HUMANS OF THE CORONAVERSE

Well, you have the symptoms. The reports should be back till Wednesday. Till then, I advise, you take proper rest, drink ample amounts of water and citrus juices and isolate yourself from your family members, in case the test comes positive." Dr Rita said in a humble tone for the hundredth time in a day. She seemed to have remembered the lines thoroughly, like an advertisement which you get to hear when calling up someone through a telephone. She recited the lines repeatedly in a calm and cool voice to not stress out her patients more than they already were.

"Thank you, doctor." The patient said and exited the cabin closing the door behind her as it made a squeaking noise and closed with a light thud. 

Rita sighed. It was her last day of her two weeks shift in the Covid-19 department, after which she would have to go in a two weeks quarantine at her home to ensure that she had not been exposed to the virus. It was an absolute torment for her to wear the P.P.E Kit and attend her patients all day long. 

Dr Rita Oberoi was a young doctor of mere 28 years of age with dark brown hair and sharp features. Coming from a family full of renowned lawyers, she considered herself a rebel. Albeit, she was a talented woman and having completed her post-graduation from a prestigious university in Delhi, she started practicing beside her senior in a private hospital, in Mumbai. The outbreak of a virus such as the Covid-19 was only imaginable in an apocalyptic movie and the utter chaos following it in the medical field, was ineffable.

"Buzz", she rang the bell to call her assistant Jakob.

"Yes ma'am?", the young assistant with curly brown hair and black rimmed glasses perched lightly on his nose said nervously, for he was new on the job.

"Please ready the files and reports of the admitted patients, I will go on rounds in ten, I expect you to accompany me." Jakob just nodded and went off hurriedly to go ahead with his assigned work.

Rita pushed open the door to sterilization chamber, a strong gush of the high pressure wind curtain followed by the UV chamber into a jet spray of concentrated disinfectant, she took off her P.P.E. suit halfway down her waist and switched on the tap. The cool water splashing on her face soothed her nerves, and cleaned her face off the sweat and heat, not to forget the mental torture all doctors go through while wearing that utterly vile suit. The only good thing about it, was that it was the only barrier between the carrier of the virus and the person susceptible to it.

Rita inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of hospital disinfectants and pure ethanol not so pleasant as the commercially available strawberry scented ones, her now favourite smell and looked at herself on the mirror. Dark rings circled her eyes due to the sleepless months spent in the hospital, a set of haggard cheeks instead of her usual plump ones and her neck a belt of rashes. She scoffed at her appearance on the mirror, "A small price for a bigger output."

Quickly wearing the suit, gloves, mask and the transparent cap with her name labelled on it so her colleagues could easily recognise her, she hastily makes her way out of her cabin and caught up with Jakob outside. 

Jakob considered Dr Rita a real mentor and was extremely fascinated with her intelligence and success which she had achieved at such a young age. 

Entering the isolation ward, Rita made her way towards the oldest patient of them all. His name was Ajeet, aged 89. 

"Hello Ajeet, how are you feeling?" Rita said, to a sunken, skeleton like body lying motionless on the hospital bed. He didn't respond, the rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitors the only proof of his life.

He had arrived at the hospital with the help of an NGO a week ago. It was a miracle that he was still alive considering his age and immune system.

Jakob thought that it was another one of Dr Rita's miracle's, that she took such great care of her patients.

It was dangerous for doctors to attach themselves emotionally to their patients and yet work professionally, but in this time of deep crisis, everyone tried to be humble and loving. The patients being quarantined in the isolation wards had little to no contact with their families and it was important for the staff to work this way to maintain a healthy interaction with the diseased and not create a situation of paranoia.

Snapping out of his thoughts he heard the vile sound of the heart rate monitor beeping frantically, "Beep, beep, beep, beep..."

"I need immediate assistance on ward IS89, we are losing his pulse!" Dr Rita said on her walkie-talkie and started tapping some buttons on the oxygen monitor. 

Immediately two more doctors entered the ward.

"We need to turn him over, his oxygen levels are deteriorating." Rita commanded.

All four of them ever so carefully held Ajeet's body and turned him over. It was a simple technique of increasing the blood supply to a person's body but a difficult task to be implemented when the person is attached to a ventilator.

"We're having multiple organ failure!”, the first doctor shot.

"He's going into septic shock. Pass me that syringe right away! Rita shouted as she started injecting certain sedatives on his body, but to no avail. Without a vaccine it was only a matter of the person's immune system, whether he or she can survive through or not.

The deafening sound of the flat line froze everyone in the room. 

