Oliver had Covid.
First, he said the doctor came to his apartment. Then he was moved to a
hospital. Then he was prescribed lung exercise, but his condition did not
improve; still, he messaged me when he could.
January 5, 2021
Hi, although it
is believed that the lungs cannot hurt, the back, the area of the lungs, hurt a
lot. Sometimes, I can hardly lie on my back. The temperature is kept around 38.
Only paracetamol, a faithful friend, comes to the rescue. The psychological
side also joined the physical pain. Every day I learn about friends who have
had coronavirus or died from its consequences.
During the
night, I woke up several times: it is difficult to breathe. My back hurts, and
bad thoughts come to my head. I don't have the strength to get out
of bed and comb my hair. For several days, I have been without an
appetite. I can hardly cram two spoons into myself. My
temperature in the morning is 37.3. But now it's hard to breathe. To get a full
chest of air, I need to make the effort. From time to time, I try to
catch my breath. I'm with the doctors all the time. Everything is
okay. I am under supervision. I just ask you to know that
I am with you, and I really miss you!
January 6, 2021
Oliver, I was
sarcastic when you first told me you had fever and exhaustion, as if it could
never be Covid, just the flu. Why not the flu? The flu’s still around,
right? Don’t people get the flu anymore?
Please forgive me.
I was self-protecting: I swallow sadness whole and manage expertly while it
detonates inside. We’ve only been chatting on this dating site for one month;
it is too soon for you to pull me into your life and death drama. Still, here I
am with you.
Today, I
remembered an image from years ago at an intensive care unit in Miami (I
was raised in South Florida) where I was visiting someone in the hospital.
Strange, I can’t remember who I was there to see. What I remember was the
beautiful young woman with the light blue wool suit, white silk blouse, and
sand-colored leather heels who walked into the waiting room after her young
husband, who had suffered a heart attack, was wheeled into the
unit. The waiting room was packed with people waiting for news about
their loved ones.
We tensed up like stick figures
when Code Blue blared on the speakers; still, we heard what the doctors said to
the beautiful woman: “the next few hours will determine whether your husband
lives or dies.” She never flinched at the prognosis: her straight black hair
and makeup stayed in place, her posture straight, and her brown eyes
unflinching, not even the slightest hint of a gasp, whimper, scream, or cry
that goes with getting sudden and unexpected bad news.
We stared at her
in awe: she was our hero; she would teach us how to handle whatever happened
with grace. But she didn’t notice us, neither did she care about our
expectations for her calm and composure. We each had our own tragedy to bear,
and she wasn’t shy or self-conscious about expressing her feelings either:
After the doctors walked away, she sat down in a waiting room chair and
gathered herself quickly like a flower that shuts tight its petals when there
is no more sunlight: she folded her arms, straightened and bent her upper body
forward, focused her gaze on the floor, and swung back and forth as hard and as
fast as she could.
My darling man,
every single one of my thoughts is with you….
January 10, 2021
Baby, my fever
really does not decrease. Now the doctor will come for the procedure. I hope I
will be better, and I can come here again today! Today is not really the best
day for me. I'm sorry that I'm so little with you today ...I hug you tightly! I
hope I will get better. Wait for me, okay? I kiss you, your Oliver.
January 11, 2021
Oliver, what
procedure? WHAT PROCEDURE? It’s torture waiting for days to hear from you only
to get a short, unclear message about what is happening to you. I know you’re
very sick; I know you’re doing your best to keep me updated, but my mental
health requires that you tell me everything: every symptom, every word jotted
down in your medical records, every conversation you have with every doctor and
nurse in the hospital, every drug you are prescribed, every meal you are
served… Details, details, my man, will save my sanity.
I need to know the
science of YOUR condition. Do you understand me? Science, such a popular word
nowadays, is lifesaving. Not that I have a head for it, yet I need scientific
words to pull me into brain-numbing hours of internet research/surfing. I need
to crash deeply into the rabbit hole of links and clicks about the science of
YOUR Covid. I need to be consumed by every bit of information about YOU lying
in that hospital bed so that I can find a place beside you in your
nightmare. Please try to understand me, my darling Oliver
January 14, 2021
Darling, I'm
back ...It was very painful and long this time. the number of patients just
increases every day and there are terrible queues; 2 more men will now be
accommodated in my ward. This situation is becoming more and more
serious. Are you still here? I really wanted to find you here. What
were you doing here without me? Were you here? I hope, madam, that you will
give me some of your precious time) Kisses, Oliver
January 15, 2021
I’m sorry I missed
you here. The time change makes it difficult to be here when you’re here.
Sweetie, don’t
they have ventilators in Singapore?
