In a Word...Cough

The lady beside me coughed. She coughed with such abandon in that cafe I thought we were back in 2019 BC (Before Covid). Across from the lady beside me, sat her daughter. I assumed she was her daughter. Their features were similar and soon she too was coughing, with similar timbre. Look alike, cough alike, probably related!

I was ... well ... beside myself.

“Why can’t you two ladies have a bit of consideration for the rest of us in these not yet post-Covid times. I’ve had Covid twice, once was really bad, and I DON’T EVER WANT TO HAVE IT AGAIN!” That’s what I wanted to say, but didn’t.

I remained beside the coughing lady and her coughing daughter. A duet, possibly a duette, seemingly oblivious to the rest of us seething polite ones all around. All beside ourselves at the casual carelessness of this viral chorus.

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Earlier this year I told you in this column about my dreaded experience of having a kidney stone. While being prepared for surgery it passed, as all things do. By then I was in a public ward of a big hospital with six beds, each sealed off by curtains. Across from me was an elderly man who coughed with a fluent ease, punctuated only by pauses when he spat volumes of sputum into a container.

“Here I am kidney-stoned beyond endurance and if that doesn’t get me, he-over-yonder surely will.” That’s what I wanted to say, but didn’t.

A woman was ushered quietly into the bed beside me overnight. She too coughed as to the manner born. On a phone she relayed to a suffering relative every detail of her experiences in the hospital up to then and, casually, dropped the Exocet “ ... they brought me here from the Covid ward”.

[ In a Word ... Fame ]

[ In a Word ... Unrequited ]

I so wanted to go home, kidney stone and all. “Covid-19 here I come, right back where I started from.” I would have sung it if I wasn’t so beside myself.

It didn’t happen. I didn’t pick up Covid just a bad respiratory infection.

Nor did I pick up Covid from the lady beside me in that cafe. She left with her coughing daughter and a copy of Tom Hank’s latest book, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.

Cough, “a violent, noisy effort to clear the lungs”, probably from Old English coughen.

inaword@irishtimes.com