By Suzanne Travis
I found it both exhilarating and embarrassing being a hero. One of the perks of COVID-19 was becoming an overnight sensation. Murals of nurses sprung up all over Los Angeles. Rosie the Riveter with muscled biceps, a polka-dot scarf and a stethoscope was one of my favorites. Another one showed an earnest but exhausted looking angel wearing scrubs with giant wings. A bunch of do-gooder parents and kids must have painted Superman and Spider-Woman wearing N95 masks and yellow PPE capes at the neighborhood school.
Anderson Cooper thanked me on a CNN segment honoring nurses, getting misty eyed when he spoke about pots and pans clanging throughout the country. There was the time I was waiting in a long line at Trader Joe’s and the customers waved me to the front. The best part was everyone laughing at my corny joke about frontline workers being able to go to the front of the line. It was polite, probably forced laughter but I didn’t mind. Someone spontaneously placed a bouquet of sunflowers in my cart and thanked me for my service. Like I was some kind of war veteran and it was awkward. I didn’t know what to say except thank her for thanking me and couldn’t wait to get home, pet my dogs and open my bottle of screw-top Trader Joe’s Pinot Noir.
I was seasoned, which translates to experienced or old, which put me in the high-risk category. But showing up to work every day during COVID-19 wasn’t because I was particularly brave. A real hero is selfless, overcoming fear in order to help others, like firefighters running into burning buildings. Or the Belgium priest in the 1800s who died while helping others at the Molokai leprosy colony. I wasn’t any of those things. I just wasn’t afraid of dying any more than I usually am.
I’m not courageous. I’m terrified of mundane things most people aren’t. I’m paralyzed when it comes to post offices and parking structures, petrified the uniformed postal workers will roll their eyes when they can tell I’m clueless about sending packages. Parking structures rate high up there on the terror scale, imagining the ticket machine won’t work and there’s a long line of cars with people inside shaking their heads. When I roll down the window and yell out, “Sorry! The machine’s broken!” they all know it’s me who’s the real problem.
The bottom line is I felt like a phony not a hero at all. Just a nurse going through the motions, doing the same work I always did, taking advantage of early hours for frontline workers at Costco. I wasn’t afraid of getting stuck with needles during the AIDS pandemic either. None of it was a sacrifice and I wasn’t noble and far from a Florence Nightingale. I just could do it and I did. Of course, it was gratifying saving lives, but if it was hard I’d do something else.
At the same time, seeing patients on respirators gasping for breath, unable to say final goodbyes in person and crying to loved ones on iPads wasn’t easy. We were invisible, shrouded in N95s with goggles and gloves, perspiring under suffocating protective gear with our names written in magic marker on our masks. We didn’t believe it at first, having only read about the Spanish flu pandemic where thousands died in 1918. Nurses were dying too. Someone I worked with named Maria ended up in the ICU and didn’t make it.
After my shifts, I stripped naked in the freezing cold garage and ran through the house to shower, twice if I had COVID-19 patients. I’d apologize to my dogs for ignoring them and shut the bedroom door. If my husband was already sleeping, I’d be relieved, too drained to have a conversation.
Noone knew how bad it would get. Breaking news showed crying nurses exhausted, slumped in hallways with red marks streaked across their faces. Morgues in New York were overflowing with trucks holding corpses in the streets.
All of it was surreal which made it easier somehow. Curfews happened and that’s when things got real. More so when restaurants and hair salons closed. That’s when panic set in. I wasn’t going to die without dying my hair. Sanctimonious news anchors were reporting from their kitchens with disheveled hair and dark roots. Not me. I was my hair, known for my various colors of red that changed like the seasons—mahogany, copper, brownish red at times. We were a sea of nurses in identical PPE gear, but staff and patients could recognize me by my red ponytail.
I hatched a plan with my guru hair stylist. We would practice social distancing at her salon where the windows were covered with cardboard. It was either go rogue and break the law or fly to Florida with big bugs and crocodiles and book banners. A place where science deniers kept schools and hair salons open. I kept working throughout the pandemic and never showed my true colors. I never went gray and never told a soul. I also never got into baking sourdough bread and never will. Looking back, it’s all a blur but being a hero for almost three years felt pretty good and I’d do it again.