The medical center staff put cold compresses under her arms to cool her down. Melvina Musket was hospitalized with a high fever. In the days after Benjamin Musket became ill, nearly everyone in the family tested positive. When the staff saw Benjamin Musket had a heart infection and COVID-19, they flew him to a hospital in Albuquerque, over 100 miles away. In town, the understaffed Gallup Indian Medical Center, run by the federal government’s Indian Health Service, was filled with cases. One day in May, Benjamin Musket started coughing. When they returned home, they wiped down every purchase and took showers. They didn’t shop at their local stores, where too many people neglected to wear masks, instead driving nearly five hours roundtrip to Albuquerque for groceries. Four generations of Muskets lived on a sheep ranch in McKinley County, New Mexico, and her father was an elderly diabetic on dialysis.
The family had been cautious when the pandemic arrived. Benjamin Musket, 80, was a former Marine, a retired machinery mechanic, a basketball coach and a board member at their church. Musket, 52, had never seen her father with facial hair. “Jesus is waiting for you,” she told him. She heard nurses crying in the background. His mouth hung open, his eyes were clamped shutand a beard covered his chin. – Melvina Musket stared at her dying father through the cellphone screen.
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