That adorable little granddaughter is on the way. I’m beyond excited. Seeing her happy little face will be a blessing after all this tension and darkness.

My wife’s mother has taken a turn for the worse, contracting COVID and developing pneumonia while in the hospital. According to what we’ve seen, the consistency of application of the hospital’s policies to prevent infectious spread is sorely lacking and depends on who is working and how they feel that day. One person needs nothing but a cloth mask; thirty minutes later someone else is in full HAZMAT.

They go room to room without sanitization; they went from a person with a known infection straight to my mother-in-law’s room, where they treated her and her roommate with no sanitization in between. I’m not a doctor, but even in non-COVID times, I thought there were policies in place against things like that, to prevent the spread of dangerous infections.

Welcome to the Alabama of Ontario.

Target: 700 words
Written: 462 words, novella: The Mungk