Day 28

The army is slowly withdrawing. They’re now coming in only to help with the early rush, and leave by mid-morning every day.

It feels very quiet, after they leave. The soldiers lend a brisk, purposeful energy to our work here, which is slowly giving way to the more measured pace of seasoned professionals who show up every day to do the same tasks they’ve done for years. The sprinters are passing the torch back to the long-distance runners.

And this, of course, is exactly as it should be. It’s fundamentally a sign of hope, a reminder that this place is not actually a field hospital but a home. We can dare to imagine a future in which the makeshift locker room will be converted back to a recreation centre, when residents will be cared for by familiar faces and not by strangers in space suits. At some point, residents will gather in the dining hall, sit in the sunny garden with their loved ones, enjoy barbecues and concerts that are a distant memory now.

Someday, there will be time to process what happened here, grieve the losses properly and look toward the future. Someday, we will all be back to some semblance of the life we had before.

Won’t we?

Day 29

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