It is the first day of a new semester.
We could be at the peak of summer when everyone has already gone on holiday. Or it could be the beginning of a fiction film where humanity has hidden somewhere other than here.
It is the day following the meeting between the Board and the directors of each year of the degree. The day after the statement of the Portuguese Medical Schools and of the University of Lisbon. Schools closed face-to-face classes and replaced them by distance-learning. The number of infected cases has increased and it is necessary to stop the interaction circuit among people so that a still almost unknown virus does not rise above the limits drawn by the human instinct for survival.
New numbers come after new numbers. Italy becomes one of the top countries of most concern in terms of deaths and infections, Spain follows slightly behind.
Without waiting for the joint agreement of partners or competitors, Director Fausto J. Pinto feels that he has civic responsibility, as a tutor, in the face of hundreds of lives under his sway. Later everyone followed him with the same decision. Only later did the Government yield. All schools will close in a few days.
Lesson plans have already been drawn up for all classes from the 1st to the 5th year, all by videoconference. Coordinated by Professor Joaquim Ferreira and with the technical support of the Audio-visual and Informatics Units, as well as with the support of many AEFML students and those responsible for each year, in the first hour of the morning the adhesion was so great that, 15 minutes before the class began, 150 students were online. Not everyone was able to join the class. A few hours later, this problem was sorted out.
Year 6 students conducting their internship interrupt their link to the affiliated hospital. How long will the wait be? Maybe two weeks. Maybe a month? And will the National Medical Board Exam be postponed?
It is necessary to clarify every bodies’ queries and create a document with the most frequent doubts and answers. The challenge is that we know almost nothing, because we have never been in a situation like this.
The evening is approaching. The last study rooms are closed and announcements are removed from the white boards, in a prediction that the election of the new student lists will also be postponed.
It is the beginning of zero day.
Nobody enters the Building and there is finally time for some to get together and drink coffee, while insisting on staying because they do not know how not to spend part of their lives in that area. The bars and libraries are closed and the stationery shop that anticipated queues for the solidarity race is flooded in darkness.
Work goes on while the uncertainty of what else may be ahead sets in. The telephone does not ring. There are no contacts from outside. The cleaning team walks in with bottles of disinfectant and gloves. Phones, mice, tables and keyboards are cleaned, "sorry to bother you miss". “You are not bothering me, you are helping,” I say as I get used to the smell of alcohol instead of perfume. "No, at this moment help only if it comes from God...", Palmira says as she leaves, taking it easy since the situation changes by the hour.
Teams meet in the Audio-visual Unit for training. One needs to know how to handle a conference call. There are teams that work non-stop, as attested by the IT group since it spent all day setting up work systems so that each person can access them remotely. It is necessary to stick posters about hand hygiene on the walls that link the Faculty to the Hospital. It seems that nobody wants to do it. We put on gloves and fill corridors with the feeling that the razor's edge is before us and we try to beat the risk in the same way we try to beat death.
Everything takes place under pressure as if today’s decisions has to be pushed back into yesterday. Team meetings take place after meetings. They're all there. The first jobs are planned for those who will learn information at distance. After all, it is "see you tomorrow", because the work of an entire Institution cannot be completed and reorganized in just 2 or 3 days. "See you tomorrow" is heard at the same rate as the fast keys on the various computers that insist on remaining connected.
A new emergency meeting is called for the following day. Last decisions are announced, the same going for answers to the last requests for help from several students who do not know what to do. Every second matters as if it reminds us that life runs by the second and has obvious risks.
The afternoon invades the corridors. There are no students, no wheelchair patient who always smoked on the same corner, no group of clinicians who drank coffee together. There is nobody. Nobody goes through the images I capture through a lens and my eyes. A lady who has been working at the Faculty for almost 20 years passes by, looking sad, "I feel empty, anguished, it seems that there is something that is not right".
She disappears on the horizon, crying. She tells me she will be back tomorrow because she forgot something. Perhaps the longing... I would say.
Today was zero day, of a new era that forces us to be serious and to realize that we do not command our own will and follow the current of time, deciding at the line of the unpredictable what may be the most sensible thing to do.
Maybe back in a few weeks. Maybe back soon.
Tomorrow is day 1. One day less that has already exceeded zero.
Joana Sousa
Editorial Team