COVID39: Chapter 11

Randi and Shane deal with another disappearance in their lives.

links

Cast

Randi Halle Millien

Shane Mark Millien

Dr. Estrum Melissa Thomas

SFX and Music Contributors

SFX

Q Tone [Query]

Tone 4.wav by patchen of freesound.org

Q Tone [Response]

Tone 3.wav by patchen of freesound.org

Music

Desmond’s Letter Theme:

Spanish Trap Guitar - Amado Carillo - Makalo Loop by Makalo

Created by Mark and Halle Millien

Cover Art by Halle Millien

Written, Directed and Produced by Mark Millien

Thank you to everyone out there making a difference at grocery stores, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and gas stations. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Desmond’s Letter:

There were a couple of nurses who stood in the crosswalk at an intersection, in protest of the protesters. It started out sounding like something really confrontational. Masked nurses staring down bare-faced gun-toting patriots like doomed students at Tiananmen Square. The reality was less dramatic. At red lights they would stand silent, arms crossed, as reminders to the signs and flags of what frontline soldiers look like in the land of COVID. Scrubs and gloves serving as the combat uniform of a nation under siege. Not just from a breeding virus. The fact that this isn’t happening anywhere else is telling. In Israel, there are protests going on against their prime minister and the allegations of corruption, leveled at him by his own government, as three elections have failed to unseat him and bring stability to a nation that has never known any lasting peace. And yet they did so in increments of six feet, with a soldier’s discipline. Here. Here it’s mobs pretending at militia. Science deniers calling upon biblical impetus for helping the pathogen spread into their homes and communities. These nurses weren’t hurling Molotov cocktails or climbing staged soapboxes. They didn’t need to. Helen has been really withdrawn this weekend. Moreso than usual. I overheard her arguing with Roderick. We all heard. The kids were sleeping next door, but the walls are too porous to absorb all that rage. He called me a little bit after the fight. I figured he would. We didn’t talk much about what he knew I must’ve heard. It’s not like any of us go anywhere. Mostly we talked about what we’d seen lately. When he got enough sleep, which was never and had some time to himself, which were scattered minutes cobbled out of pure human need, he would stream shows or movies in increments. It took him a week to finish an episode of Westworld. He still understood it better than I did. He mentioned something else though that was so him, so glass half full when all you’ve got is used solo cups. He told me that all of the animal shelters in Atlanta were empty. At first, I thought that he meant that there was some mass euthanization project due to a shortage of workers or supply chain issues with food. It wasn’t that at all. People in all of their need for companionship and love had gone out and offered their homes to every animal in the city, at a time when most of us don’t know where our next dollar is coming from. Now, truthfully, I’ve always had a bit of resentment to the PETA crowd. Prioritizing so many resources to animals when people all over the world are starving or worse, it has always smacked of, at best, warped sensibilities and at worst the type of racism that exists in the best of places. Maybe because he was the messenger, and he’d seen so much and felt so much from hearing about this, maybe because I knew he needed to hear something in me he wasn’t finding in the places he called home, but I found myself genuinely affected and happy to know that somewhere in America people weren’t being cruel, or ignorant. Maybe the nurses and the dogs and cats are the real world and the rabid protesters are a malignant outlier. I think he heard the hope in my voice and took it as a mirror. I don’t think it was an honest reflection, but I hope it was a lifeline.

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