Monday: I pick up The Kid at her Co-Parent’s for a pediatric cardiology appointment. Since she got sick, in CoronaWorld’s first two weeks, her heart on occasion races like mad for no reason: when she gets out of bed, sitting at the dinner table, standing in the shower. Sometimes she gets light-headed. Her pediatrician ran blood tests, which came back normal; her blood also tested negative for Covid-19 platelets. We set up this appointment to learn more.
The Co-Parent warns me: The Kid’s likely to underplay her symptoms.
“Mom. That’s not true. It’s just that you overdramatize so much.”
“I don’t think I do. But I hear you say that I overstate. And from my perspective, you understate.”
“But that’s just to balance you out!”
“What about what you said this week? When you tried to convince me you didn’t even need to go to this appointment?”
“I can help you out there,” I interject. “It’s probably what I say every time I have a doctor’s appointment: ‘Why should I go? I hate doctors. They’re either going to tell me I’m fine, in which case I’ve wasted my time, or that I’m sick, which I don’t really want to know. I’ll probably get better without them. Or I’ll get really sick, and then I'll go. The appointment is stupid, doctors are stupid, and the health care system in this country is a nightmare. I’m staying home.’ Does that sound about right?”
The Co-Parent nods, looks at The Kid, points at me: “That is you, two days ago.”
The Kid smiles.
“I don’t know where she gets it,” I say.
In the event, The Kid gives an excellent report to the cardiologist: not overly dramatized, not underplayed: factual, even reporting.
“That’s very helpful,” says the doc, in his 30s, dark curly hair. I’m inclined to like him.
He puts stickers on her, attaches wires for an electrocardiogram, apologizes for his fumble fingers. Normally this would be handled by a nurse; they're keeping staffing at a minimum.
“But you’re back in business,” I say.
“For a bit more than a week,” he says. “This is a good time to see a doctor — our offices are empty. No waiting.”
The EKG is normal. His instinct: orthostatic hypotension, a normal condition for many adolescents, especially in the midst of growth spurts. It often happens in showers; the body relaxes, blood vessels open, blood flows to the lower limbs, the heart temporarily freaks out, thinking it needs to speed up to generate sufficient flow' sometimes teens faint. But after a few seconds, the heart returns to normal. After a few years, the episodes stop; no long-term conditions accrue.
Still, he wants to monitor her heart. He attaches a Zio Patch, which we’ll mail back in three days; The Kid has to keep a journal, especially if she has an episode.
Relief all around.
I ride my bicycle over to The Girlfriend’s around 7 p.m., passing Fulton and Bedford to see if anything’s left of a protest action scheduled to start at 5. I see a woman in her 30s walking on Franklin, cardboard “Black Lives Matter” sign in one hand, 4- or 5-year-old girl asleep on her shoulder. Soon after I start passing young people in twos and threes, all in protest black, walking away from the intersection. Everyone’s calmly leaving; the action is over.
On Fulton, I see in the glass windows of my wine store, a food co-op handmade “Black Lives Matter” signs: last-ditch looter protection. A cycling fitness business has done them one better:
Mom calls just as The Girlfriend, The Son, and I are finishing dinner. She's holding back tears. “Are you all okay in Brooklyn?”
We’re at The Girlfriend’s apartment, a notable CoronaWorld fact after she spent 11 weeks at mine. Now that her eldest child and their partner have flown to California, The Girlfriend has her space back; she’s spent the last two days cleaning and organizing, beyond happy to be home. She and The Son went to Trader Joe’s today (the line extending only a half-block, or 10 minutes); she cooks sausages, corn-on-the-cob, a simple salad, a Trader Joe's key-lime pie for dessert.
I retreat from the dining room table, tell Mom we’re fine, ask why she’s upset. She tells me she doesn’t understand why the president walked across the street to stand in front of a church with a Bible.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been following the news for a few hours. What?”
She says the president stood in the Rose Garden threatening to use the U.S. military to crack down on protestors if a city or state doesn’t take action he deems sufficient. While he was speaking, federal officers used flash grenades and tear gas to clear peaceful protestors from Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, about 30 minutes before a Washington, D.C., curfew. Once the park was cleared, Trump walked across the street to St. John’s Church, damaged by fire a couple of nights earlier, held a Bible in the air.
“Wait," I say. "You mean he wasn’t speaking to protestors? Who was he holding up the Bible to?”
“No one. I mean, just for the cameras.”
“You mean it was a photo op? They cleared the park with tear gas for a photo op?”
“That’s what I gather. What is happening in this country? What is wrong with that man?”
I wish I had a clearer answer for her first question. For the second, I tell her the president is uninterested in governing — it’s beyond his capacities. He’s interested in two things: 1). Helping him and his friends make money (by putting corporate shills or non-entities in charge of government departments; gutting regulations standing in the way of corporate profits; hollowing out departments of career civil servants whose knowledge might stand in his way; gaming the markets; directing foreign policy, writing laws to benefit his inner circle); and 2). Playing a reality television president, winning each 24-hour news cycle.
“I’ve never watched a reality TV show," she says. "I don’t understand what that means.”
“It’s not important, aside from knowing that his actions are entirely theatre. It’s beyond Ronald Reagan, whose handlers knew how to use TV to make their guy look good. This guy stars in his own TV show; he wants high ratings, he wants the talking heads to make him look good, sound ‘presidential.’ He especially wants to look tough. He got mad when word leaked that Secret Service had hustled him down to the White House bunker Friday night, after protestors breached a barricade or something. On my social media, they started calling him #BunkerBoy or #BunkerBitch. He can’t tolerate that. He had to do something to make himself look tough. I guess this was the answer.”
“That’s … that’s despicable. It’s disgusting.”
“Yes. It is.”
“What will happen to this country?”
“I wish I had a better answer for you. I don’t know how well we'll survive until January. And that’s if Biden wins. If he takes office. Trump’s already laying the groundwork to call the election ‘rigged’ and ‘phony.’ He’s a scared authoritarian. I don’t think there’s a line he won’t cross. I think we’re facing an existential crisis.”
“That’s scary.”
“Yes. It is. I’m scared.”
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