Night and Day

31 Jan Night and Day

The other night I woke feeling agitated. This happens sometimes. A jolt into wakefulness, feeling too alert to drop back to sleep. I lie in bed wishing I could switch off. The more I wish, the less likely I’ll succeed. Sometimes it happens at that moment when I’m on the edge of sleep. Just before I slip over, a thought strays out of my subconscious and hauls me back. My mind starts racing and all my senses switch into alert mode. My heart speeds up. I sense its beat, hear the sounds of my blood moving through my arteries and veins, the occasional glug or rumble of air or digestion somewhere nudging between organs parked nose to tail under my ribs and in my belly, the draught and shudder as I take in a breath, the rattle in my lungs that’s always there but, thankfully, often quieter at night especially if I lie on my side, the strange shift in bodily pressure like a rush of adrenaline that flutters or shivers down my upper arms.

Sometimes it amazes me that I get to sleep at all!

In my head, a thread reaches out of a corner that’s out of sight during the day and spools across my mind. I run through a series of questions. Is that a slight unease I feel in my throat? Was that last cough just one of my normal ones or was it different? Drier? Persistent? Is that a headache starting? Am I a little warmer than usual? This unbidden diagnostic scan is accompanied by sharp, repetitive urgings uttered silently under my quickened breath. Please don’t let it be, please. This doesn’t happen every night. Far from it. Not even that frequently. But it seems to be lying in wait in a part of my mind that must be constantly watchful. The watchfulness is there during the day as well but if the demons are going to come out to play then they will do so at night.

Empirically, this fear, which is what I suppose it is, is bonkers. I’ve been very, very careful. I’ve been nowhere. Walks in the park or work on the allotment the limit of my extramural activities, alone or with one other person suitably distanced. Still washing the grocery delivery when it arrives. Still washing hands and wearing gloves for countless things I’d never have needed them for before. And, on top of all that, I’m not given to panic. Or rather, I haven’t been. Though perhaps there has always been more anxiety than I would ever acknowledge beneath the apparently calm face I show to the world. COVID has exposed me, pointed a finger at my vulnerabilities, muttered at me – Memento mori.

The deaths. The message repeated daily below the lethal numbers, ‘within 28 days of a positive COVID test’, the quotient of time from testing to dying. The month of February and it’s done, start to finish. It’s not that when I watch the news once a day and keep in touch with the tally that I feel something tugging to tell me I could be one of their number. The fact is that’s true for all of us. But it’s not that direct. I watch and register the tally because it feels important to admit its truth, or at least its reality, because I want to make myself think of the individual lives that make up the terrible totals. I don’t want to become numbed by the statistics, though they are numbingly bleak. Half of my brain admits the risk I could be one of them one day; the other half is quietly convinced I’ll be OK. These two seem to be the protagonists that fight it out in me at night-time.

Happily, brighter lights twinkle on the horizon of day-time. Especially the last few days. Summoned at the very precise time of 9.51 am on Wednesday morning, I had my vaccination. A small queue had formed outside the little building in front of the GP practice. Some socially-distanced chairs on the forecourt though nobody was bothering to sit down. We were all standing, shifting our body weight from one leg to the other, making conversation, being thankful it wasn’t raining but, yes, it’s been bitterly cold, trying to keep ourselves calm, I suppose. One woman, true to the great British queuing tradition, took it upon herself to check up with everyone who arrived what time they’d been allocated and made sure they went ahead of her. She’d arrived very, very early.  I wondered if she’d been there all night.

In one door, sit down, check name and date of birth. “Please relax your shoulders”, said the nurse as I peeled my sweater down over my left shoulder and discovered my left earlobe resting on it! Never realised till then how tense I was feeling. Why? With anticipation, I suppose. It took about three seconds for the tiny amount of liquid to plunge through the needle into my upper arm. Out the other door and it’s over. I so wanted to feel the earth move but it was a strange anti-climax. Others have said this too and I wonder what it’s about. Is it something about the absurdity of contrasting time spans – the eleven months of lockdown and the three seconds of vaccine delivery? Shorter than a single breath. Maybe it stretches our credulity to believe it can be the answer after all these months, all the changes to our lives, all the deaths. And yes, I know it’s not the end of the road and only a start, that I still can’t hug the people I want to hug, at least not for a few more months. So, was it the caveats that made it feel like an anti-climax, the sense that it was something but it wasn’t quite the way out of the woods?

But at least it’s the right path. And it is a bit of magic. As I walked home, my step became lighter and I imagined the inside of my body as a scene of feverish activity as the troops (and they are troops – they have little helmets and body armour) of my immune system suddenly fall into line and start rushing around purposefully to do this new task. And I thought of the skill and vision of the scientists who worked out how to engineer something that could, in just three seconds, set me up to wrestle a killer virus to the ground, dust my hands clean, walk away, leaving me free to yield to some different night-time terrors. Let’s think… did I put loo roll on that last order? … have I put the bins out? … did I press send on that email? …. did I forget Brenda’s birthday? … who is Brenda anyway?