The Madness of Crowds

The grocer had run himself ragged, and to the brink of bankruptcy, helping others. As had Sarah the baker. As had Olivier and Gabri, making meals for the elderly, for families who’d been thrown out of work. For children whose school food program was no longer an option.

Myrna left books on doorsteps, of friends and strangers, practically emptying her store.

Donning masks and slathering on disinfectant, villagers had delivered meals and medicine. Books and puzzles.

Standing outside, often in the bitter cold, they’d talked to frightened and lonely elderly men and women, through closed windows. Trying to reassure them. And themselves.

All would be well.

They returned home each evening. Exhausted. Bewildered by the speed at which all they’d known was crumbling. And not knowing how bad it would get.

So fragile was life that they could be killed by a cough.

And they were among the lucky ones.

Armand and Jean-Guy were not.

They, along with all those on the front lines, were working sixteen-hour days, coming into contact every hour with people who were desperately sick and needed help.

At the end of their days, Armand and Jean-Guy couldn’t even go home to their families. They had to isolate in Montréal, for fear of spreading the virus.

Every morning Reine-Marie would send Armand her favorite short video. Of the bells in Banff. The clapping in London. The singing in Italy. The retrievers Olive and Mabel. The funny. The profane. The moving and inspirational. And the just plain silly. So that he’d go back into the day with a smile.

And every night, often well past midnight, Armand would place the video call. She could see, in the window behind him, the cheerful posters Florence and Zora and Honoré had made for their grandfather.

As the days and weeks and months went on, he looked increasingly haggard. As did she, she suspected.

And then came that night. He’d called later than usual. And he looked like hell. He looked like death.

“Are you sick?” she’d asked, her voice rising. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

He shook his head but couldn’t yet answer. He’d looked at her, pleading for something. For help?

“What can I do? What’s happened?” She reached out, but instead of his warm, familiar face, her hand touched the cold screen.

As she watched, he lowered his head and, covering his face with his hands, he sobbed. Finally, he raised his head and lowered his hands and told her.

About getting the call to go to a nursing home. When he’d arrived, he found the daughter of a resident standing in snow that had drifted across what should have been a shoveled path to the front door. But it hadn’t been cleared in days.

Her eyes were wide in shock. He put her in his warm car, then called for help.

On the windows he could see the signs of what had happened inside. Not happy hopeful rainbows, but something else smeared on the glass.

Putting on personal protective equipment, he’d gone inside alone.

As he opened the door to the building, he recognized the smell even through his mask.

He didn’t describe to Reine-Marie in detail what he’d found. But he’d told her enough, and she’d seen the subsequent news reports to know that all had been as far from well as it was possible to get.

The most vulnerable. The weak. The infirm. Those who could not care for themselves had been abandoned. Left to die. And die they had.

Armand had been the first in and last out. Staying with each man and woman, each body, until all had been removed.

He’d immediately sent teams to other nursing homes, until all of them had been checked. And all the horrors uncovered.

It was a shame he’d carry all his life. Not that he himself had abandoned these people, but that Québec had. Quebeckers had. And he, as a senior police officer, hadn’t realized sooner that this could happen in a pandemic. That this could ever happen. Here. Here.

Not given to conspiracy theories, Armand had, nonetheless, formed and harbored a suspicion that while authorities hadn’t actively hastened the deaths, hadn’t intentionally turned their backs, neither had they chosen to look in that direction. No one had been in a hurry to use precious and increasingly rare resources on those who would die soon anyway.