Twelve-hours shifts in the ICU
watching Covid-19 patients take
their last dwindling breaths,
unmasked people standing vigil
outside the hospital insist
their relatives on ventilators
only have the flu. If the hospital
claims otherwise, it’s to get
more federal dollars.
Local preachers
praise a God stronger than
any virus since true believers
who pray to Him will never die.
Those she inoculates say
the syringe is empty, she must be
getting kickbacks from Pfizer
for peddling their fake vaccine.
She is a hero in a war many in
her town think isn’t happening,
a hoax. At the grocery-store
check-out counter they joke about
the few who wear masks.
Don’t take it serious, they say,
it’s a Democrat plot, once
Biden’s in office after the rigged
election it will all go away.
If someone comes off
the ventilator and survives,
people credit God, not doctors,
nurses, or treatments. It’s a miracle,
not modern medicine, that saves them.
When one of her patients dies,
she weeps until her ribs ache.
www.williamheathbooks.com
- Night Nurse - March 5, 2023