Fairytale Ending

As we are live! in a moment in history, writing is one way we can respond and record events. It's essential to document if we are able, how it feels to be in the centre of this experience.  We all have  unique positions, and while our experiences share many common elements, the emotional barometer is personal. Here is a pandemic story, a human story from one of our writers.

COVID-19 Will Not Separate Them

 by Kooi Glendinning 

Siew, sitting at home, all alone, obediently abides to the current government-imposed isolation. She is listening to the tv which is spewing out instructions of how to deal with the current pandemic.
Stay at home. Save lives. Save the NHS. 10, 000 deaths in Italy, Spain is fast catching up and UK is almost reaching 2000. President Trump is still blaming China and insists on calling the COVID-19 the Chinese Virus.
Why would a world famous or is it an infamous President outwardly discriminates against another race? Did he blame his own people and other relevant race when his country and the other countries had the Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD)/ Mad Cow Disease?
What about the Ebola and the AIDS? Did he blame the African? Did he call the Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (MERS) the Arab Disease? Did the Arab and the African people got beaten on the street for those diseases like they are assaulting the Chinese people now for Covid-19?
Some of Siew’s Chinese friends with similar old age range were told to go back to their own countries. But this is their home and they have been paying taxes for more than forty years and counting. They are still risking their lives as nurses, scientists, doctors, cleaners and other key workers for working on the front line and saving lives in the NHS and other public sectors.
Siew shakes her head in disappointment at the thought of President Trump, “How on earth does America come to have such an unrestrained politically incorrect president? Now he is on TV telling people that maybe injecting disinfectants and zapping people with radiation is the way forward to kill these Covid-19 viruses. There were reports saying some poor naive Americans actually hurt themselves doing that!”
Siew snaps on the remote control. The screen blackens. She screams at her own misfortune. Her husband, James, is in hospital fighting for his life.

They say he has not much time left and that she cannot visit him as she may get infected by him.
She is not sure how long they will keep him on the ventilator. Without that he will just stop breathing and die.
Over in Italy, being 65, is not the priority age group to be saved, as there are not enough ventilators and James’s prognosis is bad. Over here, in Britain, if situation catches up with our recently divorced European countries, that ventilator will be given to a younger and more able surviving patient.
Siew’s eyes are already sore with Covid-19 Pink Eye syndrome, with the virus eating its way into her body. Her lungs are slowly compacted and trying to breath is a painful process.
Her throat is drying up. The trickling of water somehow is not soothing it. She must force it down, chasing those nasty viruses down into her stomach, where the 37-degree Celsius heat and the high concentration of hydrochloric acid in there will decimate them forever.

She misses her James and their children are far away and are not allowed to visit directed by Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister. Two meters apart! Self-isolate! Save the NHS! Save lives! Kill the Covid-19!
She goes to her living room where a huge porcelain statute of the Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin)’s altar is. Siew reaches out into a box and pulls out a bunch of joss sticks, lighted them and blows off the flames. Smokes rise to reach the face of the beautiful statute of Quanyin. No matter where you stand in-front of her she is always smiling down at you.
Siew kneels in-front of Quanyin and prays, her hands swinging the lighted joss sticks up and down, the smokes rising. She bows her head down to the floor, “Quanyin, I feel it’s time for James and I to join you. But we need you to help us help the Americans first. Please forgive me but I must help them.”
With that she gets up and plunges the joss sticks into the urn and smiles at Quanyin. One of the joss sticks falls out of the urn and lands on Siew’s feet, the lighted end suddenly snapped and the rest glows with bright golden light. She takes it without hurting
herself. She smiles back at Quanyin and, of course, she smiles back.
Carefully and with a deliberate need, she puts the glowing joss stick into the beautifully embroidered hang bag, sat dormant and forgotten on the dresser, she daintily dusts off the London filthy air.
As if prompted by an invisible force, she reaches out into her wardrobe, and changes into her best cocktail dress. Not bad for an old sick lady. The chiffon lime green flowy dress snugly accentuates her petite body. She had compliments before about how good she looked when scrubbed up.
Pouting red lips and a pair of sparkling diamond earrings and matching necklace, given by her ailing James, will compliment her tanned complexion. Besides, he will be pleased that she appreciates his rather exotic gifts.
The fluffy fake beige mink coat, the matching brown embroidered hand bag and her long forgotten brown stilettos make her feel like a million dollar, even though her face is partially covered with a glaringly red face mask, sewn by her at the lock down and an elbow length pair of purple rubber gloves.
She flicks her long black silky hair back as she waltzes into the intensive care unit, and sneaks into James’s cubicle, when no one is looking and carefully keep her two meters social distancing to ensure not to contaminate anyone.
She waves the glowing magic joss stick at James, connected to all sort of humming and pumping machines by his bed. James looks up and smiles as the waves of the magic joss stick expel, one by one, the attached tubes from his body. The tubes are ejected like wrangling tentacles of an octopus.
He musters up all his remaining energy and sits up, as if just woken up from a bad dream, relief at seeing his beautiful wife coming towards him.
With delightful appreciation of Siew’s effort in her glorious, flowy attire, with all his might, he pulls off the remaining attachments and tubes, coughs up some mucousy expectorant and splatters some inaudible words of welcome to her approaching gorgeous wife.

He welcomes her with open arms and holds her tightly, never to leave her alone again.
She eventually pulls apart and kisses him lightly on his lips and helps him gets out of bed. Tenderly, she straps a matching red face mask, one of the two she sewn earlier on lockdown, on his happy but pale and breathless face. Gracefully, she holds his hand and leads him out of the hospital, avoiding and disregarding the stunned nurses and doctors.
“COVID-19 will not separate us,” she shouts out to everyone and anyone who cares to look and listens but ensuring to keep the safe two-meter social distancing.
She waves the glowing joss stick again and together they are lifted by some magic force and starts flying up into the sky.
Quanyin, in her glorious flowy white gown and her amazing ribbons, shawl, and sparkling jewellery over her carefully piled up flowing hair, with curls that would send any men into shivering jellies, magically flies down from above, to pull them up with her.
The panoramic view of the ghostly London slowly diminishing in size as they fly upwards.
They smile at each other and then lift their faces up to enjoy the chilly wind and then zoom higher and higher up, still tightly holding hands, until they are totally on top of the fluffy white cloud.
Like a couple of lovesick puppies, they snuggle together, her face on his shoulder and his hand in hers. Quanyin looks on proudly and circles around them, just floating gracefully, displaying her own splendour of a breath-taking iconic beauty.
After a few moments, slowly and gently, the beautiful Quanyin, leads them by their hands and flies past the statue of Liberty. They circle it for a while and then with deliberate purpose zoom down to what look like the White House.
They see an elderly Caucasian bulky man with yellow shaggy hair sleeping with two beautiful women, one on each side of him, in the president suite.
Siew looks at James and then at Quanyin. They all nod gently. Siew points the joss stick at the blonde man. He wakes up, sees Siew and her joss stick’s rays of golden light, chokes violently and splutters and coughs and dies on the spot. His two companions blissfully snoring away under splashes of his sputum and smelly expectorants.
The couple grabs each other’s hand and smile at Quanyin, who nods approvingly. She gracefully pulls them upwards and together fly up and up and disappears into the sky.

The End