"They say I'm lucky. I don't feel very lucky." she thought. 

It's been twenty-eight days since Neva last saw sunlight, outside the entrance to the Emergency room at Newyork Presybyterian in Queens. It's been thirty days since she came down with that despicable "flu". The horrible fever, chills, and the weird absence of both the sense of taste and smell. Not like a dulled sense of taste or smell like most colds, but it's like the "nothing" of taste and smell. A void had replaced those senses, and it was hard to remember even what it was like to taste something.

Neva was a little tall for her age, but not weirdly tall, at 5'9, there were plenty of dudes she could date without looking like a giant, so it didn't bother her being a little tall. She was usually a bit broad of shoulder and athletic looking. You could easily suspect she was on the socker or field hockey team, but you'd be wrong. She hated most sports, except Jiu Jitsu. She had 3 black belts, and had won a few local competitions for her gender and weight class. Though, you wouldn't know it from looking at her today. Today she was a shadow of the person she was a month ago. Her face had become sallow, her eyes drawn in.

She looked down at her arms, she didn't even recognize them. Where there was muscle, now there was weak and scrawny arms. She could almost see her bones through the skin. She did not like this feeling at all. She made a mental note that when she gets out of this hell hole, she needs to hit the gym hard.

Today at 2:16 p.m. Neva woke up. The date is April 21st, 2020. She could remember flashes, and vivid horrific nightmares. 

"I've heard of people having near death experiences," she thought, "but being on a ventilator is more like having a near death experience except in the depths of hell". 

In her ICU invoked "bad trip", she could remember a male nurse, smiling at her as if she were his dinner, or maybe the way a  creepy pedophile might look at a child. He must've been thirty or maybe a little older, he wasn't ugly, but is demeanor took away any attractiveness he might've had. Unmarked time passes and his face begins to morph, his eyes become hateful, full of malice, he  almost resembles a beast. Neva, then noticed he was holding a circular saw and was smiling from ear to ear. 

She looked over and realized his assistant also in a white doctors coat, looked like an evil version of her mom but it couldn't be her. That thing...the evil in it's eyes. It was like some alternate reality lifeless doppleganger version of her mom. It couldn't be her, but then at moments the light in the room would shift from dark and grey to white and bright and the woman would become her loving mom. Then wicked witch of Queens, and back again.  

Then it stayed gray and bleak for a long bit, but she was alone for a bit. There was pain in every ounce of her body, the world was out of focus, and she couldn't see very well. As her eyes came into focus the mom-monster-hybrid was holding her hand out tight against some wooden block. The psycho lab-coat beast was back, with his circular saw. He raised it and began severing her arm off at right above the elbow. Blood splurted everywhere.  

Reassuringly monster-mom rubs Neva's forehead and says: "It's okay baby. Don't worry, you don't need your arms where you're going you filthy little bitch, whores like you do just as well with no limbs at all in hell.". ICU terrors are real and they will fuck your mind up. This false dream was the last image Neva had of her mom as she woke up from her month-long coma. It wasn't real, it was induced by medicine and mechanical ventilation and probably some severe oxygen loss in my brain. But, it really seemed real.  

The nurse was taking vitals, and as she left Neva asked: "Is my mom coming? I need to see her.." she needed reassurance that whatever that "thing" was, it wasn't her mom.  

"Um, well. Let me check on that for you." she said and quickly shuffled out of the room.

"Is she really awake?" Neva could hear her brother's whiny exclamation from the hallway. "Thank God! I couldn't take it if another..." he trailed off. Another what? She wondered. 

A man in his mid-thirties wearing a mask and some sort of face covering that looked like the kind a welder wears said, "I'll walk you in, and we can talk". 

As they walked in, I noticed the doctor looked a oddly like my brother. Same blonde hair, short nose, and one eye hung ever so-slightly lower than the other. The resemblance was weird to say the least. 

"My god sis, did you sleep long enough? For fu..fricken sake you had us worried." 

"Well, you can never get enough beauty sleep, and the way I feel, I probably could use another decade."

"Where is everybody? I mean, I just woke up from a bloody coma. I had some mysterious virus named after a damn shitty brand of beer. Where's mom?"

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Nevaeh, I'm Dr. Reed. You're mom wouldn't leave your side. She was pinned to that chair." he pointed to a small office chair next to my bed. 

"Call me Neva..."

"Sure, um Neva. Well, about a week, after you came in, around 3-4 in the morning, the respiratory therapist attending you, noticed she'd fallen over and was in distress.  It seems a blood clot had become lodged in part of her lung, it's something called a..." he paused to cough and clear his throat. My brother worriedly took two steps away from him.  

I scrunched my nose at my brother. 

"Pulmonary emobolism...", she finished his sentence. Neva had a weird obsession with medical facts, she knew pulmonary embolisms can be fatal and were bad news. 

"Is she okay?" she asked, afraid of the answer.

