Face of the Disease Giver

You wouldn't think them "barn owls" are so freaky to look at just by looking at 'em - but they are.

The fact they don't even "hoot" like regular owls is what really gets at me.

Instead, God, or the universe, or whatever, decided it was okay for them to "screech" and "hiss" as if hacking up whatever field mouse they only barely digested earlier that day.

They sound like a dying old man grasping onto his last hinges of breath.

They sound exactly like my father did when he was dyeing alone in a hospital bed fifteen minutes down the road, barely cognitive, barely holding onto an iPad, barely able say any last goodbyes to his loved ones.

But all I could think about was how similar the sound was as he hacked his shredded lungs away.

Funny thing is - they say human beings naturally see faces everywhere they look.

But ever since I saw that one owl - that one day - the day my dad had died - I've seen it's face everywhere. In everything. On my phone. On the TV. Inside the grocery store. In the faces of all the cars that pass by. Hiding between the branches of the leaves in the trees, in the cracks of the walls, the clouds in the sky. But it's absolute worst - is when I close my eyes.

I haven't slept since dad died two weeks ago. I've been having hard time keeping track of the hours and endless days in between. I barely brush my teeth anymore. The faces never relent.

When I asked an old friend about them, she said them barn owls are usually considered "bad omens" of death and disease - even going as far as calling it the "disease giver".

I think that's wrong.

All my reality is now, is this face of this "disease giver," but when I truly look into it's eyes - I can almost find a sense of relief, as if this "Disease Giver" is right about everything all along-

Until the day my own face made that God awful screech.

-

You don't know the real definition of thankful until you've been inside a fully packed pandemic ward.

It was another day I didn't want to see through. At several points of which I thought of a career change.

Faces blur in the hallways as people walk to and fro. The ones in the beds are barely faces anymore. A science-fiction author from a different time would think they look like robots. I wouldn't be able to argue with them.

Some of these "robots" stay for months on end. Some only for a few days. Their faces get harder to remember, but their eyes certainly don't. The ones that are still human anyway.

I was sick earlier this year when this whole thing first started. I was the first in my unit to get sick actually. I felt like I somehow let everyone down. But one by one we all got sick. Then one by one we all came back - either next to a bed, or in one.

I thought my biggest fear was heights. It takes a lot to phase you when you're a nurse - but something about this whole thing is different.

I can honestly say now, with conviction, that my biggest fear is turning into a robot.

And I thought I knew what real fear was until the day he came in - with a face was as pale as a barn owl - I recognized his eyes too, but the last time they were here, they were from a much older brow - a brow that was eventually turned into a robot.

He kept mumbling something about a "disease giver," that it was "coming for him." Hallucinations are common with a fever of his degree - but this was clearly something else.

He had the same look others have had when they say they can see angels - a look of relief.

He stopped complaining after he was turned into a robot.

Maybe that's the whole idea.

Alex