Have you run out? Why do doctors let you struggle to breathe? Don’t they know
the whole world is on ventilators? On the news and YouTube videos, I watch sick
people around the globe breathe on machines so that I know a ventilator can
save your life, even though I cringe at the thought of you being hooked up to
one.
Every country,
county, street, hospital waits their turn for Covid and ventilators to arrive,
as if the apocalypse happens one block, one house, one person, one ventilator
at a time. Here in America, it’s too fast and furious to process, bear, or
research, so we queue in long lines for toilet paper with the same urgency we
wait in lines to be seen by emergency room doctors.
My beautiful
Oliver, are you in a real hospital? Sometimes, it sounds like you are in
a Zen center for the holistic treatment of life-threatening Covid
symptoms with fucked-up mind-over-matter procedures and breathing exercises,
but I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
My sweet man, I am
with you in thought and spirit, all day, every day. Please write even though it
is difficult to do, even though your messages break my heart.
January 19, 2021
Hello dear, I'm
sorry I couldn't write back to you sooner. Honestly, I started coughing and
they put me on a breathing apparatus. The night was sleepless again, so I am
half asleep today. How is your day today? Did Saturday start well? I
hope that today it will not be worse for me, my sweet. Your Oliver
January 25, 2021
I left you. This
is not real. Having feelings for a Norwegian working and living in Singapore
who is sick at hospital with Covid, a man I started talking to on an online
dating site one month ago, IS NOT REAL.
These last few
days while driving up the Northern California to the Redwood National
Park, Trinidad Beach, and the ancient Sumaq Village the Yurok
Natives. I never thought of
you.
I moved to
Northern California from the Northeast three months ago; everything here is
scary, unknown, and mysterious, especially driving, with its curving roads,
high winds, falling rocks, earthquakes, tsunami warnings... All my life, I’ve
driven only on expansive 6-lane highways lit up by lights every several feet.
Driving here is such a wild experience that new drivers under 18 are not
allowed on the roads at night.
At Redwood
National Park, I drove through Bald
Hills where the lands became rolling and clear of trees, and the elk roamed,
grazed, and gazed at me as if I was alien. At the Ancient Sumaq Village, I
walked around for hours by myself and peeked in at redwood cabins that once
housed the sick, village meetings, steam houses, and families of the Yurok
Tribe. In Trinidad, I marveled at gigantic rock formations jutting
up towards the sky from the wild Pacific Ocean, rocks named Marriage
Rock, Strawberry
Rock….
My darling Oliver,
I lied to you… while on the road these last few days, I only thought of you,
even though I tried not to. YOU ARE REAL. I feel you. I especially feel your
terror, stuck in my heart like a piece of ice-cold sheet metal. I
hate that you brought Covid to my world because I thought I had outrun it by
leaving my life in the Northeast to seek a new beginning in the
West. Still, I wouldn’t trade worrying about you for nothing in the
world.
I left you these
last several days because I felt adrift on the satellite of another planet
waiting for the flashing green light on this site to indicate a new message
sent by you. I just hope you’re not alone, that doctors and staff
are meticulous with your care, and that friends and family make you feel safe
and loved. My dearest Oliver, keep fighting. You will be fine. I know it. I
continue to care deeply for you from afar.
January 26, 2021
Please tell me,
I hurt you???? Tell me, tell me please, I hurt you???? I hurt you???? I just
want you for myself; for us, happiness. I want you. You are not my fantasy. You
are my reality. You are in my head. You are in my life, on a piece of paper,
yes, for now. When I write you a letter, for me this is reality, even in this
hospital bed. I want something serious. I'm tired, I'm tired of being alone.
I'm alone. I found you in the middle of the desert. You are my Oasis. I don't
want to part with you.
January 27, 2021
PLEASE, please
forgive me. I now wait by the computer for your response. Please, Oliver,
forgive me…
January 28, 2021
Darling, I
understand you, and I forgive you. Now, eyes close. The guys in the
ward are already asleep ...Good night, my queen! The most incredible. I kiss you hard and gently cover you with my
love. I wish you a cozy, wonderful, wonderful sleep, and rest. Let the night
rush by like a fairy tale, and the morning begin with something joyful and
amazing. I adore you, my little star, your Oliver.
January 29, 2021
Oliver, thanks to
you I drank all my boxes of black tea and ate all my vegetables. Tomorrow, I’ll
start the raw honey and raw cheese. I’m trying to eat better, but stress
binge-eating fruits and vegetables is gross.
You sound
better. Are you better? I can tell by your words that you feel
better. Do you know my greatest talent is reading the nuances and
subtleties of personality in someone’s writing. My man, I know you are
ambitious, passionate, strong, boyish, brooding, manly…
Years ago, I read
about a social anthropologist out of a university in Texas who proved that
functions words such as prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, articles… tell a
lot about personality, not that I need proof to trust my feelings about you or
for you.
