We have evolved. The school year started in August 2019. Phillip was an English teacher at a Language Institute, and I welcomed the new academic year as a curriculum writer at an all-girls’ school in Dubai. By October, I was made redundant and found myself swimming in uncertainty. In December, we moved home to America after almost 8 years overseas. By January, we were both searching for work, and in March, we thankfully were both hired as Emergency Medical Couriers.

So in the midst of COVID-19, when most people were starting to stay home, we started roaming the streets of Omaha, Nebraska, delivering medicine and medical supplies to homes and nursing homes, and bloodwork and specimens to and from hospitals, blood banks, and the airport.

It’s tough to explain how difficult and yet gratifying this particular “job” really is. It sounds simple enough: Pick up a bag or box. Deliver bag or box. Right!? Well, if you want the short version, yes, that’s it in a nutshell. But for those who want to know more, here’s more detail:

Take today, for example. I was out for a morning walk at 9:30 am, working my plan to earn my minimum of 30 minutes exercise, take a shower, and eat breakfast. It was not to be, however, because my phone rang. A STAT order had arrived. I had to get home, jump into a work tee, pack a cooler with a few snacks and water, grab my phone, and run to a pharmacy warehouse to collect blood work and drive it in a refrigerated bag to a laboratory downtown. Of course, everything had to be tracked, recorded, and properly documented online–and completed within a one hour window. When this delivery ended, I headed to another Pharmacy in town for their 11 am route, newly assigned to me.

Arriving there, I found 12 orders. Entering the addresses into an email, I sent it on to dispatch. They loaded the information onto my waybill app, and with this app I tracked pickup and delivery and receiving person for all twelve locations. At one house a 100 year old man paid me an 86 cent tip 🙂 to “help pay for that there new lookin’ car!” At another house, I waited while nobody answered the door, even though I knocked hard enough to raise the dead. When I finally reached the client by phone, he answered and shouted, “Everyone knows to use the back door. I don’t answer the front door!” Winding through cigarette butts, trash, dogs, and “stuff,” I finally made it the the proper door and delivered his methadone. This route ended at 2 pm, three hours after starting. Road Warrior, another app, had predicted the route would take only 1 hour and 49 minutes. That’s typical. By the time you talk to clients, make them feel valued, stop at every red light across town, and wait for people to answer their doors (or not)…it takes a long time!

Anyway, I finished the 11 am route with just enough time to transition to my regular 2:30 route at another pharmacy, I ate cold oatmeal and a banana from my bag for breakfast.

The 2:30 route was small today. 4 boxes. Spread out across town, yes. But doable. I was done by 4:00 and ran to Whole Foods. We were out of Almond Milk, and Philip Kyle wanted to make granola but needed oats and maple syrup. I managed to drop off the groceries at home and pick up my other half at 4:30. We raced across town in my car to borrow a second car since our trusted and favorite and paid-for vehicle (pictured above) just had its motor completely thrashed by a bad fuel stop in the middle of nowhere USA a few weekends ago. But personal problem aside, we’ve contracted for certain hours and specific routes, and the job must get done. So today, thankful to borrow a family member’s car, we focused on the tasks at hand, and I slurped down a green juice while driving to our next stop. We arrived at 4:57 for our 5 pm route. Whew!

This time piles of boxes awaited us. First steps included: sort boxes for South and North sides of Omaha. Email dispatch. Await orders to arrive on required phone apps. Wait for forever for all of our boxes to be ready.Finally, at 5:54, I started my route and Phillip started his, aiming to arrive at the UPS hub before it closed at 6:30.

Listening to podcasts, completing online paperwork, listening to talk radio, and following GPS directions filled the next few hours, and when Phillip finished his deliveries, he headed to Falls City, a 3.5 hour round trip journey on his schedule. I found myself on yet another STAT pickup, and wearily, I noted the time: 8:50 pm. But instead of driving home, I headed to the office. Today was payday, and I hadn’t had a second to collect our checks.

Collapsing on the couch, eating a bowl of granola, and watching a recorded episode of The Voice finished my full day. Phillip stopped by on his return from Falls City and started his night dispatching/driving shift by 10:30 pm. No sooner had he poured his own bowl of granola than the phone rang–time to drive to Fremont, STAT!

So here I am, too tired to write creatively. Too tired to write at all. But I’m determined to share. After all, our job is essential! People wait in their homes for our arrival– some needing end of life care medication. Others need food for their stomach pumps. Still others are facing months of recovery from injuries and illness. One man tripped over his black dog, broke his foot, had surgery, got an infection, and now faces amputation of his foot. At some homes, sick children peek out from behind their mother’s legs. At other houses, children answer the door, taking the medication to their sick parents. Sometimes, we are told to go collect a pump and are met by adult children simply saying, “Here. We don’t need this anymore. Mom died yesterday.”

And so it goes. For a medical courier, the needs are endless, the hours are long, and the jumbling about on crappy roads for 9-12 hours a day takes its toll on one’s back. Sometimes you go hours without eating, though passing fast food joints all day long. You wear your mask, fog up your glasses, and wonder if you can even breathe in the heat and humidity. You endure temperature checks, hand washing, and many questions at every nursing home or hospital entry point. But you smile, and you cheerfully deliver the supplies, because you realize how fortunate you are to still be healthy and able to work at all in these crazy, COVID-19 times.

It’s midnight now. And tomorrow, I’ll get up and do it all over again. And the next day after that as well. The work-wheel churns incessantly, and I hang in there. Because for now, this job matters. Peoples’ lives matter. And I’m out there, along with many others, putting my life on the line so that others can have what they need, when they need it. If this means meeting Delta airlines at 10 pm so that a blood bank can get blood ready and to a hospital for a surgery patient, so be it. If it is medication for your mother in memory care, we are there. If your beautiful, red-headed teenager is terminally ill, we call in advance to arrange our arrival. If you are 89 and take ten minutes to answer your door with your walker, we smile and tell you to have a good day anyway.

So yep, this is what we do as medical couriers. We are mostly behind the scenes, witness to the strength of families and the dedication of so many home health nurses and aides. We see the best nursing homes…and the worst. We crawl the scary night hallways of hospitals to deliver urine to the pathology laboratory. We remember which doors to enter, and we know when you want us to basically sneak your boxes to your front porch at 10 pm when prying neighborhoods have mostly gone to sleep. We’ve taken our Sunday afternoons to drive 2.5 hours one way to make sure your daughter gets her meds when she’s at her dad’s house for the weekend. And we are grateful that we have the opportunity to spend part of our own lifetime making your lifetimes better.