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Last March 21, at 0.45 in the morning, it was Nelson whose eyes were watering in the square that leads to the entrance of the Madrid Hospital of La Paz. This May 28, at exactly 0.48 am, it is at White to whom they cry. She is a couple of meters from where he was then. They are not known but the coincidence is mathematical, as if it were taken from a cheap fiction. He said that his wife had just been admitted due to coronavirus, that she was very ill, that she had been released and that she had to be left alone. She says that a month ago she was discharged, that she overcame the disease but that she returns to the ER for all the consequences, the tiredness, the difficulty in breathing. He is before, she is after; the now.
After doing so at the end of March, EL ESPAÑOL has again visited the emergencies of four large hospitals in Madrid at dawn. The spirits are different, they are not so saturated and they have learned to cope with the pandemic. But the hell that was has become a purgatory, now everyone waits for the sprout which they anticipate will arrive in October. Proof of this is that most of the contracts that served to fill the lack of health personnel have been extended until December. “If I were to arrive tomorrow, we would be prepared here. The facilities are ready and the material we have is much better ”, explains César, caretaker at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital.
And would they be mentally prepared?
“Of course not. That’s not what you prepare for. It was very screwed, “responds César already with a changed face. “Not again, please“Says Juan, a nurse from La Paz, while he draws his cigarette on his break. “There will be a regrowth, for sure, and we will not be able to with it. We already have PPE, yes, but we are not emotionally prepared. I think I will have to ask for a leave or something, I can’t take it anymore, ”says Raquel, who works at the ICU at Gregorio Marañón. “We would be prepared regarding the notions of treatment, but mentally I don’t know if we will hold. We have no desire for it to be repeated, ”says Laura, ICU nurse at the Puerta del Hierro Hospital.
On the first route, Spain was about to overcome the barrier of 20,000 infected and 1,000 dead. Now the number rises sharply to 236,769 infected and 27,118 deceased. This is 142 times the 9/11 attack. But with the data from the Ministry of Health, one no longer knows. Last Sunday they were 28,752 dead, on Monday they were 26,834, on Tuesday they were 27,171 and now it is lower. It is difficult to know whether someone will die tomorrow or a handful will be resurrected. It would be laughable if those numbers were not behind Carmen, 80 years old; Andrew, 65, and so on. The only thing the situation was missing was creating skepticism about the death toll, making the data laugh at the dead.
Ramón y Cajal Hospital (23.00)
Even before reaching the first destination, from the taxi, everything seems different. The city is recovering the meaning that had been stolen from it. Before, nothing was good for nothing. There were no cars on its avenues or people walking on its sidewalks. Now, the bar terraces are a social achievement which is savored as if it were having made the working hours last eight hours. You even see a traffic accident and you remember ironically the little voice of the grandfather of the Casa Tarradellas ad that says: “Good things should never change.”
At Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid the toilets no longer have the pizza delivery man waiting half an hour and they no longer receive him with a “sorry, we just don’t stop.” Now they walk back from a nearby bar and stop to look at the humidity that has risen on the bust of Dr. Ramón y Cajal escorting the entrance to the ER. An ambulance arrives and, while the ritual of costumes as taken from E.T., At the end it opens and they only wear masks, nothing more. A person on the stretcher, covered, does not wear a respirator.
But the battle is not over yet. Behind closed doors, the directors of the Ramón y Cajal told the kings, in early May, that they still had 157 people with Covid on the 6th floor and that 46 were still in the ICU. On the first route they had just 21 people in the ICU, the number is now double. But the ER, at least, have returned to what they were: boring faces watching television, they have been there for hours, but there is no longer the defeated gaze of before, now separated in the seats by a poster that asks to keep the safety distance .
An elderly man, possibly Covid, enters the Ramón y Cajal Hospital.
