Products of Human Will
“Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.”
― Albert Camus, [The Plague]
I chanced upon the book on a sojourn to the capital. Outside, the heavy rain lashed itself against the windowpanes. In the quiet of the evening, Vitosha Boulevard becomes engulfed in mist and aside from the barely visible silhouettes of diners at repose, or the occasional figure hastening towards the metro, the boulevard itself is silent. The neon lights of commerce glow, but the backdrop of the Sv. Nedelya Church casts a forgiving glow over the boulevard. At the bookstore, it was almost closing time, and I was the only client, dripping wet from the rain and the lack of an umbrella. I reached forward to pick up the book from its shelf, and chanced upon this quote again. Memories, of a time before I was a doctor, or even a medical student, came back to me. The distant, almost fictional warmth of the South Indian summer from more than a decade ago crept towards me. I was a teenage boy then, and I had read The Plague, by Albert Camus. It was an endeavour in secret, I recalled, because I was meant to be studying for my exams, and in the quiet nights of the small town I lived in at the time, reading this work became more than an act of rebellion, but a glimpse into the life I wanted to lead. It was only later, when the COVID pandemic was upon us, and I found myself in Bulgaria attempting to dispel myths about the virus in its early stages, did I remember the book itself. Time had passed, much of life had happened. When the initial warnings and case reports were being counted and analyzed, I sat at my computer, having just returned from a Oncohematology screening camp in Southwestern Bulgaria, wondering if the reports were to be believed. At that time, there were less than a thousand or so cases. That number probably tripled in as many days. The above paragraph came to me in fragments, disjointed and remembering in the paraphrasing of a strained mind. Wars and Pandemics don't fall out of the sky, I remembered, and how prophetic these words were to be in the coming years.
My hands trembled a little when reading these words again, years later as a doctor. I have had COVID twice, the yearly flu season affects me too, and I cannot even recall how many patients I have seen in the emergency department, here where I serve as a surgeon in training, or when I was an Intern Physician, attempting to screen patients undergoing Oncosurgical care. Numbers and statistics become abstract against the backdrop of human experience and in doing so, they become disconnected from our own lived experience. I remembered the night I was infected, when I spent an entire night shift as an Intern Physician in a COVID-19 Intensive care ward, attempting CPR on a ward full of terribly sick patients, most of whom weren't vaccinated. I recalled the hours I had spent writing article after article, attending meetings, attempting to reason, debate and cajole "skeptics", all to watch the cases rise. When the COVID-19 virus took hold of me, I found myself in bed, my lungs screaming with each breath I took, and me wondering if this truly was my end too. Later, when the brain fog cleared temporarily as the spring sun burst into my room, I laughed it all off. I recalled the books I had read, the work I had done as a researcher, and of course, the friends I had come to know and love over the years. I let my wheezing and coughing become secondary to the greater illness at hand, my slowly eroding sense of hope. If there was a hidden epidemic under the statistics of the COVID case numbers and quarantine mandates, it was this, the prevalence of despair, one that I know for a fact has only increased with each passing year.
In the bookshop, a helpful assistant walks over to me to ask if everything is alright. The reminiscence is over in an instant. A little disconcerted, I mumble that everything is great. I am used to being interrupted, and sometimes have been described as a man who's seen a ghost. Forcing a smile, I tell her that unfortunately, I have read all the books available on sale on the shelves. The selection of English books is always limited here, because it is not a very popular language. The assistant asked if she could make a recommendation and seeing The Plague in my still trembling hands, she told me that she thoroughly recommended it. I replied that I had read it, slowly coming back to Earth. The trembling in my hands settled. Not wishing to come off as standoffish, I told her that I had read the book as a boy, a long time ago. She gave me the same look that I have seen multiple times before, that the visage of the almost hermit like man wearing military boots and a field jacket, and unruly beard to match, didn't quite match the public imagination of the well-read academic. I have been described as someone who persistently looks as if he's just stepped in from the cold. In this corner of the world, foreign, bearded men are seen with suspicion and I wasn't surprised when the assistant asked me what I was doing in Bulgaria. Was I a tourist?
I replied to her in Bulgarian that I was a surgeon in training and then I was confronted with the second most common look I have come to understand. A mix of relief, confusion, piqued interest and not suspicion, but pity. Here? The expression seems to say, in this country?
Later, with a cup of coffee warming my hands, I regaled the assistant and her colleagues with my stories of the frontline work that I do. I told them of my daily work of seeing patients, the emergency surgery and the palliative care measures that I am working on. The meditations of my life, working in a place that neither feels foreign or different. They asked me if I wrote, and I told them that I did, on occasion. Excited, they asked if I was published. I told them that I wasn't published anywhere, a lie of omission intended to prevent a litigation of my own past. One of her colleagues knew someone who was my patient. I didn't recall the patient with clarity but I did know that it was one of my more routine cases. Something minor enough that didn't warrant archiving on my part. The book itself was placed back on the shelf.