Trip - Flash Forward

 

Maria - Happy on Our Trip

I was going to carry on writing about my trip this week, but I can’t face it. I heard today that one of the friends I travelled with has died from coronavirus. It was always great to have Maria on a trip because she loved to laugh and strongly believed that you had to make the most of life. She’d just had her first vaccine shot (Chinese vaccine) the day before we left. Out of the three of us, she was the only one who’d been vaccinated. She felt no side effects, but about four days into our trip, she complained of a tightness in her chest and took things easy (opting out of certain sites if they involved a climb). We all thought it was a reaction to the vaccine.

Several days after we returned, I heard that she’d got coronavirus and was in hospital. She came out of hospital, having oxygen delivered at home, then went back in again because she couldn’t breathe. She had to have oxygen the whole time; sixty percent of her lung capacity was gone. Next, a heart attack. Then she recovered. Then, finally, she died. It’s tragic. And not a nice way to die. It’s hard to grasp.

We assume she must have got coronavirus before she got the vaccine. It’s extraordinary, because she was very careful since she had underlying conditions (eg, diabetes, among others) and was thus high risk.

The other lady I went with also became ill once she returned (clearly something from Maria), but when she went for a PCR test, it returned a negative result. That was also baffling to me. Her symptoms were similar to coronavirus. She recovered.

I didn’t have any symptoms. None. Before I’d heard Maria had coronavirus, I was swimming in the sea quite happily. After I heard, I did my best to avoid infecting anyone (in case I had it and was asymptomatic). I couldn’t see the point in getting a PCR when it was relatively easy just to stay in for a while. Our tour guide also had no symptoms afterwards.

But it makes my mind boggle. We spent four hours a day in the car together for seven days. Most of the time, the window was open and there was a good draught. But not always. A lot of the time, when we had air conditioning instead, we wore masks. But not always (I grew relaxed after a while thinking that if any of us three had it, I was in any case doomed). I sat in the back on my own. Perhaps that helped. I would say I was 1.5m away from Maria; at least I think I could stretch out between where I was and where she was in the car, and I’m 164cm. I had my own room at the hotels. Perhaps all of this helped. But I took an apple from her that she had peeled. We handed things to each other. We ate together. And even if I was a distance away from her in the car, four hours is still a long time. And not even as a one off. It was pretty much every day. Our tour guide was in the same position as me, but diagonally in front of Maria rather than diagonally behind. Maybe that says something. Maybe it was just enough distance (although I sat next to Maria on the day we drove back, which was a long journey…).

It makes me think the superspreader theory has some legs (ie, that most of the cases are due to a few people who, for some reason, spread the virus; whereas the majority aren’t actually that likely to transmit it). My first reaction was to feel invincible. I’d been with her all that time, and not caught it! That feeling has gone and has been replaced by uncertainty – the knowledge of my complete lack of understanding about how coronavirus works (and, let’s face it, even the experts still don’t really know). My mind boggles.

Anyway, I shouldn’t make this about me (it's hard not to ruminate!). If she got coronavirus before the trip, then maybe we can be grateful that she managed to see some more of Egypt in her final, healthy days. Better than having spent them not doing much at home. And she would want to live life to the full. She was quite fatalistic about life. If you die, you die. But I shudder at the thought of having to rely on oxygen to breathe and I understand she was in pain. She was in the intensive care section of the hospital.

But through it all, she still kept laughing and joking. That was her way. That was the way she blessed herself and those who knew her. I’m not sure what’s happening now. I guess she’ll be buried here. These things never seem real. Rest in peace, Maria.