I cried. I couldn’t control my tears. I couldn’t use my words.
It happened not only in public, but on CNN, in front of America and the world.
What brought me to tears was, at first, simply anger. Anger at those who do not take our evils seriously and at those who are actively fighting the truth. They are putting people’s lives in danger.
But in a poor area of Los Angeles, the whole family was infected, including Sesma’s brother and his family who lived next door. The youngest survived, but Sesma lost her stepfather and then her mother within 11 days.
I met her at her mother’s funeral. It was a very disturbing scene. An open coffin in the corner of a parking lot – the only available and safe place for people to gather – with flowers perched on the pavement below.
Sesma stopped in front of me, a stranger, and told me her story. She was trying to be brave at her mother’s funeral, but how can you say goodbye to the most important person in your life in a parking lot? Then, I wouldn’t let myself cry, I was working. But I allowed myself to see, feel and hear while the mariachi band played “Amor Eterno” or “Love Eternal”.
I cannot tell you how difficult it is to constantly experience two distinct worlds in a beautiful but imperfect America: one based on reality, the other based on conspiracy and tribalism.
I’ve been to 10 hospitals trying to deal with the pandemic. I have witnessed people writhing in pain, panting and almost dying from Covid-19 in ICUs across the country. I saw doctors and nurses with exhaustion plastered on their faces, still struggling as if the pandemic had just started, even though we are 12 months later.
And then, as I walk home and stop for gas, someone rolls their eyes at me and asks, “Why are you wearing a mask?” Like I’m the one who’s crazy.
Listening to Sesma’s voice as the story aired well before dawn in Los Angeles, I realized that she would wake up without her mother and stepfather because of the coronavirus. She will do this every day for the rest of her life. A double dose of pain every day. Pain that can go from excruciating agony to deaf pain, but never goes away.
And then I thought about where she was going to wake up. In southern Los Angeles, there are no convenient emergency care clinics. The community has 10 times fewer doctors per resident than the rest of California, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital chief told me – the only facility that stands out in a health desert.
The main supermarket chains that saturate other neighborhoods are absent in southern Los Angeles. The branches of national pharmacies do not have options for sugar-free candies or healthy bars with low sugar content. Just what rots your teeth and contributes to diabetes.
This may seem like something unimportant. It is not. The most frequently performed surgery at the community hospital is diabetes amputation.
Sesma’s stepfather had diabetes and asthma. Your mother, a lung disease. Covid devours people who have these types of comorbidities. When the coronavirus appeared, he found the perfect victims. But premature death is nothing new in southern Los Angeles. Life expectancy there is 10 years – TEN YEARS! – less than the rest of the city of Los Angeles, the head of the hospital told us.
Nowadays, when I get home, I have no one to hug or hug. I am isolating myself to keep any infection out of my husband’s lungs in the best way I know how – to stay in another room, wear a mask at home and have a coronavirus test a few days after going to the hospital.
It’s lonely. But not as lonely as having a family member dying, infected because I didn’t care about the dangers.
While putting the footage back to work, thinking again about how to tell the story of this hospital, to make people believe, I called CNN to see our whole world change.
It was January 6, and across the country, in Washington, there was another deadly battle fueled by lies. A violent and ill-informed crowd was knocking on the doors of the United States Capitol and they succeeded.
I just wanted to scream. If few thought that this could happen in modern America, I have always feared that it would happen. And I know it’s not over. As sure as the coronavirus is about to deliver another destructive blow because of the Christmas and New Year revelry, militia members, white nationalists, Trump insurrectionists, conspiracy theorists and their supporters can deliver yet another blow to American democracy as we know it .
So, when you saw me cry, you witnessed my anger. I care about my country. I worry about the new and old evils we face. And I feel that my country is undergoing life support devices.