Meltdown and Other Covid Stories

By David Margolis

Who better to write about the Covid pandemic than a retired physician, a prime target for the deadly virus? 

Dr. David Margolis wrote these tales during the worst time of the pandemic, cooped up in a house with only his imagination as a guest. He has produced a remarkable collection of stories, combining sadness and loss with medical

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uranus Publishing Company LLC
• Release date: Jun 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9780991215492

Book preview

Rutabaga Medicine

(Fear and superstition early in the pandemic.)

It was a wintry afternoon in 2020. A whipping wind chilled my elderly bones as the dog and I trudged haltingly to the only grocery store in Big Creek, MO, population 946. My wife, Valerie, had family in these rural parts going back generations, and when her father died, we inherited the old homestead on the edge of town next to the eponymous creek—a stream that wasn’t wide enough to be called big. After I stopped working as a gastroenterologist, we sold our house in the city and remodeled the dilapidated structure, hoping to experience the bucolic life. Valerie found a teller’s position at the local branch of Peoples Bank and Trust, just to pass the time, and within six months, she became the bank manager. I gave up on golf, which was a favorite pastime of doctors in my day but not so much anymore, and began to consider myself a gardener, a fisherman, and a househusband. It wasn’t long before I could load a dishwasher and vacuum a carpet with a confident panache. In retirement, you can become an amateur at whatever you fancy.

The market was only two blocks from the house, but equivalent to a five-mile walk for a Maltese—a small white dog with a sense of entitlement. As we approached Main Street, the aging houses were replaced by broken-down mobile homes, lying catawampus to the road. We changed direction, and now the angry gusts were directly in our face. Sophie stopped abruptly to savor the uriniferous odor of a fire hydrant, and as she squatted to pee, I secured the parka hood tightly over my head. After more obligatory sniffing delays, we eventually arrived at the only stoplight in town, at an intersection devoid of any cars, then waited for the light to turn green. After that, we made good progress, past the boarded–up hardware store, the bank, Jimbo’s Saloon, and the Faith Baptist Church, finally achieving our destination: Crump’s Produce and Fine Foods with Fine Foods being a definite overstatement of the situation.

I pulled down the parka hood that I’d just put up, took off my Gore–Tex gloves, and applied my face mask, pressing the metal pieces to my cheekbones in the hope that my glasses wouldn’t fog. I pushed on the cold metal lever to open the door, wishing that I hadn’t removed the gloves. The ancient floorboards made a creaking sound as they sagged from my weight. We started down an aisle of Twinkies, Oreos, pretzels, along with the Keebler Elf, all tasting infinitely better than a crunchy carrot or a leafy lettuce as long as you’re not worried about being fifty to a hundred pounds overweight, which described most of the inhabitants of Big Creek. I placed a bag of Frito-Lay chips and some peanut butter cookies in my grocery cart, ostensibly for my wife. We snuck past the freezer of ice cream, and approached the meat and poultry case devoted to chicken nuggets, hamburger patties, bratwursts, hot dogs and a few cuts of beef including a package of stew meat that I selected for my barley soup. Sophie looked up at me scoldingly, surprised that I hadn’t immediately opened the package for her enjoyment.

Hey Jerry, what’s up? It was Carl Crump, the proprietor, who appeared from behind the cash register. No need for him to wear a mask, since it wasn’t compulsory in the tyranny–free state of Missouri.

How’s it going, Carl? Answer a question with a question, that’s the polite greeting in mid-America.

Things have been slow since the Save-A-Lot opened in Boulder Bluffs. Some of my customers are ordering their groceries online from there.

I’ve heard about that. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we’d done that more than once.

I can’t afford employees for that kind of thing. These young people today want health insurance and maternity leave, just to work at a grocery store. A sad look crossed his face. Did you hear about Betty Forester?

No.

They took her to the hospital in St. Louis, she’s got the Covid real bad. They flew her there by helicopter. Then Trish got a call from her sister in Pilot Point, she’s come down with a cough and lost her sense of smell. You think the vaccine will do any good Doc, if it ever comes?