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A few meters from the entrance, Caesar, the warden says that it is no longer what it was. “The fat is over,” he explains as he grabs a jacket from the trunk of his car. “But it’s not over. Before, grandparents came to us, forgive me for the expression, but now we are still entering younger people, also from Covid, and they are much worse. I don’t know why it is, ”he says behind the mask. Interestingly, on the first route not everyone was wearing a mask. It was not mandatory. Now it is. And it says that of the second wave: “That’s not what you prepare for. It was so fucked up” According to the latest statistic, 26% of their fellow hospital workers have tested positive for coronavirus.
On the same street, on the terraces of the bars there is already life. Nothing to do with before. Beers, dinners, etc. A laugh is heard; A woman sitting in front of a man says that “Ana already told me that you loved your work.” They are getting to know each other. After a while a couple of young women pass by with a dog, they hug and kiss each other with accumulated tenderness from months and say to see each other again tomorrow. But before starting the trip to the next destination, an ambulance enters and all the protocol is activated. Again all the technicians with the special suits, again an old man who can no longer stand on a stretcher, again to disinfect the entire ambulance to go back to the street. The war is not over.
A group of restrooms wait on their guard at the La Paz Hospital Emergency Department.
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La Paz Hospital (0.15 hours)
At the emergency entrance of the La Paz Hospital, a young male nurse is sitting on a bollard throwing out a cigarette. He relates that yes, that things are better but that it is not over. That at the highest peak they came to have nine plants for ICU, which are now four, but that “before all this” was only one. He says that we can use his words for the report but that we put a false name, which makes them sign a confidentiality agreement. What name do we give you? “Whoever you want” Juan? “Voucher”. And Juan says they are waiting for the regrowth. “The vast majority of those who hired when we needed people have been renewed until December, they hope it will be like October,” he explains. “We are ready, but not mentally, not again, please,” he says with a nervous chuckle.
Like the rest of the hospitals at night, La Paz no longer gives the image it had at the beginning of all this. A parking lot that once seemed like a war zone with ambulances is now a huge white tent with a sign that says Professional consultation. But in this new normal, a guy comes out with a plaster arm – before it would be unthinkable that someone was there for something else – the flags fly at half-staff and a nurse kisses a girl on the way out of the ER. The number of kisses that will be distributed throughout the night is striking, as if they had been kept and now they were scared that they would spoil.
A male nurse kisses the doors of the La Paz Hospital Emergency Department.
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And then it comes White, together with his partner. They are both very tired. They’ve been there for many hours. “We are from 19.30,” he says. They take five hours. “I had Covid at the end of March and I was discharged I think on April 22,” she explains. “Before, when I came, they put me in a tent that was there and is no longer there,” he says. But not everything is overcome. Visibly tired and with her eyes on the verge of crying, she says that she feels defeated in the aftermath of the coronavirus. “I feel very tired. I find it hard to breathe my lungs hurt. I had a very bad time and I am very tired right now. I just want to go home. ” And he goes. They walk a few meters and both take a taxi. At least, it’s something. Before there were no taxis at the stop and much less they could both have gotten on it.
Another couple of nurses, boy and girl, young, go up to the plaza at the main entrance to La Paz and when they are asked… “What did they tell you? I think there is still a lack of material. Not as much as respirators and others but PPE, we continue to reuse more than we should, “he explains. “And I am very burned because I think people have not learned anything, you see them going out there, you see that they act as if this has never happened, and it continues to happen and it will happen ”, he adds.
After a while, a group of girls come back to have a drink. “Girls, I don’t know if you know but the Monday is the end of not paying in the SER area“Says one. And when it is 1:00 a.m., the three McDonald’s workers leave work and lower the metal blind. At the moment, the Open 24 hours it is still misleading advertising. In the window of one of the rooms in La Paz there is a sign that says Everything will be fine. The echo of the last nurse resounds: “You see that they act as if this had never happened.”
Gregorio Marañón Hospital (1.50 hours)
In the previous route for emergencies, the Gregorio Marañón Hospital It was without a doubt the worst. While in the rest of the centers you could see the battle for what the sick and health had, they jumped there with the naked eye. There was a converted dermatology waiting room where Covid patients slept, crossed on several chairs, on a stretcher in full view, and even in wheelchairs. People came and went from the center seeing the bleakness of the panorama. That room is now empty. The stretcher, which is still in the same place, no longer has a person or sheets and one wonders what happened to the woman who occupied it, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.