For fun, I ran a couple of our
emails through his online LSM (Language Style Matching)
program. Babe, we are a match. I copied our results below:
Your LSM Results
The LSM score gives us a sense of
how similarly two people are using language. It can indicate how synchronized
their use of words is.
Your LSM score is 0.88
Compared to other
online chats that we have analyzed, your LSM score is slightly above
average. To give you an idea, most LSM scores for online chats range
between .75 and .95, with an average around .84. The more that the two people
are paying attention to each other in their interaction, the higher the LSM.
My wonderful
Oliver, today you made me very happy. Please tell me how you are feeling. Are
you on your way to a full recovery? At least I can only hope you are. Yours…
February 2, 2021
Darling, when I
thought it couldn't be worse, when the pain was terrible, and when I was
delirious for a day, I returned to my thoughts that I haven’t seen you yet, I
haven’t hugged you yet, I haven’t kissed you yet, I haven’t confessed my love
to you in real life. I need to run away from this disease, from this delirium
because I still have so many wonderful things in life that I must accomplish
and experience with you!!!
February 3, 2021
Oliver, yes, yes,
we will meet. But… what happened? Did you relapse? I thought you were getting
better. Your message terrified me, so I ran out of my place to hike the redwood
forest behind my apartment. There, I prayed. I especially looked for
the sunlight that streaks the crown, trunk, roots, and mysterious and tumorous
burls that bulge from the redwoods, and I imagined catching streaks of amber
rays of light running along the reddish veins of the bark and sending them to
you in Singapore.
My darling man, do
you know I was terrified of moving out West because I’d never been, and because
I’d always heard stories about the slaughter of the buffalo and Native
Americans. I can feel the energy of a place, and it’s a blessing and a curse.
In the Northeast, I was distracted by skyscrapers, trains, planes, pursuit of
higher education, relationships, lots of people and all the drama that came
with knowing those people.
I knew that out West
there was mostly land, that only 16 percent of the population lived out that
way, and that its history was exposed for all to see and feel. I
thought I might not be able to bear or process living such truths all the time,
so I prepared for my trip by watching a documentary by my favorite filmmaker,
Ken Burns; it was beautiful, raw, heart-breaking, and it took weeks to watch
and process each episode. Still, I dreaded watching the final episode because I
couldn’t conceive of how Burns would wrap it all up and give me peace of mind,
yet it knew I must do it, even though I kept putting it off.
The night before I
left town, I sat in my empty apartment in Portland, Maine, and I watched the
last episode of “The West,” my heart beating fast and furious the entire time.
And there it was the closing, words from an American historian who gave me the courage
to follow through with my move to California:
“The real story of the American
West is a story of spirit. The challenge to live and love with a broken heart.
If you think about all the various stories of betrayal in the West, it will
break your heart. But in the stories of broken hearts there is also a healing -
a joy. And that joy and that healing come from the land itself. And
I don’t think we can forget that. That the land literally brings us back to a
reverential state of mind where we realize that the health of the land is the
health of the people. It is about the spirit, and in that spirit are
the seeds of joy…”
My dearest Oliver,
I send you all the healing and joy I can find in this pained and beautiful
land. You will get well. I know it. Yours always…
February 7, 2021
Oliver, where are
you? Why don’t you write? I’m worried sick. I’m also angry at you for not
giving me your personal information or communicating with me on your personal
email.
Maybe you’re
married; I was going to ask you about that the week before you got sick, but
then it wasn’t the right time. I don’t care about that now. Please
have someone, anyone, let me know how you are. One word, two words. I don’t
care if we never communicate again.
This morning, I
looked for airfares to Singapore. It felt right to go to you. Why not? I ran
away to New York City at 17, eloped to Biloxi at 19, adopted children in Russia
at 23 with my husband at the time. I am an American rebel with
bloodlines tied to a conquering European father (Spanish) and conquered
Caribbean Native mother (Taino). All I’ve learned from that mix is to follow my
heart, and my heart led me to you But, then I watched YouTube videos of
Singapore, and I saw police, empty streets, lockdown, essential travel
mandates, warning signs. Unlike in America, no one there would
understand my roaming search in the name of love.
And…who can I tell
about my crazy, little secret? No one! It is just me, you, and
Covid.
Please, dearest
Oliver, let me know something, anything. You must write back, please…
February 10, 2021
Still, no word… I
don’t even know what to say except I dread coming on this site to find news of
you--or no news of you. Sadness feels like a shallow, lifeless pond
in the middle of nowhere…yours…
February 12, 2021
My
dear Oliver, today I read and re-read an email you sent me a week after we
started chatting. I knew then that love had come for me, and that I must
surrender to it--and you--no matter what happened, or I would always regret
running away from it.
