The patient

The ambulance siren was wailing louder and closer, hitting my eardrums with no empathy. Every time it reverberated, my heart was imprinted with a cut that ached slightly. A series of the squeaky trolley beds rattling around the hospital corridor, followed by fierce shouting and foot stepping of the doctors and nurses one after another. Not a single sound was made in the room, as if the air was frozen. However, any obvious breath in and out, any sighs were able to catch my attention and made my eyes to pick up on. The same thought must had been sharing in everyone's head: there came another patient with Covid-19 who needed to be hospitalized. As the morning passed, I lost all awareness of time, like strands of sands slipping quietly from my gripped hands. Under the rubber gloves, every pore was widely opened and receiving collisions with stuffy air particles. Soreness occurred in my neck as I looked up at the clock due to the long-time posture of looking down. As a surge of anxiety filled my nose, accompanied by the stimulation of bleach and alcohol that oozed from the disinfectants, I scanned the hospital room again. Warm light gave a yellow tone to the isolated walls and made them seem less stark. Similarly, patients' pale faces also got some vigorous looks, although many of them were at a loss as to how to lift up their spirits. Busy equipment placed onto the walls reduced the emptiness and the hospital curtains 'sealed off' patients from another, in order to provide them with a private space within the crowd. 

Everything beyond the doctors was repelling me away unless the doctors gave me more tasks to be completed. As a nursing assistant who just graduated from university, I knew I had to lend a hand at this most urgent moment and once the decision was made, I made sure to plant my feet firmly on the bedrock of persistence. Despite that, it was never a safe bet to be at the frontline of this soundless war as I was the closest and the most vulnerable to the virus, so any careless action would make me become one of the patients in this room.

An aged man was lying on a clean white bed in a stiff position. Skinny arms stuck out of the long loose hospital grown, which also draped his body distinctly to the fact that he suffered from malnutrition. His compromised lungs have been failing to function by the invasion of the covid-19 for about a month, whilst for him, every second mercilessly lasted as long as a day. The light illuminated the sorrowful on his weather-beaten face, yet I saw there was a flicker of hope in him when our eyes met. Those deep-set eyes, which were in low spirits and darkened like an endless abyss, were peacefully blinking at a very low frequency. With the help of a ventilator, supplemental oxygen was able to get into his lungs, which acted like a rope reaching towards the abyss. It was not hard to picture when he described his swelling lungs were drowning with fluids. As soon as the virus entered into the body, it invaded the upside-down tree liked respiratory tract and damaged its branches ruthlessly. Amazed by the swift speed that the virus spread like a domino chain reaction, I already felt a mountain of pressure pressing onto my chest, heavy enough for me to perceive the shortness of breath. Then, a sensation of tightening knot was formed in the centre of my chest.

As the energy was seeping away little by little, his mind buzzed between in unconsciousness and staying awake. His frizzy, tangled grey hair, which hadn't been trimmed for a long period of time, looked like a clotted mass of wool. I was signalled by the colour of his lips, which has changed significantly from the other day, a bleak blue, the sign of severe case. Persistent pain weakened his perseverance while his shrivelled body had endured too much burden which his age could not bear. A winkled line down the centre of his forehead where he had set his face against the stress, could be seen that he was never bowled over by the virus. It felt like jet lag every day for him, with him shuffling in and out of consciousness, however, the harsh pain alerted him to the fact that he was alive.

Feeling his pain and anguish, but knowing it wasn't real for me. The doctor came in with a downcast look, his thick prominent brows frowned in an alarm. For a second, my insides trembled and wished this look did not imply the same as what I thought. I went immediately crestfallen and tried to hold my emotion to not to burst out. An instant sense of coldness touched the tip of my fingers but quickly, more sweats replaced the numbness of my palms under the steamy gloves. In a seemingly self-contradictory way, the more determined I was trying not to look at his direction, the stronger the force that kept me to mark on him. Unwittingly, a glance was made. The light that was reflected from his face glared out of the surrounding, stirred me to cause an impetuous flow of melancholy streaming through my body.