The Iliad is Love

Warrior. Colored Pencil by Colleen Smith

When I stepped into the waiting room of the emergency department, the hot press of people looked up at me expectantly. Was it their turn? Who would I call? “Maria?” I looked around. Seeing several people begin to walk forward or stand, I quickly added a last name. One woman stepped forward. “How is he?” she asked. I could sense as much as see a room of eyebrows knitting, lips pursing, eyes glowering. Nearly everyone had been waiting longer than this Maria. But in the emergency department, being seen quickly doesn’t bode well.

I looked around for a place to sit, but there was none —standing room only here. I couldn’t bring her inside. A silly rule, given the cramped waiting room full of sick, hacking people. And I didn’t want to venture farther outside — it would mean stripping my Tyvek suit, face shield, and mask. How crass, but this was the third or fourth such conversation of the day. Donning and doffing was a slog. Plus, there was no guarantee I could find replacement protective gear. It’s not like I could ever shake off the invisible film of the virus.

So I told her the news there, as I’d told the other (mostly) women. “He stopped breathing for a few minutes, which caused his heart to stop. We were able to intubate him-put in the breathing tube with the ventilator–to breathe for him, and his heart is beating on its own now. We’ll do what we can, but it’s unlikely that he’ll survive. I don’t know if he’ll ever wake up.” She didn’t cry. Maybe she expected it. Sorrow clung to our heads like mist. “What do I do now? I have four children.” “Go home. Take care of your children. Take care of yourself.” Someone near her reached out a hand. I turned. I walked back through the doors to the next one.

When Hector reached the oak tree by the Western Gate,
Trojan wives and daughters ran up to him,
Asking about their children, their brothers,
Their kinsmen, their husbands. He told them all,
Each woman in turn, to pray to the gods.
Sorrow clung to their heads like mist.

I walked home all of the days of that beautiful, warming spring 2020 in the bright sunlight. With the empty streets, the air seemed to shimmer with light refracting through the water droplet-laced air of the early morning hours. The smell of flowers and the eerie silence of New York City Streets was punctuated by the jarring sound of birds chirping and the occasional soothing siren of an ambulance. I felt my skin crawl with dirt and grime; the smell of nitrile gloves and plastic emanated from my body in waves, which was odd because my home life involved an exceedingly diligent hygiene routine.

Sunlight shimmered on great Hector’s helmet.
Mother don’t offer me any wine.
It would drain the power out of my limbs.
I have too much reverence to pour a libation
With unwashed hands to Zeus almighty,
Or pray to Cronion in the black cloudbanks
Spattered with blood and the filth of battle.

The routine of washing was both excessive and insufficient. How can you wash off something you can’t see or feel, but know has been swarming the air around you? Put clothes into a bag, touch as little as possible, and go straight into the shower. Sometimes, if no one was around, I’d strip to my underwear in the hallway. The scrubbing of the face and all the exposed areas felt frantic, futile.

While screening patients in line outside, trying to pick out the sick ones and send home the less sick, a man stepped into my field of view, wedging himself between me and the next patient in line. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt. But you keep touching your glasses with your glove. You must be more careful.” His accent was exactly that of the Kill Bill 2 character Esteban Vihaio.¹ I was transported to the scene where he says, “Bill shot you in the head, no? I would have been much nicer. I would have just cut your face.”² “Thank you. You’re right.” I said, blinking, barely able to see him through my fogged lenses. That afternoon, I walked through the department with no mask on. It was probably too late anyway. I hoped I would live. It was mostly the men who succumbed.

[Hector:]
Don’t ask me to sit, Helen, even though
You love me. You will never persuade me.
My heart is out there with our fighting men.
They already feel my absence from battle.
… I’m going to my house now
To see my family, my wife and my boy. I don’t know
Whether I’ll ever be back to see them again, or if
The gods will destroy me at the hands of the Greeks.
…

“Mama home! Huggle. Mama huggle Mary!” came the cry, as soon as I’d shut the third-floor door. The door that had previously been barred shut. Who would climb up an extra set of stairs to enter their apartment? A scampering, patter of little feet punctuated by the occasional cry of “Mama,” and a slower, heavier step echoed up the spiral staircase. “No Mary, you can’t cuddle Mama yet. You can’t touch her yet.” “HUGGLE MAMA NOW!” A little yellow head popped up above the floor and then disappeared, whisked away by my husband. “I haven’t wiped anything down yet,” I yelled as I shut and locked the bathroom door, just in case she escaped his clutches.

[Andromache, Hector’s wife:]
Possessed is what you are, Hector. Your courage
Is going to kill you, and you have no feeling left
For your little boy or for me, the luckless woman
Who will soon be your widow. It won’t be long
Before the whole Greek army swarms and kills you.
And when they do, it will be better for me
To sink into the earth. …

My colleague told me his wife was coming home with their kids. Neither of them could stand the separation. We had no idea when it would end. “If my wife and I both die. Colleen. If we both die. I have something to ask you. If we both die, will you make sure my kids stay together and get to my parents?” The breath left him in a ragged, thick rush. “Of course.” “I’ll do the same for you.” “I know.”

