Waiting
This year I waited:
To see if we would make it on our vacation before the pandemic swept away our plans.
To see how hard it would hit the US.
To see how quickly it moved from California to Delaware.
With bated breath for my first COVID patient.
For someone to come watch me enter and exit my isolation rooms to ensure I didn’t contaminate anything on my way out.
To see if my patient would get emergency (last resort) approval for medications that may or may not help.
To see if any of the medications worked.
To see if my patients woke up after I put them in an induced coma.
To see if their lungs could work again if they did wake up.
For family meetings, where we explained nothing was getting better.
And watched my patients slowly, painfully decline over weeks, while I got to know them, their hobbies, and the families they would be leaving behind.
With forced optimism, letting people have ‘a good day.’
In silence, crying with them, alone in the room, when I tell them things are getting worse and that’s not a good sign.
To see if it was inevitable whether or not I got infected and passed it along to Wayne.
And wondered if any of my coworkers would die.
And wondered if I would have enough PPE.
To find out if my mother’s cancer was metastatic. To see if the surgeon was able to remove everything.
And cried as patient after patient died.
Inside my silent isolation rooms with unconscious, intubated patients, for someone to carefully pass more medications in to me.
For the discharge of the successful recoveries.
For regular patients to come back, sicker than before.
With an iPad in one hand for family members unable to visit, cheering good days and sobbing as they say goodbye.
For the sun to shine.
For short vacations outside and good clean air.
To see my family.
For months as we attempted to recoup our vacation costs.
For any sense of common sense prevailing.
And held my tongue, instead of arguing about different perspectives on the pandemic.
To see if people would follow basic rules.
For election results.
For new medications and vaccines.
For the next wave.
For this to all be over.
This Christmas, I am waiting to feel a thrill of hope, because I am part of the weary world trying to rejoice. I am waiting for the new and glorious morn. Come again, Lord Jesus.