
Ships are now being quarantined, but it is already too late.
 

Last night I checked on Myra Applegate.
 
She is still on a respirator.
 
She was one of the early cases, so at least she got one.
 
She doesn’t remember me or anything that happened to her.
 
We’re not sure if she’ll live.

Mayor Malcolm Jefferson issued a health warning telling people to wash their hands, to cover their noses and mouths if they coughed or sneezed, and to isolate themselves.
 
Schools have been closed, movie theaters, and any place where people congregate.
 
Venice Beach, City Walk, Universal Studios, Disney Land, Magic Mountain are all closed.
 
Two thousand National Guard patrol the streets, but the city is so vast they have difficulty controlling the movement of the population.
 
People in LA are used to being outside, and despite the constant news updates and exhortations to
isolate,
it’s hard to get them to stay in.
 
People don’t yet take the epidemic seriously—it’s only the flu, after all.
 
They don’t understand.
 
The mayor hasn’t imposed quarantine yet, but that’s next.
 
Restaurants are closing not because of the health warning, but because nobody is going out.
 
Plus there’s not enough help.

Everyone is getting sick.

#

Sunday, September 22, 2013

It’s unbelievable how fast this thing is spreading.
 
All it takes is inhaling one little droplet from a sick person.
 
The virus attaches itself to the epithelial cells of the respiratory tract with spikes, and within fifteen minutes it invades the healthy cell.
 
It starts reproducing like crazy within the cell, and after about ten hours, the cell bursts, releasing thousands of viruses that invade other cells.
 
The incubation period for influenza is twenty-four to seventy-two hours.
 
Many die within twenty-four hours of their first symptoms.

It’s only been seven days.
 
Seven days!
 
Within three days of the first case, hundreds, then thousands started pouring into the hospitals.
 
Every single hospital bed is full.
 

St. John’s is in emergency mode.
 
All elective surgeries have been cancelled, and patients with other illnesses and injuries are being discharged early.
 
The waiting rooms have been turned into overflow areas.
 
We’re out of beds, so we lay people on blankets.
 
They all have fevers, some shaking so badly they look like they’re being electrocuted.
 
Many turn blue with cyanosis, especially their fingers and lips.
 
Many become delirious and incontinent, blood-tinged froth bubbling from their noses and mouths, choking, trying to clear their air passages.
 
Some die before we can get to them.
 
We don’t have enough personnel, so sometimes the corpses lie there for hours next to other patients.

All of our mechanical respirators are in use, and we need more.
 
We’ve had a run on hypodermic needles, and we are almost out of antibiotics.
 
The whole way hospitals have learned to operate—stocking only what we anticipate needing in the next few weeks—is making the crisis worse.
 
I’m afraid we’re even going to run out of rubber gloves.
 

There are only about 200 acute care beds per 100,000 people in Los Angeles County—they filled up fast.
 
Lorna Peterson refuses to turn anyone away who comes to St. Johns, but many of the seventy-eight 911-receiving hospitals in LA County have already closed their doors to new patients.
 
It’s
worse in East Los Angeles where Hispanic families are large, houses crowded, and they have trouble with the language.
 
People have no place to go.
 
The Red Cross has set up cots in school gymnasiums, but there are nowhere near enough people to help the patients.
 
They lay in the cots in their own filth.
 
Many Hispanics won’t go to the
shelters,
afraid they will be rounded up and sent back to Mexico.
 
Families of eight or twelve all get sick with no one to care for them.
 
Entire households die, their bodies decomposing for days before anyone finds them.
 
Sometimes, one very sick person will still be alive.
 
I can’t imagine the horror of it—your whole family around you
dead,
and you are coughing your guts out, gasping for breath, their putrefying gases filling your lungs.
 
You beg God to let you die.

Mayor Malcolm Jefferson has called for volunteers to work at the Red Cross centers.
 
But the virus has defeated even the most earnest Samaritan.
 
They show up, eager to help, then flee, appalled by the stench, the coughing, the cries for mercy, the bodies leaking blood and fluids.
 
They flee to their homes.

In the hospitals, volunteers are useless.
   

#

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Mother has been an angel.
 
As soon as I knew we had an influenza epidemic, she began to organize the neighborhood.
 
Her first thought was to locate everybody who has been vaccinated for flu.
 
They might get sick, but probably not so sick they need to go to the hospital.
 
With an authority that seemed to descend upon her from above, Mother appointed these people community Flu Wardens, giving each a four block territory.
 
She e-mailed them on how to care for influenza patients, and gave them boxes of gloves, antibacterial soap, surgical masks, and other emergency supplies Dad picked up at Costco.
 
She stressed it was important people try not to go to the hospital and stay home if they could.
 
They will only make themselves vulnerable to secondary infections such as bacterial pneumonia or
staph
, and the stress of getting there and waiting to be admitted will tax their strength.
 
It is hard to convince people to stay home when they’re bleeding out of their ears.

