16. Point of View – Lizzie Presser
I try to draw out their experiences in hospital wards, and the accompanying layers of emotion—their first reactions to rapidly-unfolding events in the hospital, and how their feelings, actions, expectations evolve in the minutes and hours and days and weeks after.
As a journalist covering Covid-19, I’m spending my days talking with nurses and doctors and other healthcare workers. Sometimes, I email them a short prompt: What do you want the world to know today? What moments stuck with you from the hospital? And in return, I often receive what feels like their own journal entries—ruminations on what they’ve witnessed, what they haven’t yet processed, what they wish they had the power to change, the pain they want the public to see and understand.
Sometimes, I call them and encourage them to air what’s on their mind. Often, they’re driving to or from work and I transcribe as they speak. I try to draw out their experiences in hospital wards, and the accompanying layers of emotion—their first reactions to rapidly-unfolding events in the hospital, and how their feelings, actions, expectations evolve in the minutes and hours and days and weeks after. – Lizzie Presser
Prompt:
Call someone you haven’t spoken to in some time. Ask what their days and weeks of isolation, or essential work, have been like. What is a moment that has been significant for them in recent weeks? Try to understand why that moment in particular. What did it show them about themselves or their families or their coworkers? How did an emotion—a first gut response, like anger—evolve and reveal itself to be something else altogether, like fear?
Then, write a journal entry inspired by that conversation. Explore what stepping out of your own experience and into someone else’s brought up, maybe even clarified, for you. What was unexpected? Did it evoke a significant moment from your own life over these past weeks? How has your understanding of that moment changed?
Lori Tucker-Sullivan
Location: Detroit, MI
About: I am a writer living in Detroit. I'm currently working on a book about the widows of rock stars who died young and what they have taught me about grief. Forthcoming from BMG Books, spring 2021. The inspiration for this entry was a new friendship begun just before lockdown and thinking about how new relationships will be impacted by COVID.
Age: 56
I already had a call scheduled when this prompt came about, so this post is a bit of a cheat, but not much.
I felt the smile come to my face as soon as I saw S’s number on my phone this morning. We met on New Year’s Eve at a party given by mutual friends. Our conversation was amiable, and we had much in common. We shared that awkward feeling that sets in sometime around 11:50, knowing that everyone else was coupled off and we’d be left standing in the background, watching the young people in Times Square kissing like they have their whole lives ahead of them, because they do. We hugged as two strangers on New Year’s Eve should, before ducking out just after the ball dropped. I walked to my apartment across the hall; he got on the elevator, waving as the doors closed.
As we both had lots of travel—him for his job, me for research on a book, we saw each other just three times in January and February. The last was bookstore hopping just before everything hit the fan and we were suddenly home bound. A few days into sheltering in place, he called. We spent two hours sharing more than we probably should have at that point in our relationship. We talked about marriages ended and what it was like for me to lose my husband. I hung up and thought about how intriguing or dangerous it can be to get to know someone during end times.
Today’s call was a check-in. I’d had a rough weekend with the sudden loss of a friend in an accident and frustrations with people in my state who think that shelter in place precautions to ward off death are somehow tyrannical. I mentioned in a text last night that things felt sad and off. We scheduled a call for this morning. Our talks, today included, are easy and comfortable. I curl up in a chair and allow myself to feel like a teenager again, getting a call from my current crush, talking quietly so my parents can’t hear. But we talk as adults—comforting each other as we worry about our kids, daring to say what stresses us most, dreaming of what we’ll do when this is over.
S was recently furloughed from his job and has started to feel adrift. He’s also an artist—a painter, and our conversation always makes its way to what we are both working on. He easily sees himself as an artist and I struggle to call myself a writer, despite several publications and a book deal. It’s in my head, he tells me. I decide to believe him. This morning we talk about a painting of his I would like to purchase. When this is over and he can get into his studio (currently padlocked by state order) he’ll bring it to my apartment. Maybe he’ll bring a hammer and nails (even though I have my own tools). We’ll find the perfect spot and he’ll help me hang it. Then we’ll go get dinner al fresco at the Italian place around the corner. It will be warm and sunny. I let myself picture us sharing a bottle of wine.
It is brave of us, I think, to reach out and talk openly during these times when either of us could be sad or temperamental. But it could also be risky. I wonder what it will mean for a relationship, if that’s what we’re building. What will it be like for us once we’re back to work and interacting with others, not feeling so vulnerable or yearning so much for human interaction? It will be our first test, I suppose. Laying my phone on the nightstand this morning, I decide that I hope we pass.