They lost him. No matter how many times Rita did this, she couldn't help the feeling of deep anxiety taking over her mind. The fact that someone's life was in her hands and that she couldn't do just enough to save them congested her mind with a fathomless pit of emotions.

However, she could not let this obstruct her train of reasonable thoughts and tried to spring back into action.

"Call in the Clinical Autopsy team and get hold of the man's family.", she instructed Jakob and went off to the main station of the floor.

"Hey, I need a new kit." She told her colleague sitting on the counter.

"Just sign here, I will get you one."

Cautiously signing her signature on the digital monitor Rita quickly sanitized her hand and the pen with a wipe.

Sanitizing her way through the doors of the lobby and passing through a UV chamber and high pressure wind curtain, she entered the doctor's lounge, quickly changing into her new garments and disposing off the old ones throwing it on her way again to the sterilized chamber after which she went off to attend her patients.

A man dragging a covered trolley took out the red coloured garbage bag which read Biohazard, out of the red coloured bin where Rita had previously disposed her garments and exchanged it with a new one. 

Pushing the trolley through several levels of the hospital, he parked the trolley in front of a large garbage truck and threw the red garbage bags behind it. 

Banging the side of the truck twice, he said, "All done! Move it." The driver started the ignition and drew off, to dump the garbage in the dumping land. 

A rusty board stood outside the gates of the dumping grounds with the letters - 'Municipal Corporation Dumping Grounds' - painted lightly on it, which may not even be visible to some, but the rotten smell of discarded food, plastics, metals and other such scraps completed the job of keeping people away from that land. 

The man stopped the truck and pulled the lever which opened the back of the truck and out came a river of hazardous materials, uncountable surgical masks tainted with sputum and saliva, crumbled and shredded plastic gloves to ensure there is no recycling, PPE suits soaked in strong bleach disposed from hospitals all over the city of Mumbai.

After emptying the truck, he reversed the vehicle and met with his fellow sanitary worker, Mukesh wearing an N95 mask loosely holding on behind his ear with an unsolicited knot, which probably had undergone multiple washes, an exorbitant and equally must have in this pandemic. 

"Hey bro, Mukesh how are you?" He shouted.

"Oh hey! Just finishing off today's work.", he replied.

"I hope no one in your family caught the Corona disease. It shut my neighbour lady yesterday, nevertheless she was a bit of a nuisance in the area anyway" The man shot back.

"Lord Shiva's blessings, all of them are well and good for now. I am in a bit of a hurry I will talk to you later.”, saying this he rode off in his cart, carrying his meagre belongings to collect his wage for the day.

Mukesh was 29 years old and had a family consisting of 6 people, his wife, three children and his mother. As a sanitation worker he was doing his bit for the society, but the real motivation was feeding six stomachs, which was bare minimum after his basic salary had undergone 50% deduction.

Making his way through the lanes of his slum, Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums located in Mumbai, he smoothly drove his cart despite it being narrow and slippery due to the overflowing open drains plus the sudden pouring of the rain.

"Sunita get me some water fast! I need to wash off my hands." He shouted over the threshold of his makeshift hut, with tobacco tainted red brick walls enclosing a small room with large posters and bamboo sticks for a roof, weighed down by tires and broken bricks. A scatter of unmatched utensils covering a quarter of the room which was supposedly a kitchen. His mother sitting on the corner peeling pea's and his children playing with plastic bottles and cardboard boxes.

"Coming!" Her wife shouted, immediately running to the kitchen and grabbing a half-melted bar of Dettol soap with the old ones stuck tightly to them, and a mug full of water from the bucket.

"Thank you." Mukesh replied and washed off his hands and legs exactly the way he had seen in the Dettol soap advertisement, promising to kill 99.9% germs including the sinister novel virus.

As soon as he did that his children came over to him and hugged him, shouting, "Papa is here!"

"You naughty children! Let your father enter at least, my poor son must be hungry, Sunita serve him dinner." Mukesh's mother said angrily to his children.

"Yeah my little kids, now let's go eat, I'm starving." 

As they all sat together and started eating pulses and rice with half a piece of onion and green chilli.

Meanwhile on the opposite end of the city, Dr Rita finally entered the safe confines of her luxurious loft on the 26th floor flooding the room with fresh air currents from the Arabian Sea. Entering her bedroom, she immediately stepped in to the hot shower to sooth her sore muscles and clean off the sweat and dirt off her body.

After blow drying her hair to prevent catching a cold, she sanitized her hands yet again and started preparing dinner for herself.

She cut some vegetables and meat and added them to the boiling water to prepare a nutritious broth. Preparing the dressing on the side for her salad she was disturbed by the ringing of her phone.

"Hello?"

