‘thoughts of you are a tiny glow of light’
Rachel Clarke, 48, a palliative care doctor and author, writes to her best friend Rebecca Inglis, also an ICU doctor. Both have been working on Covid wards and unable to see each other because of the demands of their jobs.
Dearest Bex,
It’s been another of those days where I had to pull over on the long drive home. Tonight, I sobbed in a layby at the scale of the loss. I wept for the people we cannot save and I thought I’d never stop.
You know precisely what it’s like, don’t you? That particular cruelty of Covid – the way it forces us apart at precisely those times when we need each other the most. The way it separates mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, as one lies in the hospital, so very far from the other. The way it spreads through speech and touch, our means of sharing our love and affection. The way our patients, from the moment they arrive in the hospital, may never see another human face again. We are masks and gowns who swirl above their beds. Our smiles, our attempts to show we’re more than PPE, cannot be seen but only imagined. How I hate this virus for stealing our humanity.
To say I miss you, Bex, doesn’t even come close. On the very darkest days – when I feel battered by Covid, trampled by the country’s collective loss – the thought of finally flinging my arms around you is, despite everything, a tiny glow of light. Ever since medical school, you’ve been my inspiration. You’re a one-woman ninja force for life and decency.
When another virus, Ebola, caused catastrophic loss of life in Sierra Leone, you volunteered in a heartbeat to fly out there. You chose to risk your own life against an infectious disease that kills half of those it infects. Courageous? You’re the essence of
courage. Oh – and you also tell the filthiest jokes, make the meanest cocktails and once performed a salsa in a gold sequinned minidress in front of the entire hospital.
We both know that unless you’re there, in a hospital awash with Covid, it’s impossible to imagine the clamour and frenzy, the confusion and fear. Sometimes, it feels like the only point of stillness – the one moment of calm – is when I clasp the hand of a patient who is approaching the end of their life. The chaos recedes, I forget the clamminess and discomfort of my PPE, and I focus all I have on the human being before me. I give everything I can to help them know they’re not alone, that they are loved and they matter.
And then I think of you. Of all of the NHS nurses and doctors and porters and cleaners who keep right on going – and smiling. You are the single bravest, kindest, brightest woman I know. Here’s to that moment when we go wild with cocktails – please let it be soon – my one in a million friend, my spark in the darkness. I love you. Rachel’s book, ‘Breathtaking’, published by Little, Brown, is out now