Where's Alex? By Dr. Mary Black

We meet every morning and afternoon meetings in Public Health Scotland. Since February 2020. We review the new cases, the deaths, the outbreaks, and more recently the vaccination numbers. As a team we decide what we will do next, connect to other teams throughout the day, across Scotland, the UK, out into the wider world. It is intense, you must concentrate and pick up problems to solve.

I said at the end of one meeting. "It’s wonderful… and I’m one of the portraits,’ said Dr Alexandra Stirling, one of my team. ‘Where are you? Which one is you?’ came the chorus of online comments and voices from the Incident Room." I posted the link, and a game of Where’s Wally began as everyone searched for Alex.

As I scrolled through the hundreds of portraits I was bowled over by the diversity of the faces. The techniques used by each artist made my connection immediate. I could imagine lives, shifts, families through those images. Even the sea of NHS blue had rainbows throughout. It buoyed me to know each of those people would have my back at work and care for me if I got ill.

I learned that day Alex, herself an artist had put her own visual arts sabbatical on hold to work an 80 hour week as part of the health protection team for Scotland. I learned that Alex was the one who had knitted small animals that sit beneath the large screen we use twice a day to hold health protection meetings across Scotland.

The Healthcare Heroes exhibition made me appreciate the significance of my own family history – five generations of doctors, and between us an almost continuous working contribution since the start of the NHS. 

It made me look again at each of my colleagues and wonder about their lives, about what they had put on hold to do the relentless, exhausting work, late into the night, as the numbers kept climbing, searching for clues, for answers, for anything we could do to turn the pandemic off.

The emotional connection through the brush marks and the pencil lines, as the artist gaze engages with a sitter engagement, was immediate.