The Longest Day in Shanghai

As the first rays of dawn peeked through the curtains that fateful April morning, Mei's water broke. An overwhelming feeling of fear pervaded the atmosphere as her husband Li hastily gathered their meticulously packed hospital bags. The first day of the citywide lockdown in Shanghai occurred on this extraordinary day, April 4, 2022.

Community WeChat groups had been abuzz with rumors of a shutdown for weeks, but official announcements were evasive and often conflicting. With little to lose, Mei and Li had prepared for the worst: they had stored food and other essentials, and most crucially, they had verified that they had legitimate 48-hour nucleic acid test results before heading to the hospital. The world they knew had transformed in the span of a single night, a sobering fact that hit them as they emerged into the strangely silent streets.

The previously busy streets were now deserted, with only the rare ambulance and police vehicle visible as we made our way to the hospital. As time went on, Mei's contractions became worse, and she grasped the armrest tightly, her knuckles becoming white. They got to the hospital, but instead of a cozy delivery room, they were sent to a temporary isolation unit. As the citywide computer collapse claimed their painstakingly gathered test findings, the health code system went down the drain, leaving them confused and in terror.

The hours passed in the austere isolation chamber while Mei's cry for help reverberated off the stark walls. Fluttered in and out were nurses, their faces hidden beneath masks and shields as they wore stifling protective gear from head to toe. Due to fatigue and anxiety, empathy was obscured, and communication was difficult. Li screamed out for someone to take his suffering away, someone he could recognize, and some compassion, but his cries went unheard. The system was overwhelmed, and the workers worked at or near capacity.

Mei was ultimately carried into a packed delivery room at the eleventh hour, where a long line of moms giving birth created a dissonant symphony of their pain. Giving birth to a world that seemed to be falling apart left no room for anesthesiologists, comfort, or dignity; all that remained was the primitive, unfiltered act of creating life. There was no time for bonding or delicate first moments as a family when their gorgeous, squalling kid came. Mei was left desolate and abandoned when he was swept away.

The following days were a living nightmare, a bureaucratic maze reminiscent of Kafka's work, filled with deprivation. As a result of nurse burnout, even essentials like water and diapers were scarce and treated as treats. In the reverberating corridors, Li haggled with other distraught dads for medical supplies as he combed the hospital. The building was filled with the frightening fog of stories of people confined to their houses without access to food or medical treatment. The mechanisms that were supposed to help and safeguard them had turned into something that confined and tortured them.

Despite the broken landscape, Mei held her kid close to her bosom as they exited the hospital, their eyes watering in the intense sunshine. The streets were still empty, broken only by the distant sound of sirens. The pain they had suffered would always be visible in their spirits, and their steps were sluggish because of it.

As the lockdown dragged on for months with no sign of relief in sight, Mei and Li frequently thought back on that longest day—the day their baby was born into a world that had become hopelessly lost. Their community's resiliency and the little gestures of compassion that shone through the gloom were something they marveled at. On the other hand, they had to deal with the psychological wounds caused by a government that put fear ahead of empathy and a system that let them down.

Like so many others, their tale demonstrated the resilience of the human spirit, the ability to persevere and love even when faced with unfathomable hardship. They clung to the notion that their kid would one day experience a life free from the folly and brutality of that April lockdown as he grew up, learning to negotiate a world eternally changed by the pandemic's shadow.