People are so sick they can’t prepare food for themselves, so instead of delivering vegetables, Mother makes gigantic vats of vegetable soup, which Dad delivers by bicycle.
 
He also gives each house an orange triangle which the city requires to be hung on doors of the sick.

On the days I actually get home to sleep, I visit as many houses with orange triangles as I can in the early afternoon before I head back to the hospital.
 
I carry with me mother’s little blue gym bag filled with antibiotics.
 
So many people live alone with no one to care for them.
 
The flu can strike so fast that by the time someone responds to their phone call or e-mail, they are too sick to answer.
 
No one shows up to help.
 
They die.

Through her Flu Wardens, Mother has gotten word out to every household to write the date on a window each morning, so the wardens can walk by and know someone in the house is alive and functioning.
 
If they pass a house with the wrong date, they’ll break in.
 
More than once they’ve found someone dead inside.
 
The wardens go into these houses with two other people so they can get the corpses in the body bags and lay them in the driveway to get picked up.
 
They hang a black triangle on the door.

#

Thursday, October 10, 2013

We are four weeks into the epidemic.
 
The virus is spreading across the nation.
 
FEMA has sent Disaster Medical Assistant Teams and National Nursing Response Teams all over the country.
 
The news reports outbreaks in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, New York, and Washington.
 
There’s no stopping it.

This morning was the first day I woke up in my own bed and didn’t have to go to work since the epidemic started.
 
We’ve been sleeping at the hospital on eighteen hour shifts, then six hours sleep.
 
We’re all exhausted.
 
My shoulders and back hurt like hell.
 
I can hardly move.
 
I feel awful.
 
I wonder if I am getting the flu, and take deep breaths, checking.
 
Then I realize my aches are muscle soreness from lifting people all day.
 
The
oseltamivir
makes me
nauseated,
the lack of sleep makes me dizzy.
 
I don’t know how much longer any of us can hold up.

I get the sinking thought I get every morning when I wake—that somewhere out there Peter is sick, in some grungy safe house, lying feverish and dehydrated and alone, coughing his lungs out, his comrades, afraid of being discovered, refusing to take him to the hospital, telling themselves if he dies it is Allah’s will.
 
My heart aches for him.
 
There is nothing I can do.
 

I look at my clock: twelve o’clock exactly.
 
When I don’t hear the noontime call for prayer from the mosque down the street, I realized the muezzin must be sick.
 
The muezzin call used to make me feel anxious, but its absence worries me more.
  

I lie in bed listening.
 
The city has become eerily quiet.
 
Buses no longer rumble down Montana, and many fewer cars.
 
No roar of planes overhead, or screams of children playing outside.
 
No lawn mowers or leaf blowers.
 
No motorcycles or thumping car stereos.
 
Just quiet.
 
The coo of the mourning dove.
 
The wind rustling in the palm trees.

And coughing.
 
Up and down the street you hear it, muffled through the closed windows.

The
Goldmans
who live in Mom’s studio are sick.
 
I brought them antibiotics from the hospital, and Mother makes sure they drink water, changes their sheets, controls their fevers with ice packs, and thumps their backs to loosen phlegm.
 
There is little more we can do.
  

Dad seems fine.
 
Cynthia stays in her room, but so far is symptom free.
 
Mother has the snuffles.
 
I order her to bed, but she drags on, making soup, sending out e-mails to her Flu Wardens, visiting neighbors.
 
It’s useless to tell her to slow down.
 
I get dressed, check on the
Goldmans
, and head to work.

#

Monday, October 14, 2013

Snap, crackle, pop!
 
If it weren’t so disgusting, I’d laugh.
 
In some patients oxygen leaks through their lungs and makes dime-sized air pockets beneath the skin, first on the neck, then spreading over the body.
 
When we roll the patients over to change their sheets, they crackle and pop like crushed bubble wrap.
 
One nurse calls them her Rice
Crispi
patients.

All the doctors and nurses are getting delirious.
 
Our humor reflects our exhaustion.

Like most other LA hospitals, we have now stopped accepting patients.
 
Security officers guard the doors, shoving away fists full of dollars.
 
How desperate people must be to try to bribe their way into this death mill.
 
They refuse to leave.
 
The line wraps around the block.
 
As soon as the dead are carried away, a handful more are admitted.
 
Some die in line waiting.

Today I saw Sara
Jiluwis
sitting cross legged in the hallway cradling her five-year old daughter.
 
I had been hurrying down the hallway for a new shipment of antibiotics that had just arrived downstairs, but I stopped, frozen by her gaze.
 
I had come to think of her as my enemy, the woman who corrupted my sister’s mind.
 
“Please help us,” she said, or maybe it was only the look in her dark brown eyes, wide with fear, peering out from her
hijab
.
 
She was even more beautiful in her grief.
 
I felt no rancor toward her.
 
Nor pity.
 
I wanted her to stop looking at me.
 
If I felt anything toward her, I felt annoyed—a person I couldn’t ignore without feeling enormous guilt for my unjustified hate for her.