Autor:    Julián Silva Puentes

ÓMICRON

—If I had known we would get this bad, we wouldn´t have gone to that party —I told Diana yesterday when I felt like I was going to pass out in bed.

Before the Omicron, I didn´t think it was possible to pass out while sitting on a stable surface. Today, I don´t know what to believe, because I swear, I passed out in bed yesterday when I was watching TV. It also happened to me while I was working on the computer on Sunday and in the shower, it almost happened to me. There I was not sitting, and surely it would be very painful. But I didn´t fall because I sat down before I lose consciousness.

Today is not the day of fainting because today it was the turn of Vertigo. Interestingly, Vertigo keeps me on my toes and that´s why it never catches me off guard to take me down to the floor. If I get out of bed, and I´m afraid I´ll fall flat on my face, I crawl with my back against the wall until I reach my destination, where I take the place, I won´t get up from in all day because the spins of Vertigo inside my head are quite annoying. Then I stay in the same spot, staring at a fixed point all day until I feel it´s safe to get up again.

Today´s Vertigo is not like the one I normally get. Today´s Vertigo has to do with that wonder of nature, the variant of Covid 19 called Omicron that has given humanity so many surprises just when we thought we were beginning to get out of it. Today´s Vertigo is enhanced by ten days of fever, heaviness in the chest, tiredness that I did not imagine feeling before suffering such horror, burning eyes, and the most vivid nightmares I have ever experienced. That feeling of suffocation, so similar to sleep apnea, is accompanied by some terrible event at the most dreamlike moment of the night. So you think you´re drowning in an avalanche and jump on the bed.

—Are you well? —Diane asked me.

—I thought I was drowning —I replied, feeling my chest rise and fall, trying to remember what it´s like to breathe normally.

Actually, I´m not bad at all if I compare myself to the fatal victims of Covid 19. My friend Ricardo died last year, as well as two colleagues from my old job. All of them under 40, left without saying goodbye because death comes without warning. The Covid has been warning us for almost 24 months and it seems that it will continue for a long time. Would they know? My friend Ricardo and the thousands of people who followed in his footsteps should not have known that 2020 and 2021 would be his last year. And that is the worst of all: not knowing. Not knowing what awaits us when we hug on New Year´s Eve and wish each other all kinds of beautiful things for the future.

Now it´s time for an embarrassing confession: the first time I heard the name Omicron, I thought it was one of the villains from the much-talked-about new Spider-Man movie. Due to I stopped watching superhero movies so long ago, I didn´t pay attention to the matter and went on with my life. Later it became clear that it was a new variant of Covid, and I kept myself from asking stupid questions. Anyway, I gave little importance to the matter, because after 2 years of the pandemic I had not felt sick. Last year I tested positive, but I didn´t suffer much. So, I thought I was above people who lie in bed for 15 days to recover. Or above the people who lose their lives.

My friend Vertigo woke up this morning with me. In the absence of an alarm clock, Vertigo warns me of the new day by violently shaking my head. I am not speaking literally, please understand, because Vertigo does not exist to the extent that Diana exists, or the house cat exists. That´s why I write Vertigo with V in capital letter, as if it were a proper name, because more than a health condition, it´s a creature that follows me everywhere no matter how fast I run.

Now, thanks to my new friend Omicron, the Vertigo has tripled its powers to the point where it makes me want to cry from how dizzy I feel. And it is that sitting, lying down, or standing on my hands, the world has been spinning around for three days and three nights. Interestingly, I can work better than usual, well not usually because it is the first time in my life that Omicron visits me. Last week, I had a fever of 39 degrees that almost prevented me from working. I say “almost”, because the type of employment I have does not allow me to convalesce or take breaks or anything that takes hours away from my contractual obligations. I´m a service provider, that´s what I´m trying to say, and like the slaves of old, I don´t have work hours because all hours are business hours whether it´s Sunday, Monday, or if I have Omicron.

That´s a positive thing about Vertigo: it helps you concentrate better. Last week I had such a fever that I barely managed to answer a dozen requests. In any case, even though I did not stop nodding on the keyboard, I was a good slave because I did my duty despite the great discomfort that afflicted me. I got to the point where I started writing this, which I didn´t think possible under such conditions.

—Lie down on the bed! —Diana told me when she saw me drooling in front of the computer.

—And what about my new contract? —I replied, closing the matter.

What I tried to tell Diana, and of course she understood, was that my contract ends these days, and logically I need a new one, so I must work harder, because one false step and the Administration will decide that someone more dedicated can work more and better. Even sick you have to work because things out there are not easy at all and poor devils capable of doing whatever it takes to not starve, are what is leftover.

Needless to say, I´m one of those poor devils because I know what it´s like to be unemployed for a year. Waking up in the morning and sending out 20 resumes to webpages job search is the fastest path to an existential crisis. You get to the point of questioning your life and all your decisions because you don´t have money to buy a potato snack, much less for the rent. So, you depend on the circumstances to survive and, in a country like Colombia, the circumstances are very rarely favorable.

That´s why I work with or without Omicron and Diana too. She is sick too, but she can´t stop producing. We both look at each other for encouragement, but we are so pale, and our eyes are so deep in their sockets that we prefer to pretend that everything that is happening is very funny, and we smile, not without first commenting on the weather outside our window.

—It´s getting cold again —I tell her, like for saying something.

—Huh?

—The cold —I repeat—. Looks like the cold is back.

—Oh yeah. My feet are cold —she replies.

We each continue with our own, me in front of the window of the room that overlooks the street, and Diana in the dining room. Each one has their job as well as their discomfort. I have a fever and Vertigo, and Diana feels that her chest weighs 80 kilos. She also has a fever, but she has fewer tremors than me. However, we both tremble: I from cold and she from heat.

—I feel like I have a piece of the sun on my back —Diana tells me.

—I, on the other hand, have my hands and feet as cold as ice.

We smile because opposites attract, and we attract each other in “sickness as well as in health”. These ten days have definitely been of sickness because the Omicron does not forgive the noblest of intentions. Of course, we are not nobler than the noblest of men, nor more evil than the worst of villains. We are a couple of creatures trying to do the best they can with what they are given. I was given a fertile imagination to live in the clouds and Diana the kind of intelligence that leads a person to the presidency of the Republic. In any case, no matter how presidential our ambitions are, at this time it is almost impossible to do anything other than work with the little energy we have; we stay in front of the computer complaining and falling asleep at times on the keyboard, we can do that. We also drink a lot of coffee to get us back on track, even though the smell of coffee makes me nauseous now. That´s something new: the constant feeling of nausea about some foods and drinks that I used to like a lot.

That´s why I´m writing because I´ve just suppressed the urge to vomit after a good sip of coffee and I dedicate myself to putting one word after another until they miraculously make sense. Or so I imagine. I really don´t have the energy to reread what according to my feverish humanity is a great piece of writing. It will be? Have I captured the fear of not breathing at night and ending up in the hospital, just like so many people in the world? I do not think so. Today I feel much better than yesterday and even more optimistic, because you can be a poor man with no prospects or future one day, and the next one life smiles at you, and you won the lottery. Or you won the Pulitzer without knowing how or why. Everything is possible as long as we can breathe and have the ability to do and say things in this big world of ours. That´s what my good friend Ricardo would say. And that´s what I say now.