“My dear woman,
let me tell you something that I have not said before: Most of all, I like to
wake up early to meet the dawn; it seems that with the rays of the sun, I am
the first in line to absorb all my strength. My great dream is to go
to Alaska to
swim with whales. I love to buy groceries in supermarkets; I
remember that as a child my parents did not have money, so we bought only the
essentials, but now that I have money, I go to the supermarket like a small
child, and I buy everything.
When I cook, I
always turn on Queen and sing like a guitarist. Before getting on
planes, I pray. In my wallet, in my little pocket, I have a photo of my mother
when she was 20 years old. I can't eat raw fish in sushi. When I meditate and
need to imagine a place where I am happy, it is always by the
ocean. Well, my most cherished desire is that everything that
happens to me is closely connected in this life with you and only with you
!!!!!Your Oliver.”
February 12, 2021
Oliver, you are
ordered to come back to me to tell me that your lungs are fine and that you
left the hospital. You are ordered to wish me sweet dreams every night. If
something happened to you, I would know it. I would feel it, like Lara in Dr.
Zhivago: she knew when something happened to him, she walked into the place
where he was at even after years of separation. I HATE THIS COMPUTER, this
website, because I am stuck in a place where I can’t hold your hand, or sit by
your side, or ask minute-by-minute news of your health. It makes me want to
SCREAM. But this is not about me, so I am going to stay calm and refuse to cry
or pray for you anymore because you are fine, and you are ordered to come back
to me NOW, my sweet, sweet Oliver…
February 13, 2021
My darling man, I
know you are receiving my messages. I know you are reading them even though you
are not able to respond, so I will continue to write until you answer me.
Like I said
before, I’ve been living in California for three months; I moved here a year
into the pandemic because I got sick of Mainers giving me cold stares while
quietly measuring the distance in steps between us, even though the distance
between us could never be enough. During that time, I decided to
live harder and faster than I ever did before the pandemic because I wasn’t
waiting in my apartment for Covid to come for me. So, I blew my
savings and lived wild and free, even while wearing a mask. Everywhere
businesses and shopkeepers took my money because they needed it.
I hiked Sawyer and
Bradbury Mountains, and I went on a moose safari and boat trip in the North
Woods. I took a bus to Boston to visit my favorite museum, The Isabella Gardner
Museum. Then I took a plane to Miami to visit my grown children, and a plane to
Eureka, CA, to find a new apartment. On my way to California, I took a road
trip out West and visited the museums of gun slingers and bank robbers. The
world was empty, but there were quite a few straddlers out there, just like me.
Oliver, sweet
dreams, please come back to me soon. Please…...
February, 14, 2021
I wish you a Happy
Valentines Day, my darling man.
Now, more about my
trip out West: Everywhere, Covid was experienced differently: In
West Virginia, they put up Christmas decorations in October; and in Missouri, they
put up signs on storefront windows that said, “Where a mask if you want to.” In
Kansas, the guide at the Dalton Gang Museum showed me the tunneled
basement where the gang hid from the police. He told me stories of directing
plays on open prairies where dinner was served from a chuck wagon, even though
he confessed that his acting troupe wasn’t as good as the one in Dodge
City. A cast member had recently caught Covid, and they were proceeding
carefully with future plays. In Platt, Kansas, I saw billions
of stars at midnight, and I saluted the conductor of lone cargo train painted
in bright red, yellow, and orange that slowly crossed open land as it was
traveling through portals of time. In Kentucky, they talked about God, guns,
politics, and they played banjo on the radio; and in Indian, they talked about
God, too, but they preferred playing classical music to talk radio.
Thinking only of you, my Darling
Oliver
February 15, 2021
Dearest Oliver,
In Oklahoma, I saw endless
landlocked prairies with windowless farms as if their apocalypse happened long
ago; and in New
Mexico, I shared a piece of fudge with a shopkeeper at a chocolate shop
while listening to eulogies on the radio to those who had lost their lives to
Covid the week before. In Taos,
I was ashamed of my indifference to the pandemic and its toll, so I left town
early even though I intended to stay 3 days.
In Arizona, they
hung out in large numbers in Sedona and
treated themselves to half-off massage, tarot readings, and guided hikes in
the Red
Rocks. In California, they said, “Good morning,” “Good night,” and “Have a
wonderful day,” while social-distancing and wearing masks. I was home.
As always, babe, I
wait for your response…
March 11, 2021
Dearest Oliver,
“It must be in you to do three
things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
Read my exciting memoir, " of Ruby," available at: https://www.amazon.com/Continent-Ruby-Memoir-Because-sometimes-ebook/dp/B00TT5DDWO?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
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