It started off with noble intentions. A message came across our local doctors’ group chat.
“Can you work in the vaccine clinic on New Year’s Day?” I answered the call before I had even thought about why: Please yes, sign me up.
I couldn’t think of a better way to help out in the middle of this pandemic. I was going to be part of the solution!
“It will be one of the happiest workplaces this year,” one of the doctors in our group chat mused.
Fifteen hours later I was lying awake in bed, wondering what I had done. I hadn’t been vaccinated myself, and I was about to come face to face with about 400 high-risk health care workers who all needed vaccination. Sure, they’d be happy because it was their lucky day, but it might not be mine. I wasn’t going to get vaccinated. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get paid. It might be that all I got for my efforts was a case of COVID-19.
And the knowledge that I’d been part of the solution, of course.
“Are you sure you won’t get the shot?” my husband asked over breakfast. “Maybe there will be enough left over at the end of the day for you to get a jab?”
I’m a community family doctor. I work in an office, not the hospital. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be the one selected for any leftover vaccine jabs.
At 7:30 on Friday morning I donned my scrubs, mask, gown and safety glasses. I scraped the ice off the car, and headed into the local hospital, wondering if I was chump or champion.
And then the excitement of the day lifted me away. There were a few dozen of us in the old hospital gym. I hadn’t been in a space with dozens of other people for… so long! We were quickly oriented and set to our jobs.
Twelve of us were administering vaccine. Two were doctors, ten were nurses.
Uncountable others were greeting, registering and directing.
One emerg doc stood by with epinephrine, in case of allergic reactions. “Or selfies,” she told me. “I’ve been spending most of my time taking selfies for people as they get their vaccine.”
The vaccinees started arriving. My first was a fellow leaning on a stroller. He lived in a retirement home, and had managed to get himself to the hospital clinic. I happily jabbed him.
Next were a few nurses and personal support workers. Then the daughter of a long term care resident. Then a seventeen year old who worked as a dishwasher in a long term care home.
As the morning went on, I started to piece together the local vaccination strategy. I was poking needles into all the people who came in contact with long term care residents: their physiotherapists and executive directors, custodians and family. Sometimes I looked at the young, healthy people I was injecting and wondered why they were getting a needle before me. That seventeen year old gave me pause. I felt the first little drop of envy. But I talked myself out of it. After all, she was getting injected in order to protect the residents, not for herself. This is a smart strategy, I reminded myself.
When there was a break in the flow, I would stare at those vaccine-filled syringes sitting in a basin on my desk. I was starting to seriously covet them.
This thought was not coming from my best self. I shook it off.
I had injected about 20 people by noon. The nurse at the table in front of me leaned over to talk. “Have you noticed that the physicians getting vaccinated are way more excited than everyone else?”
She was right. Most others were low-key, but the doctors I had vaccinated this morning were seriously elated in a way that the rest weren’t. What was that about?
I started to watch the people coming in. Who looked happy to be here?
My table-neighbour interrupted my musing. “I want to ask if I can get one of the leftover vaccines,” she told me. “Me too!” I said. “Do you think we have a chance?”
“We should. We deserve it.”
“Yeah, us and everyone else.”
“Maybe if they say no, we can just palm a couple of these and inject each other on a break.”
Under my mask, I grinned and said nothing.
We kept going. I thought more about my workmate’s idea. True confession: Just like old Jimmy Carter, I was lusting in my heart.
I imagined the two of us in some dark hallway of the hospital, jabbing each other.
I imagined the two of us getting caught, or accused. I imagined the newspaper articles and the public shame.
Again, I shook it off. I knew I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to get caught. And frankly, it was wrong. I had to accept that I wasn’t the most needy.
My neighbour leaned over. “I don’t think we should do it,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “It’s a wild daydream though.”
By late afternoon we were seeing lots of hospital workers. I injected many nurses who worked in the local ICU and Emerg. My earlier envy was now layered with gratitude. “You guys have been so brave,” I told them, meaning it. “Thank you for the work you do.” Some of them nodded; some of them looked like they wanted to cry.
