1. Christy talked to Everett's nurse this evening and she talked with Everett. The news is encouraging.
For starters, he did not experience Covid symptoms today.
His medical team decided to remove the NG tube from his nose, the one that they used to feed Everett. Today, Everett started a liquid diet.
The abscesses are still draining and on Friday Everett will be administered a CAT scan so his team can see how much abscess remains. His antibiotic regimen continues.
At the same time that Everett says he wants to go home and that he wants a beer, in phone conversation with Christy, he tells her he understands why he's in the hospital and why he can't go home.
Until the abscesses clear up, Everett will stay in the hospital.
Christy also reports that today, on the phone, Everett sounded stronger, could hear her better, and dropped an Everettism on Christy. Christy asked how he felt, and he said, "Not too shabby!" Classic.
Christy's Covid test results have not come back. She's in conversation with a social worker about support for Everett once he returns home. Christy plans to return to the hospital on Saturday to deliver some things and pick up others. She'll spend Friday continuing to prepare the house for Everett's return.
2. By the time I put down The Pillars of the Earth today, I'd finished about three quarters of the book. As a reader of fiction, I rarely, if ever, try to anticipate what's coming up and so, if a writer's hope is to surprise the reader with things that happen, I'm the reader the author wants. Several turns in the story surprised me as I read today and, along with these pleasures, I enjoyed how Ken Follett's plot turns not only move the story forward, creating momentum, but they deepened the development of prominent characters in the story. Yes, some of the characters persist in being single dimensional, not because Follett is failing as a writer, but because he's exploring the arrested development of these men, exploring the dangers of their prolonged immaturity, lack of self-control, and self-centeredness. Other characters grow. They examine flaws within themselves. They rarely act only with self-interest in mind. The experience a complex of emotions.
I'll just say, without providing plot spoiling details, that the epic sweep of this novel grew today when the action, for some characters, moved across the English Channel into France and Spain. It's fun.
3. The temperatures haven't been that low, but the late autumn rain is chilly and the shorter days seem to increase the chill with their longer hours of darkness.
I'm grateful for tea, whether it's English Breakfast, Bengal Spice, Lemon Ginger, or just plain Ginger tea. Reading a long and winding novel and drinking cups of tea, warms me, comforts me.
Later in the evening, after dinner, I took a break from tea and warmed myself with a cup of hot chocolate. No rum. No brandy. Just hot chocolate and digging deeper into the challenges of life in 12th century England, enjoying my comfortable home while at the same time being transported far from it.
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