Joanne Gruber is a writer and editor living in Coconut Creek, Fla.
In my recurring nightmare, I’m in bed in a hospital corridor in Fort Lauderdale. The corridor is so wide that beds can fit side by side in it, and so long that the beds stretch as far as I can see in both directions. Of course, my vision is obscured somewhat by my oxygen mask. I’m breathing through a tube attached to a ventilator that I’m sharing with a strapping young man whose lifelong tan can still be detected beneath his current pallor; he looks as though he’s never been sick a day in his life till now. I feel woozy but not too bad, actually. In fact, I’m pretty confident I can lick this thing. Problem is, there’s a huddle of doctors, nurses — who can say what they are, they’re in those jerry-built hazmat suits — only a half dozen bed-pairs away from us. From the way they’re looking down at the patients and whispering to one another, it’s clear they’re deciding which of us to take off the ventilators so someone more deserving can be intubated.
With each passing day, there are more and more headlines along the lines of “The Hardest Questions Doctors May Face: Who Will be Saved? Who Won’t?” And since South Florida, where I am still amazed to find myself, is full of both the very young and the very old, I have no doubt that this scene currently only in my imagination may one day be all too real.
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
True, I don’t have covid-19. But I’m a New Yorker, so it’s in my nature to, sure, sure, hope for the best but, c’mon, expect the worst. Thus, there’s no time to waste: I’ve got to figure out now, while I still have a non-feverish brain and full lung capacity, how I’m going to plead my case despite being, as I only found out about a month ago, elderly. (I always thought I had another 15, 20 years before I’d earn that qualifier. Then again, in Florida a news report about a grandmother driving into a canal and drowning can be expected to mention at some point that the woman was 45.)
I wouldn’t get far by arguing that I’m responsible for my nonagenarian mother’s care (the reason I’m here) — she’s disposable, er, expendable, too. And I’m pretty sure the doctors wouldn’t be impressed by the fact that my cat won’t even touch his food until I walk through the door. I have no significant other and no kids … I can feel the nurses unhooking the ventilator as I write. So what makes me worth keeping around?
That I was an editor at Spy magazine? Too long ago, and, anyway, it wasn’t on Florida newsstands. That I knew the secret to getting into Studio (and knew enough to say “Studio” instead of “Studio 54”), and that when someone introduced me to Arthur Miller, I could have sworn he gave me an appreciative once-over? No use inviting unfavorable comparisons to the present. That I was the breaststroke champion at the Knickerbocker Yacht Club in the 1970s? Ditto.
Or that I type really quickly, know shorthand and can say at least a couple of sentences in a dozen languages, including Farsi and Bahasa Indonesian? That I won several “volunteer of the year” awards in Manhattan in the ’90s, I read to schoolkids down here and am a whiz at nonprofit fundraising? That I once sent a police officer in pursuit of a kid who looked about 5 years old, had just exited Central Park and was disappearing into a Fifth Avenue crowd and, as it turned out I had correctly surmised, was playing a fun trick on Mommy? That without visibly moving a muscle, I can produce an audible crackling sound in my ears to the beat of, say, “Winchester Cathedral”?
I should have gone to medical or nursing school. Or stayed in law school. Or stayed in art school. As it is, what do I have to offer that would move me from one column to the other?
I picture the medical team reaching my bed, removing my ventilator tube and then wheeling the bed down the hall, toward a darkened door with no name or number on it. This is it, I think to myself. Away you go.
I’ve got it! Somehow I summon the strength to reach out with both of my arms and grab hold of the doorway, stopping my bed halfway through, as I cry out, “Wait! I’m a good friend of Dave Barry’s!”
I’m not, of course. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I’m a long way from home.
Read more:
’10 days later, he was gone:’ Readers share their personal stories about covid-19
Megan McArdle: This is the scary part. But Americans will get through this.
Kim McMahon: The upside to all this downtime
Laura Venderkam: We have a lot more time now. So why can’t we get anything done?
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