The Heart of a Friend, Quentin: After COVID-19
I wanted to share a story about Quentin. A few winters before the floods took the Lyndonville Diner, he stood outside, holding a cup of hot coffee. He had this way of flat-palming the cup, so it wouldn’t burn his hand. His fingers tapped jittery against the paper.
Quentin often pressed his fingers to his neck, just below the jaw, counting his heartbeats. “One hundred twelve,” he said without looking up. “Yesterday it was seventy-four.” He asked me to log it into an app, keeping a running tally of a heart that wasn’t behaving as it should. He’s young, younger than me.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he finally met my gaze, his voice edged with a nervous laugh, but his eyes carried something heavier. “How your heart can feel like it’s still beating, still doing its job, but deep down—you know you’re not okay.” He paused, rolling the napkin into a tight little cylinder. “They say I’m fine. But I can feel it, you know? Something’s not fine. Feels like my blood’s pushing through sludge like the pipes are rusting out.”
Quentin didn’t stay long. He finished his coffee and disappeared into the snowy streets of Lyndonville. I sat there, staring at the napkin he left behind, wondering how many Quentins were out there, counting their beats, waiting for something to break.
He was the first person to welcome us to Vermont. Hardworking and kind, he was going to do all the fix-it work around our house, but after COVID, he never recovered.
Humans aren’t built for slow crises. We’re wired for explosions, tigers in the bushes, and fires we can see and feel. But a slow burn? A pandemic that quietly dismantles your insides while the world moves on? Forget it.
COVID-19 is still here. It’s still killing people, still wrecking lives, and still doing its slow, insidious damage to the body—especially the heart. We’ve moved on because the acute phase is over, but the prolonged and chronic phases? They’re just getting started.
The word “vessel” comes from the Latin vasculum, meaning “small container.” We are little containers of blood, oxygen, and life. And SARS-CoV-2? It’s ripping those containers apart from the inside.
The heart relies on vessels to deliver blood and oxygen to every corner of the body, but the virus doesn’t care. It scars the walls, clogs the highways, and leaves tiny landmines in the system. Even people like Quentin, who “recovered,” are walking around with damaged vessels, their hearts working overtime to push blood through pipes that aren’t what they used to be.
Quentin’s heart wasn’t failing, not yet, but it was struggling. “They ran tests,” he’d said, “and everything looks normal. But it’s not normal. I know my body.” He wasn’t wrong. Studies show that SARS-CoV-2 can cause inflammation and scarring in blood vessels long after the initial infection is gone, setting the stage for heart disease, strokes, and worse.
Quentin’s little game with the napkin got me thinking. Try this: sit still, press your fingers to your neck, and count your heartbeats. Do it every day for a month. If your body’s healthy, you’ll barely notice a change. But imagine your vessels are inflamed, your heart’s overworked, and your blood’s thicker than it should be. The numbers won’t stay steady. They’ll creep up, like Quentin’s, and you’ll feel it—that quiet sense that something’s just… off.
That’s what SARS-CoV-2 is doing to people. It’s not dramatic. It’s not Hollywood. It’s a slow, grinding process that leaves you worse every day, even if you can’t put your finger on it.
This isn’t the first time we’ve faced a slow-moving killer. HIV pulled the same trick, lurking in bodies for years before exploding into AIDS. Back then, the world ignored the warning signs because the damage wasn’t immediate. Now, SARS-CoV-2 is pulling the same con, and we’re falling for it all over again.
Quentin didn’t wait for his heart to give out. He was fighting for every beat, every day, tracking his body’s quiet rebellion on napkin scraps. The rest of us? We’re pretending the clock isn’t ticking. But it is. SARS-CoV-2 isn’t done, and the damage it’s causing will ripple out for decades.
The question is, will we learn from history? Or are we doomed to watch it repeat itself, one heartbeat at a time?
Love always,
David