"The respiratory tech called a code blue, and helped get her stabilized. Unfortunately she had covid-19 herself, nobody knew and there was more than just one blood clot. It seems multiple tiny blood clots is a new symptom that nobody had really seen much of or documented before.  There were too many clots all throughout her lungs and all over her body. I've never seen anything like it. i'm sorry Neva, she succombed 3 days later. That was about 13 days ago."

"Did I make her sick? Did I give it to her?" 

The Dr looked at my brother. 

"Answer me! Did I do this?".

"It's really hard to say, it's everywhere right now. She could've gotten it from a vending machine, or just the air ducts. There's so much we don't yet know about this virus. I'm sorry."

"Neva, I'm sorry. You know mom loved you..." Jeremy began to say.

"She was a monster..." I cried. 

"What do you ..."

"In my dream, or waking nightmare. I can't stop seeing this evil maniacal version of her standing over me, while some crazy doctor cuts off my body parts with a circular saw. I know it wasn't her, but goddamnit it was so real it's the last thing I remember."

"It was so vivid, so real. Fucking christ! She was dying and I was dreaming she was some serial killing mad-woman. WTF is wrong with me??!"

"Sometimes, being in the ICU, hooked up to machines on strong drugs to keep you paralyzed and pain-free, it can cause hallucinations. Medicine's come a long way, where before we might lose 30-40% in the ICU that number has dropped to maybe 4-6%, unfortunately there are side-effects to the technologies we use to save lives. I'm sorry you experienced that. It's very real, it's very scary, and I know many who've been changed by the ICU for life, I highly recommend you talk to a mental health professional when you leave to work through it."

"Yeah, thanks doc. Can you please leave me alone now."

"Yes...If you need anything just ask the nurse to page me. I uh, knew your mom a long time ago. She was remarkable, then and seeing the children she raised, well, it seems she remained pretty remarkable." What the fuck was that supposed to mean she thought, as she again compared the resemblance of her brother and this man, there couldn't be something between her mom and this guy, could there? 

"I'll be outside if you need me sis..."

"Where the fuck do you think you're going? I told him to get lost, you're not going anywhere! Take a seat Pete!"

"Damn it Nev! My name's not Pete."

"Well douchebag doesn't rhyme with Seat."

"Goddamnit! that's not my name either!"

"Well, what rhymes with Jeremy?" he shrugged.

"I know, unbearably!" she said and gave a soft smile. It was nice seeing Jeremy, he was out of town on business since January, she was glad he was back.

"Was there a ... funeral?" Neva asked gingerly. Almost unable to get out that last word. 

"Sort of, but not really. It's not fair Nev. None of this is fair." He said, tears in his eyes. "At least, I have you. We're all that's left now. Just the two of us."

"Well, I'm not planning on going anywhere now that I'm back with the living. What did you mean by 'sort of'".

"Well, it was a video funeral. We couldn't be allowed near her body, lest we catch what killed her. The funeral home set up a webcam and we said our goodbyes over something called Zoom. Some sort of brady-bunch like video chatroom or conference calling thing. Then they cremated her, we really didn't have a choice on that either."

"Oh... how many people were in the chat?"

"Maybe 10 or so. Some of Mom's coworkers, aunt Jules. Dr. Reed even showed up for a few minutes. People said some remarks, a catholic priest gave a euology, and that was it."

"Oh... 10 people. Mom was only missed by 10 people?" ... She felt a lump grow in her chest and throat. She hadn't known her mom was that lonely.  

"Well, a lot's going on in the world, I mean... shit's really hitting the fan everywhere. The firm mom worked at has moved completely work-from-home, and they had to let go like 15% of the staff. Every bar and restaurant in the city is closed except for pickup or delivery. The whole city is on lockdown,it's like fucking martial law."

"Seriously?" 

"Yeah, the world turned into a dystopian novel overnight, Neva."

"Bleh, maybe I should've stayed asleep...Hey, can you hand me my phone?" 

"Sure."

He sat in silence watching her intently, like she was about to break into a million pieces. After awhile she called him out on it, and he grinned, and started scrolling through reddit on his own phone. She did the same. After a few minutes he pulled a  wireless bluetooth speaker out of his backpack and turned on some rock music. He offered her a twizzler but just the thought made her stomach gurgle.

They sat mostly in silence the rest of the afternoon, but it was good not being alone in this cold place, where her mom had died. Around dinner-time, he put on a face mask and said he'd be right back. He came back with a pizza, he'd ordered online. Pizza sounded good, but she still couldn't smell, she wasn't even sure she could even taste. Come to think of it, she couldn't remember tasting any of the food they brought her to try the past day or so. 

She grabbed a slice anyways and started munching on it. It made her tummy feel funny, so she slid it back in the box. 

The next morning when she woke the sun was shining but Jeremy was gone. There was a note on the pizza box. "Sis, had to run home for a bit. Be back later. Get some rest."