"Dr Rita? This is Nisha from Mt. Sinai Hospital." Nisha was the receptionist at the hospital Dr Rita worked in.

"Oh hey, Nisha. Is there an emergency?"

"No, nothing of that sorts. We received a mail from Daily Mumbai media channel. They are requesting for an interview and Dr Rajeev is out for other businesses. He cannot take it up. It would be great if you took it up for him." 

"Oh yeah, sure. I'll take it up.", Rita replied instantly.

"I'll email you the details, they gave you the questions for a head start. The interview is day after tomorrow." Nisha said on the receiver of the landline while forwarding the details on Rita's email.

"Okay, sure. Thank you." saying this Rita ended the call.

Grabbing her MacBook from her desk she tucked herself in her blankets. Opening the email labelled Daily Mumbai and went through its contents.

"Statistics of the deceased patients and the numbers recovered.”, she read the first question aloud.

"We have 203 cases in our hospital till now and 56 recoveries. Deceased rate fairly low." Reminiscing Ajeet’s trembling body, she snapped out of her thoughts. 

Rita skipped to the next one, "The progress of the vaccine, hmm, latest information says the Russians are on it after the third phase of Human trails performed at the Oxford University"

"A piece of thanksgiving to those who are providing their service and a message to the masses...." Just then another work call cut her train of thoughts and she got occupied with the call all night.

On the day of the interview, Rita was jumping with excitement. She couldn't sleep properly all night because of the delirium pumping through her veins. 

As for her last question she thought about it a lot. Delivering a nice message of staying safe and how to thank all the doctors and police staff for contributing to the society by serving the people day and night. By risking their lives and helping the people. She didn't want to forget any points, so she noted all of them down on a paper tucking it safely in her binder.

The traffic in Mumbai was infuriating and the vehicles moved at a turtle pace as Rita made her way to the studio of the media channel. She increased the volume of the radio and looked out her window to the service lane.

A man wearing torn gloves and a stained white N95 mask was separating the rubbish in his cart. He was Mukesh but Rita didn't know her, neither did he. They were two strangers who lived in the same world, the same country, the same city, doing their bit towards the society during this global crisis.

She saw the owner of the house scrunching his nose while giving away the garbage bag as he scolded Mukesh for not coming the day before.

Something clicked inside Rita at that moment, and she dimmed the radio for the rest of the drive. Reaching the studio, she saw the shiny board outside with the big letters - Daily Mumbai - labelled in red.  She went to the reception and said, "Hello I'm here for the doctor's interview. Dr Rita Oberoi."

"Yes ma'am, please follow me.", Rita was led to a backstage touch-up room filled with some make up equipment and clothes. The host of the show was dressed in a professional dark blue jacket and office pants.

"Hello I'm Soumya. Let's head to the studio."

Rita gave a curt nod and followed her to the main stage remembering to carry her notes from the binder. Several lights were aimed at the two chairs placed on the centre with several camera's aimed at different angles. A large screen placed at the back showed the camera which shot an angle where Rita could see her face. 

It was exciting but Rita was nevertheless quite nervous.

"Alright we're going live in three, two, one and start." The head director shouted.

"Good morning Mumbai. Every week we bring to you an expert through this talk show. For today's talk we have a renowned professional in the medical field, Dr Rita Oberoi who is working in the front lines for treating Covid-19 patients at the Mt. Sinai Hospital in Mumbai. Doctor tell us something about yourself."

The first set of questions went off smoothly quoting the statistics and the progress of the vaccine development. Rita answered them all confidently.

"Our last question for today, being a humanist yourself who has been helping so many people, you all are really the true heroes on this day and we thank you whole heartedly. But being one, who might you want to thank, the heroes of today's world. Whom do you consider, deserve the appreciation for their service?"

Rita looked down at the small paper she was holding in her hands, until yesterday her perspective about certain things was different but it changed drastically after what she saw on her way to the studio.

Smiling lightly, she crunched up the paper in her hands and tucked them inside the pocket of her jacket and looked up straight on the camera.

"In today's world we just notice the big things. Size is what matters the most, big job, big car, big houses, big fame. What we fail to consider is the fact that every drop fills the ocean. Every piece of wood or brick makes a house. Every screw and nail fitted in a car makes it a brand-new piece of luxury. And even the smallest contribution made by people, completes the society. I realized this bit of information quite recently. And I'd like all of you to consider it too. Start showing respect to the smallest of creatures thriving in this planet. Stop all the hatred in this world. Start spreading love, help each other, it is, what makes us, humans."

There was an absolute silence in the studio for about 5 seconds, after which all of them erupted in a huge round of applause.