From a San Francisco resident about receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine. A Poem for Moscone.
Crossing Market Street I thought do not get hit by a car before you get there and I don’t and walk into an enormous room where I am welcomed by cheerful helper after helper in matching t-shirts on the first day this massive site is open with its color-coded signs, its yellow arrows on the floor, its helpers waving me on and leading me to a waiting station with a seated woman in hospital blues, happy in her flesh, blue beads in her multi-braided hair, who says her name is Gayla, and she’s going to talk to me in order to distract me, saying she has been caring for a relative for six months in some other state, but I’m not sure who or where because is her mouth is covered by a mask, and now she’s taken this job in California for three months. And then she says, and soon we will be able to be with our loved ones again, and almost a year of tears begin to fill my eyes and Gayla says, Oh, baby! and grabs my hands, one in each of hers, and I am stunned, looking down to see my hands in hers, my hands that have not touched or been touched for almost a year, and I see her hands are beautiful, small and elegant, with tapered fingers and luminous black skin, so I squeeze both of them as hard as I can, and Gayla tells me I have made her day and the she says she thinks I am a sign from God that she was right to come here for this work, and I stare at her because I cannot speak, and she gives me a little square of gauze because there are no tissues for my eyes, and then she dabs my arm and puts the needle in my arm and plunges in the clear solution I have been waiting for so long, and she fills out my little card and says I should just sit there for a few more minutes and I do, until I can stand and walk a few steps off and turn and say, Thank you, Gayla, and she thanks me, too. Now I go to sit on a distanced folding chair until my numbers show up on the big electronic screen and I walk past more lovely helpers who are saying, Congratulations! And Thank you for coming! And Have a good day! And I walk out into the California sun, high buildings dazzling in the light, and the day is more than good, even though the restaurants are still empty and the art museum is closed in this world we’ve made and damaged, this shuddering world we be to keep on spinning for as long as it can.
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SAN FRANCISCO
MARIN MEDICAL SOCIETY
From The Murmur, Notes from the Physician-In-Chief’s Office at Kaiser Permanente
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SAN FRANCISCO MARIN MEDICINE APRIL/MAY/JUNE 2021
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