They all call me Doc which I don’t particularly encourage. When you’re not seeing patients or reading the medical journals anymore, the stuff escapes your memory pretty quickly, and I don’t want to give people bad advice, or maybe I don’t want to be bothered period. No sense trying to garner some undeserved respect. I’d experienced it all in thirty-five years of practice, the bedtime phone calls, the emergency procedures, the ailing and complaining, the poor and the uninsured, and the specter of death that can eat at your psyche. It took some time, but slowly I came to grips with the ordinary existence that was the rest of my life. So nowadays, I’m a dumb shit like everyone else. I want to go to a movie or dine at a decent restaurant or visit my grandchildren which I can’t because of the Covid, and I’d like to be rid of the nausea that comes with the tightness in my upper gut—the medical term is epigastrium. It wakes me up at night. My former partner, Sabina Mehta, tells me it’s just stress. She tells me I’m as fit as a fiddle, some fiddle, playing a country jig instead of Beethoven’s violin concerto.

Wha’d ya say? I’d forgotten Carl’s question. That happened frequently these days.

The vaccine, think it will help?

Sure it will Carl, it should be available in the next few months.

Any point bothering with it? Carl was an unconvinced resident of the Show Me State.

Vaccines have prevented a whole lot of diseases, just look at measles and—

I dunno, all that stuff is run by big government, and I saw where Fauci’s going to make a profit on every shot. I think I’ll hold off for now. Then why did he ask if he already knew the answer?

Just then, an elderly woman came through the door that led upstairs to the Crump living quarters. She was thin with the dried-prune look of extreme old age. A thicket of unkempt silver hair extruded from her skull, and a moderate moustache covered her upper lip. Without the wrinkled polkadot dress, she could have been mistaken for a man. Granny, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Jerrold Benjamin. Granny cupped an ear with her hand.

He’s a doctor, Carl raised his voice a notch.

Not anymore, I’m retired.

That’s a nice little dog you got there. What kind is it? She bent toward Sophie. The dog emitted a soft growl in the back of her throat. She didn’t like strangers, or even me for that matter, only my wife, Valerie.

She’s part Maltese.

Part what? I don’t hear too well.

She a mutt! I barked irritably.

Granny here’s visiting from Kansas, said Carl. The nursing home where she lives was filled with Covid. The wife felt she’d be better off out of that environment. We’ve tried to quarantine her, but she’s none too cooperative. From behind her back, he made a circular motion with his finger around his right ear, then pointed to the mother-in-law. I reflexively flattened my mask closer to my cheek bones.

What’s this I’m hearing about the Covid, you know something I don’t know seeing as you’re a bigshot doctor? she asked.

Let’s not go into that with Jerry here, I don’t believe he’d want to hear your theories just now, cautioned Carl.

It’s been brought by the Devil, she interrupted. You do believe in the Devil? Her eyes grew wide as she moved uncomfortably close to me. I imagined her stirring a cauldron containing eye of newt and toe of frog. He brought it to us and there’s not a damn thing we can do except pray for our sins. In little Big Creek, there were many theories. Covid was no worse than the flu; the hospitals gave every patient a Covid diagnosis to collect more money; it was a hoax invented by communists and pedophiles. But on the chance that Covid did exist, it was manufactured by the deep state and sold to the Chinese.

And you don’t need to wear one of those nose and mouth gizmos, they won’t do you no good. Beelzebub’s goin’ to do what he’s goin’ to do, exceptin’ if God intervenes, and he ain’t inclined to do that so far. When your time’s up, it ain’t do no good to fight it, she cackled.

Well, just the same, I’ll keep it on. My forced smile couldn’t be seen behind the mask. I’d learned long ago not to get into it with this sort of zealot. I moved off toward the produce aisle and began picking out some vegetables for the soup. The organic carrots didn’t look any different from the regular carrots, but Valerie’s kind of fussy about things like that. I grabbed a small sack of onions. There’s not much of a market for organic onions because of their low levels of pesticides— evidently most insects don’t enjoy the bitter taste.

Why don’t you get a few of these, Doc? Granny had been following me. She held a few brownish-purple tubers in her veiny hands.

They look a bit past their peak for turnips.

They ain’t turnips, they’re rutabagas.

Rutabagas?

They’re akin to a turnip, but they got a sweeter taste. I know for sure that the Devil don’t like ‘em. He don’t like turnips neither, but Carl here don’t carry any, he says they just go rotten sitting on the shelf.

He’s not a vegetable enthusiast? I asked.

Who, Carl?

No, the Devil. I emitted a muffled chuckle behind the mask.

He is, for tomatoes and cucumbers, and he likes steamed asparagus, but he just ain’t partial toward rutabagas, and that could work in your favor.

My favor?

"Before he shoots them Covid buggers in you, he might smell the rutabaga on your breath and decide to move on to someone