Sean Kirst: Covid pushed him to the brink. The Bills are helping to bring him back.

Washington survived a Covid-19 infection that brought him to the edge. It began with general weakness, with the absence of taste and smell. It quickly became so difficult to draw a breath that Washington asked his brother James for a ride to the hospital.

For 24 days that began in August and ended in mid-September, Washington was a patient at Buffalo General Medical Center, where he spent more than two weeks in an induced coma that he believes saved his life, within intensive care.

 As far as he can remember, his first telephone conversation once he was past that intubation was with his 15-year-old son, Vaughn Jr., and it included this question from a dad who had been shut off from the outside world for weeks:

 “How are our Bills doing?”

Just fine, his son told him, a statement that still holds true in December.

Washington will be watching Saturday as the Bills attempt to clinch their first division title in 25 years during a road game against the Denver Broncos. “At first, it was the only thing I looked forward to,” he said of following the Bills during his recovery.

Not "the Bills." That would not do justice to the connection.

“My Bills,” said Washington, who speaks with admiration of the grit of free safety Jordan Poyer, and "the hunger" of wideout Stefon Diggs, and of the qualities of so many players he respects.

We spoke the day before he went through a second surgery to remedy blood clots, another result of Covid-19. Again and again, he placed his focus on gratitude. Washington thanked his family and all the doctors and nurses at Buffalo General, before offering emphatic appreciation for the hospital's security guards and cleaning people.

From his perspective, they all played a role.

His sister Raquel, a major presence in his life, is also a nurse. Washington remembers when she could not come into his hospital room, how she could only stand at a corridor window and hold up a notepad with “I love you” written in big letters. He remembers hearing a sudden cry of grief in the hallway of a Covid floor, and how he knew someone’s spouse or parent had been lost.

It underlines a belief he finds overwhelming: “I think I had a miracle.” He lived through the ventilator, through blood clots and pneumonia, through haunting virus nightmares when he believed he was on a burning spaceship and could not get off. In recovery, he went to a nursing home for rehab, finally arriving home in late September. At a safe distance, he was able to again greet his closest friends, and his voice cracks as he speaks of the kindness of what they did.

The ringleader in that selfless plan was Wendell Giles, a fellow high school basketball star when Washington was at Sweet Home and Giles at Bishop Timon, in the late 1980s. They eventually played in the same back-court when they roomed together at a small Tennessee college, Martin Methodist. Giles said the way they anticipated each other's thoughts and actions on the floor is not much different from how they interact, decades later.  

They are family. Their teenage sons are close. The Bills, too, are part of that long bond, since Washington and Giles have gone to so many games together they have lost count.

“He’s like a brother and I care about him deeply,” said Giles, who works for the state Labor Department in Albany and is recovering from his own encounter with Covid-19. Last month, he spent 10 days in the hospital, where he needed oxygen and an infusion of the drug Regeneron, though he never went onto a ventilator. “This thing has hit home,” said Giles, whose friendship is one of many things Washington is quick to describe as gifts from God.

In the hospital, Washington learned how Giles and two other old friends - they are content to be identified as Marcus and Rodney - stepped in to quietly handle some of Washington's car payments and other obligations. If not for them, those bills would have awaited Washington, retired from General Motors, once he came home. The story is particularly important to Rev. Frank Bostic, senior pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church, who remembers well when Washington was a small child.

"It's a sad time," Bostic said, speaking of so many people sick with the virus or in day-to-day economic freefall. In Washington's recovery, Bostic finds an element of hope, and a Yuletide template in the way close friends rallied together.

"It serves as an example of what you and I can do," Bostic said.

The entire conversation with Washington revolved around thanks. He spoke of the longtime commitment of his late mother, a nurse, and of his father, who spent years at Republic Steel. He remains grateful for his sister and others in his family, for everything they did while he was hospitalized, and Washington said his first thoughts once he woke up and regained clarity went out directly to his two sons.

As for his Bills, he wonders if they understand how their resilience “gave me hope and gave me something to keep fighting for,” he said.

Three years ago, Washington was at the famous “snow game” against the Indianapolis Colts, shivering beneath a light jacket as the Bills pulled out an overtime win in a full-blown snowstorm. Since regaining consciousness he has watched every game, waking up early on Sundays to contemplate every strength and weakness in that week’s opponent. Without prompting, he offered an assessment of each time Buffalo has lost.

Tennessee? The whole tumultuous start-and-go situation with the virus, he said, had the Bills “a little off.” Kansas City? He thinks if the two teams play again, the Bills will be ready. Of Arizona, and the impossible touchdown pass that beat Buffalo in the final seconds?

You learn from the hardest moments, Washington said, and the win over Pittsburgh leaves him with this conclusion.

“We’re Super Bowl-ready,” he concluded of his city and his team, though such goals rise or fall on much smaller weekly steps.

Addressing the rest of us, Washington does not want anyone to go through what he experienced. He is relieved to know that in recovery he is months beyond being contagious. A vaccine is coming, one he will be happy to receive, but he also asks us to wear masks and maintain safe space until the pandemic truly fades away. 

Looking toward the Broncos, with a division title for Buffalo within reach, Giles and Washington will be on the phone today to fret together long before kickoff. Beginning in the morning and until whenever they rehash the score tonight, they will set aside daily worry about lingering harm from the virus to focus instead on the football team they have followed together since they were kids.

“The Bills kind of take your mind off everything else that’s going on,” Giles said, a simple thing that for at least a few short hours, for these best friends, becomes a cure.