An uptight Smile
Saint Pierre is one of the biggest,
public hospitals in the centre of Brussels. Monday today and after a quiet difficult weekend at home I had to visit it urgently for
a personal matter that has nothing to do with covid-19. There is no need to say it but as everyone else on this planet I was frighten to death to visit any doctor or any hospital at this moment. The previous weeks, all those things I had heard and I had seen in press and in my social media about
the global pandemic, had absolutely kept me away from any possible carrier of the killing virus. I didn’t know how crazy the
situation could be in le Service des
Urgences where I was hoping to see a dermatologist but what I found surprised
me a lot. It was unexpectedly quiet. A woman from Somalia and me, we were the only
visitors.
After some time waiting in a green tent that it felt as if I was in a war-zone in Middle-East and several fully covered nurses that were coming and were going by asking more or less the same questions, I was guided to a small cubical where behind a Plexiglas I could finally see a doctor. It felt strange that she kept asking me again and again if I had any symptoms of the ones I shouldn’t have. Thank God I hadn’t. But, as she finally said, “a specialist from the covid-19 department had to see me too…”
Through several, quiet dark, empty from visitors and stuff corridors, by following a red taped line on the floor, I arrived in an scary, full of beds and wheelchairs chamber where if it was possible, I wouldn’t even have to breathe. After some interviews with two different doctors where I had to repeat again the same answers, I had to wait there for some hour till we had my blood test results.
They needed to check my kidneys so they could give me the strong medication I was supposed to start.
I started exploring the place. Not far from me, behind a medical screen, a young, black woman, dizzy as I saw later, was lying on one of the beds. Some minutes later, in that nerve-racking quiet place, a nurse arrived by pushing a wheelchair with one of the major victims of this last-two-months madnees.
A nicely dressed, must probably from Uccle, old lady, enter into that already uncomfortable scene. Thin and delicate, by holding her bag and her black cane on her knees, she whispered a silent bonjour to the dizzy girl and me and with an uptight smile and some question marks above her white hair head they both disappeared behind a door where previously I had seen more doctors and more nurses…
Outside, the sun was getting warmer. Spring was already here and some doctors were having their cigarette-break. I fixed for a thousand time my mask on my face and with quick steps I exit the quiet, deserted yard.
Covid-19 days, Brussels 20th of April 2020
After some time waiting in a green tent that it felt as if I was in a war-zone in Middle-East and several fully covered nurses that were coming and were going by asking more or less the same questions, I was guided to a small cubical where behind a Plexiglas I could finally see a doctor. It felt strange that she kept asking me again and again if I had any symptoms of the ones I shouldn’t have. Thank God I hadn’t. But, as she finally said, “a specialist from the covid-19 department had to see me too…”
Through several, quiet dark, empty from visitors and stuff corridors, by following a red taped line on the floor, I arrived in an scary, full of beds and wheelchairs chamber where if it was possible, I wouldn’t even have to breathe. After some interviews with two different doctors where I had to repeat again the same answers, I had to wait there for some hour till we had my blood test results.
They needed to check my kidneys so they could give me the strong medication I was supposed to start.
I started exploring the place. Not far from me, behind a medical screen, a young, black woman, dizzy as I saw later, was lying on one of the beds. Some minutes later, in that nerve-racking quiet place, a nurse arrived by pushing a wheelchair with one of the major victims of this last-two-months madnees.
A nicely dressed, must probably from Uccle, old lady, enter into that already uncomfortable scene. Thin and delicate, by holding her bag and her black cane on her knees, she whispered a silent bonjour to the dizzy girl and me and with an uptight smile and some question marks above her white hair head they both disappeared behind a door where previously I had seen more doctors and more nurses…
Outside, the sun was getting warmer. Spring was already here and some doctors were having their cigarette-break. I fixed for a thousand time my mask on my face and with quick steps I exit the quiet, deserted yard.
Covid-19 days, Brussels 20th of April 2020
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