Member-only story
Modern Life
Is it just me, or does everyone feel numb?
A shooting recently occurred at the hospital where I work. A patient became agitated and barricaded himself inside a bathroom. When security unlocked the door, he rushed them with a handgun and shot one guard in the shoulder. It was just another day in America, and the incident barely made the news.
Sadly, this wasn’t my first encounter with gun violence. Six years before the Columbine murders, a student from my graduating class shot and killed our vice-principal in the hallway at my high school. At that time, it felt like an anomaly, and I never expected something so horrific to become so normalized. Now, experiencing a workplace shooting has become so anticipated that many employees receive annual emails outlining what to do in the event of an active shooter.
I know that I’ve lost a lot of faith in humanity. However, it wasn’t any specific shooting that caused me to feel this way; rather, it was the Covid pandemic that really pushed me over the edge.
I worked as a CT technologist in a hospital throughout the Covid pandemic. Yes, Covid was real. I saw it in lungs that had turned white and opaque, occupying the spaces where air should have been. The earliest cases were the worst. The whole situation was incredibly confusing, and for months, I felt as though I were trapped in a long tunnel with no light…