But that emptiness takes little time to stop being celebrated. Directly opposite was another waiting room, crowded with defeated relatives, but its interior is no longer visible. The windows are covered with opaque paper and a sign that says Covid-19 zone psychologically shields the door. However, a somewhat tired and disoriented old man prepares to enter, until a nurse comes out and affectionately tells him that he is crazy, that he cannot enter there. He hesitates, had been there before, he explains, and she responds. “Yes, this was before the family waiting room, but now it is a Covid area,” says the nurse.
On the street and still in overalls, Raquel, the ICU nurse at Gregorio Marañón is very, very nervous. “I am outraged,” she says. “With the theme of parking,” he adds. “From June 1 they start charging SER and I have nothing to do with the car. I have rented a flat with a partner to avoid infecting my family and I pay with my money. Now they will start charging and I have nowhere to put the car. Do I also have to pay about 80 euros for a parking space? “
And he throws another question into the air: “What do I risk my life for every day?” “I have been with this for three months and, although the world is moving forward, I continue to work with Covid. What I do? Am I going home to infect my husband and children? I have a colleague who was infected, we have infected 18 of them, she went to her house and although she took all the precautions, she neglected herself and infected her husband. He has died. How do you think she feels now? The applause already gives us a little the same because they are very beautiful but they have forgotten us, “he says. “There is going to be a regrowth, for sure, and we are not going to be able to do it emotionally. We already have PPE, yes, but we are not emotionally prepared. I think I will have to ask for a leave or something, I can’t take it anymore ”, he adds. And look at his watch. “I have to return”. “When I get to work I see people on these terraces drinking something and it is very good because Spain needs it, but they have forgotten about us,” and he leaves.
Puerta del Hierro Hospital (3.30 hours)
The last stop on the route was and is reserved for the Puerta del Hierro Hospital from Majadahonda. The first time, in late March, the outlook was unremarkable. Empty waiting rooms, the entrance to the ER without people … But when you talked to the nurses they told you that “the worst thing is that you know they are going to die alone.” Now, paradoxically, there is more activity. In half an hour a couple of ambulances arrive. One without Covid, one with. And the toilets of the last one, which is a Las Rozas ambulanceThey come out dressed in the clothing that protects their lives and take it off with laughter. What better than taking it with humor. But when asked, it makes them angry.
“Do you want the truth?” He asks. For that we are. “Well, now people have made a fool of themselves with the car and the motorcycle, on the one hand, and on the other you see them in bars as if nothing happened. It happens. And let’s get back to that. I think we are going to be in a continuous zero phase. For us it is a little sad, ”he says.
Laura, a nurse in the ICU, says that although everything is calmer and they only have one person in the ICU, everything still throbs. Remember that when they die, their belongings are left in a drawer and that when they open it, the image that this is a person, not one more figure comes to them suddenly. “And you think of your family, your father …”, he says. “When you are there, you work and you don’t stop and you even have good times with your colleagues. But when you go out a slab falls on you. And the silences in the changing rooms when we arrived… that did not exist before ”, he adds.
Sealed chairs to maintain the safety distance at the Puerta del Hierro in Majadahonda.
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-Are we ready for the possible second wave?
– We would be prepared as for the notions of treatment, but mentally I do not know if we will endure. We have no desire to have it repeated. It has been many hours, very bad people. It is very angry because we see that people now laugh at it, after all that we who work in hospitals have cried. It is pure impotence, just as people do not believe that we have worked so hard. I cry … all with that pressure on my chest … we no longer know if it is that we are infected or that it is pure anxiety.
This Thursday, the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has acknowledged that she is preparing for a second regrowth, collecting materials and completing the construction of a new emergency hospital. It is the calm that precedes the storm.
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