Hector, you are my…
…blossoming husband
But show some pity and stay here by the tower,
Don’t make your child an orphan, your wife a widow.
Station your men here by the fig tree, where the city
Is weakest because the wall can be scaled.

I was asked by many, “Why don’t you stop? Why don’t you just quit?” I don’t have a good answer to this day. I signed up for this job, and this was part of it. But was it? Seeing patients with contagious diseases, even deadly ones, is part of my job. But without the supplies or safety gear? Without the armor? I felt a responsibility to my colleagues and patients. So was it duty or honor? We couldn’t all quit, and no one was going to say I wasn’t up to the challenge. So was it pride? Did I just want to be in the middle of it all? Was it FOMO? Was it the reckless adventure of it? But at a risk to my life? A risk to my family? For those of us in the ED at the time, we saw colleagues, brothers, fathers, uncles, husbands, one after another, die.

Yes, Andromache, I worry about all this myself,
But my shame before the Trojans and their wives,
With their long robes trailing, would be too terrible
If I hung back from battle like a coward.
And my heart won’t let me. I’ve learned to be
One of the best, to fight in Troy’s first ranks,
Defending my father’s honor and my own.
Deep in my heart I know too well
There will come a day when holy Ilion will perish,
…

“Can I call my son?” “What?” I moved my ear right up to the large mask, which was strapped tightly onto his face to create a seal that prevented air from leaking out. “Can I…call…my son…before?” his eyes swirled around frantically, and his hands flapped toward the ventilator. “Yes! Of course!” I said. He picked up his phone and called a number. “Hola? Papa?” He gestured to the mask. I shook my head. If I took off the mask, it would make the intubation harder, his oxygen would be lower, and it was already so low. But Dr. A had told us no one had yet been extubated, unless they died. He might never talk to his son again. I unclipped the mask and lifted it. “They’re going to help me sleep. I haven’t slept for days,” he said. “Te amo. Mi hijo.” I pressed the mask back on his face. My own leaking tears were mercifully hidden behind my face shield. We did that a few more times. He hung up. “Okay,” I said. “Only one call?”

The words were a slap. A shock. My stomach dropped. I had been thinking of the EKGs I needed to review before approving the next doses of hydroxychloroquine. I was considering the other two patients I might need to intubate next, and how I could adjust their oxygen to try to delay it. It was so tricky - if I waited too long, I might have a crash, less controlled, intubation on my hands. In my distraction, I had forgotten that these were probably the last words he would ever say to anyone he loved. Did he know? “Make as many calls as you want.” I lifted and pressed the mask for what felt like an eternity, or a few minutes. I can’t remember.

But the pain I will feel for the Trojans then,
For Hecuba [his mother], and for Priam King [his father],
For my many fine brothers who will have by then
Fallen in the dust behind enemy lines-
All that pain is nothing to what I will feel
For you, when some bronze-armored Greek
Leads you away in tears, on your first day of slavery.

One day, I could walk home, down the eerily quiet NYC streets, to my family. The next, I could be destroyed, or worse, bring death home to my family. But I would rather be dead myself than see them dead after I failed in the fight. Was it fear of this shame that kept me working?

And you will work some other woman’s loom
In Argos or carry water from a Spartan spring,
All against your will, under great duress.

In my dreams, I am floating as if in space–legs rising in the air behind me, my only tether a BIPAP mask that I press with fury into a blank face of a dying man.

And someone, seeing you crying, will say,
“That is the wife of Hector, the best of all
The Trojans when they fought around Ilion.’
Someday someone will say that, renewing your pain
At having lost such a man to fight off the day
Of your enslavement. But may I be dead
And the earth heaped up above me
Before I hear your cry as you are dragged away.

I went to the hospital day in, day out. What was the point of a day off? What was the point of sleep? The patients weren’t getting any sitting in folding chairs arrayed like flower petals around oxygen tanks for days. And so I missed my family’s life. I picture it swirling around me like a vortex, or being woven like the cloth on Andromache’s loom, for me to look back at the story. But I’m not in the tapestry. My oldest attended school online. My husband and our two-year-old, Mary, had dance parties every day to fill the hours. I ate meals at home, if I was home, in a corner, in case I was contagious.

With these words, resplendent Hector
Reached for his child, who shrank back screaming
Into his nurse’s bosom, terrified of his father’s
Bronze-encased face and the horsehair plume
He saw nodding down from the helmet’s crest.

One day, having long recovered from COVID, all of us vaccinated, I walked in the main door of my apartment. “Mama’s home! Huggle Mama!” I heard the familiar patter of little feet. I stood in the doorway, fighting my urge to step back. Mary broke her run and stood facing me, arms spread out wide. “Daddy?” she yelled, looking backward. “Am I allowed to touch Mama?”

END

—

The lines from the Iliad are taken from the Stanley Lombardo translation. Thanks to Travis Pew and Mike Riggs for reading drafts and giving me the courage to share.

1. time stamp 2:00

2. time stamp 3:18