Imagine this.
Your father is dying from Covid-19. He is being wheeled into the ICU for emergency rescue. You are chasing after his gurney pushed by a team of emergency medical workers running through the hallway of the hospital. He’s now in the ICU room and you’re shut out.
You cannot enter not because you are the daughter and an outsider. You cannot go in because you are part of the medical team. You are an insider.
Just like the rest of the team, you are in full hazmat gear covered from head to toe, not an inch of skin exposed. But when the door is finally open, you are about to lose it. Your father died. You want to see his face one last time. You are tempted to take everything off, but you can’t. Your teammates are holding you back, restraining you as you yelled. They are stroking your back and your arms as you scream “papa.”
“Don’t get so upset. Stay strong. Keep calm. If you break down, what will happen to us?”
Your medical teammates need you.
Your country needs you. Your comrades need you.
You are in Wuhan, China.
Ok, you can stop imagining now.
What I’ve been describing here are the opening scenes of “76 Days” – a harrowing documentary chronicling what it looked and sounded like inside a Wuhan hospital during the Covid lockdown.
New York-based award-winning filmmaker Hao Wu worked with two co-directors -Weixi Chen and another who remains anonymous – who are reporters on the ground in Wuhan risking getting contaminated themselves while filming in PPE and taking very few bathroom breaks. They’d gained unprecedented access to not only the hospital but to countless intimate and intense moments where their camera becomes your eyeballs. You see up-close and personal the desperate life-saving operation, as well as the methodical and clinical arrangement once death is certain and the post-death sorting and sanitizing of personal belongings can begin for patients’ families to come and claim.
During the screening of “76 Days” at the Boston Asian American Film Festival earlier this month, I found myself speechlessly stoic, almost zen-like sitting on the edge of my chair. I wept inside when the daughter wailed after her father died. I cringed at the sight of a massive crowd jammed up against the closed door of the hospital. All were waiting for their names to be called in one by one. Everyone was desperate. The hospital staff kept their poise. Even as they took breaks to eat or exhale from exhaustion, their composure never broke. Their absolute dedication to their life-saving mission was palpable.
Besides the incredible access which allowed the camera to capture scenes that felt like real-time as they unfolded – from a senile but mild-mannered elderly man who repeatedly insisted on going home yet succumbed to honorific cajoling by staff who acted like his grandchild to a crying woman who feared the worst for her family and society at large – what struck me most in “76 Days” was the calm, courtesy and civility throughout the chronicle of pain and grief as well as the angst and joy after a baby was born. The longing for hope was matched by the beginning of a new life delivered by a soft-spoken caring nurse.
At times, I found myself asking is this real?
Of course, this is. “76 Days” is a documentary.
But what I was really wondering was the absence of blunder or brawl that may naturally accompany any stressed-out families separated by Covid-isolated hospitalizations. The absence of a bloody mess or clash or conflict between people and the fumble-free orderly manners of the hospital staff at times felt uncanny.
The tone and tenor of 76 Days is a far cry from the finger-pointing, scare-mongering Covid-coverage that I was used to watching on American TV news or in social media. The point was I felt right to expect emotional outbursts, vociferous complaints because I’d consumed so much of it on the air and online. I also began to question whether there was self-censorship in 76 Days. Is this humanly possible that there was no panic? Did any doctors and nurses worry about anything? Were they hiding their fear in silence?
When I consider these questions, I realize what I was noticing was the different responses to the camera in times of chaos and crisis. In the Wuhan hospital, people know they are on camera and they act as if they must show things are under control. But for American news or documentary shows, the camera wants to show you just the opposite. People play to the camera, acting or speaking out what’s wrong with the system, who’s to blame or what is at stake. There is a lot of heat as if inflaming emotions is the only way to illuminate darkness, end injustice or stop the pain.
In “76 Days”, hospital workers behave like a model citizen army fixing their eyes on stopping the advance of the enemy – the Coronavirus. Their highly organized, harmonized, and mechanized approach to the process of life-saving and post-death family contact may be dubious, but it is also indispensable and desirable.
We want caregivers to comfort and even coddle us when we’re in a life or death situation.
We crave attention and understanding when we’re fighting for our last breath.
The exemplary conduct of the Wuhan hospital team makes me think of the countless selfless frontline workers in America who do that as well. But they don’t saturate our airwaves, the big screen, or social media. And they don’t get enough recognition they deserve.
At a time when we’re experiencing a second wave Covid surge in Europe and in the U.S, especially after the White House told us “we cannot control the pandemic” because the virus is like the flu they can only try to contain, “76 Days” offers a glimpse into humanity at its best. It is a reminder that we can practice self-control. We can care more for one another, like family, like neighbors because we are all in this sea of troubles together even as we are in different boats. We never know which way the winds may blow, but Covid is the common storm; we must ride it out together for the common good
(Note: “76 Days” is to be released on MTV Documentary in the Winter 2020-21. A special thank you to Hao Wu for permission to use the photo and video clip for this blog.)