Careful Language

I heard a word today that I haven’t heard since this all began. I heard someone use the word ‘bite.’ They didn’t say it as a joke, and they didn’t use it metaphorically. It was a plain, factual statement made in the hallway. And the most unsettling part? Nobody corrected them. Nobody laughed. Nobody even blinked. It’s as if the word has finally been allowed back into the vocabulary because it’s the only one that fits the reality of what’s happening in the isolation wards. We are past the point of euphemisms. We are into the bone and the blood now, and the truth is finally starting to speak its own name.