Doctors came in who I knew. “Thank you,” I said to them, too. I made plans to play poker with one, when this was all over. I laughed with another about the huge number of referrals I had sent him lately.
The clinic manager came up to me at the end of the day and said I could leave early. I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to get the leftover vaccine. I sanitized my work desk slowly, hoping against hope.
I bundled into my coat and left. As I went out the doors of the hospital, one of the greeters stopped me. “Do you think I could get a leftover dose?” she asked, all excitement. She looked as hopeful as I had felt.
We all want it, I realized. We are all sick of this pandemic, we all want to find the escape hatch.
At home I told my husband about my day as we ate the roast chicken he had cooked up, alone. Our german shepherd sat on the floor beside us, looking up, waiting for a scrap of leftover chicken. Her eyes were excited; her tongue hung out. She was patient, expectant, craving.
“That’s how I felt all day!” I said to my husband.
The following day my husband and I took the dog for a long walk beside the river. We talked a lot about the vaccine clinic, and how that was going. “Perhaps I’ll get the vaccine by Easter,” I told him. “Maybe you’ll get one by Labour Day. There are still a lot of people before us.”
We saw a solitary bald eagle perched at the top of a dead tree. That seemed about right.
When we got home from our river walk, I checked my phone. There were 70 notifications on the doctors’ WhatsApp group.
I opened up the screen. “I am at the GRH COVID vaccine clinic. We have 32 shots and no one to give them to,” said the first new message.
“Nurses have already called hospital floors. No takers.”
“Good for another 4 hours only.”
“I’M GETTING MY VACCINE!!!!” I yelled, pivoting from the desk and running down the stairs.
“I’ll drive you,” said my husband.
I grabbed my health card, and we went tearing out to the car.
Fastest drive to the hospital ever. Threw on a mask.
Tore up to the front door.
S-O-P-H-I-E W-I-L-S-O-N I said to the greeter at the front door.
S-O-P-H-I-E W-I-L-S-O-N I said again to the lanky young man registering me.
“Hey I know you!” he said back to me. “You used to be my doctor in Guelph.”
Last time I saw this fellow, before I moved cities, he was a squeak of a kid. Now — a wave of satisfaction spread through me. I loved my job. I loved every connection with every patient and every colleague. I felt elated.
“Right over here,” said the next person.
I was now sitting in front of the same nurse who had schemed with me the day before.
“Did you get a shot?” I asked her.
“Yes, just before you came.”
I smiled through my mask. I’m sure she smiled back.
“All legit.”
“Yep.”
The moment itself was a blip. I watched the needle disappear into my shoulder. Just like that. A little squirt of fluid entered my body. I felt nothing. Not even a sting. No trumpets.
Most of the staff had gone home. Since I could, I volunteered to give more injections. There were twenty more doctors eagerly standing in line for their vaccine.
I gave one to the guy who had been right behind me in the line. Then to a colleague from the days when I worked at the University clinic. Then to the anesthetist who had been at the surgery I had needed myself, urgently, two years ago. Then to a resident I had never met before. No doubt I would meet him again soon, though. This was my community I was helping. I was ebullient. We all were.
When I was done, the young man who had been my patient checked me out.
I came home, exhausted. Full of joy and relief. I got my leftover dose. This pandemic was a different thing for me, now. I had found the escape hatch.
And yet here were some other, unexpected things: I now felt a little sadness and I noticed a growing, dominating sense of guilt. Worse days were coming. Many of my colleagues still weren’t vaccinated. Nor my family. There were still months of ducking and covering, for all of them.
If I am one of the fortunate few, I thought later, then I will make myself worthy. I will put this vaccine to work.
When I checked WhatsApp the next day, there was a new message. “Who can help vaccinate long term care residents, in their homes?”
You know I signed up.
