In Which I Finally Contract COVID-19

Why should I get only a mild case, when so many others have died? It's not fair.

Didn't I know, on some level? Didn't I guess?

On Sunday afternoon at Books-A-Million, when I swallowed a mouthful of coffee wrong and java irritated my sinuses for about an hour afterward, couldn't I have guessed? Or that night, when I felt brief but inexplicable spasms of pain coursing down my back as I sat on the couch, watching “Hercules” with my niece, couldn't I have guessed?

By Monday night - or early Tuesday morning - at 2 AM, when I fell asleep with a bottle of throat spray clutched in my hand, didn't I intuit that I might finally, at long last, have caught COVID-19?

Well, frankly, no!

The coffee caused my burning sinuses, I was sure. Backaches? I was sitting in a stiff, artificial position during “Hercules,” trying to keep my feet off of my parents’ leather couch - unlike the way I sit on my own. And I thought my new vape was to blame for my sore throat, or maybe the sleet-y, wet drive from my mom and dad’s house to Indianapolis, where Dave's parents live.

But on Tuesday morning, it took everything I had in me not to stagger out into their living room, cast my eyes down at the carpet, and let loose a wave of snot and a pitiful, “I'm siiiick!” in the manner of a small child who's just thrown up in their bed.

What was I going to do? I really was sicker than I'd been in years. I was so lightheaded that it felt as if I were constantly in the middle of falling over. My sinuses throbbed - my cheeks and jaws pulsed furiously. My throat was absolutely raw. And my whole body ached like I'd been hit by a car. By the way, I actually have been hit by a car. It felt exactly like that.

Finally, these subtle, puzzling clues were starting to add up.

Dave's COVID-cautious parents leapt into action, saving me from having to somehow maneuver myself to the car and safely drive to Walgreens. Though a stack of sick supplies waited in my virtual cart for curbside pickup, I had no idea how I'd ever make the half-mile drive. Thankfully, I didn't have to.

Dazed, I sat at the kitchen table, trying to remember to breathe into my sleeve. Dave's mom zapped me with a thermometer. 97.6 - normal. And I wasn't coughing. Still, her husband emerged from downstairs with an armful of masks and a COVID test. I swabbed my nostrils, then resumed staring into space like a very congested zombie as the result developed.

Someone suggested, very kindly, that I take my contagious ass back to the bedroom while we waited. I felt stupid. Of course.

Fifteen minutes later, a knock. Positive, Dave's dad told me from behind a mask. I should call my doctor back in California and try to get some Paxlovid sent over.

Shiiiiit.

I waited until 11:30, when the doctor's office would open up at 8:30 their time. I called immediately.

“Uh-huh … uh-huh,” said the receptionist. “And how did you come to know you were positive?”

What an odd question, I thought. “My … test said so?”

Silence. Then, “Okaaay. And what made you know you should take a test?”

I recited my symptoms. “No cough, though, and no fever.”

“Uh-huh. Have you ever had a coronavirus shot?”

“Yes. Three,” I said.

Another little pause, and then, bafflingly, a great, galloping burst of laughter. “Wow! Hoo-boy. Okay,” the receptionist snickered. “Someone will call you! Hang in there!”

What was funny about that? I didn't know, and I was too out of it to ask for details. I rolled over and fell back asleep.

This was not how our holiday trip to Indiana was supposed to go!

I don't know why I wasn't more worried about catching COVID from our cross-country drive, from any of my myriad trips inside stores, restaurants, or gas stations, or from any of the social gatherings I've had since arriving. Well, OK - I guess if I'm being pedantic and hopelessly literal, I wasn't worried because I've had two vaccines and a booster. I mean, I've never come down with measles, either - I'm vaccinated! And I've certainly never come down with something I'm vaccinated against at Christmas or New Year's, while staying as a guest in my future in-laws’ home.

So - forgive me my irresponsibility - I'll admit it: I didn't have a Plan B. Plan A was just “don't get COVID,” and it had been working well for quite awhile now.

It’s not exactly that I thought I'd never get COVID. But I did think - and hope - that I could put it off for awhile. Abruptly, I realized that I did put it off for awhile: I avoided COVID for four years. And now, statistics have come for me, too, as they must inevitably come for us all.

That first, awful March was four years ago: does that seem right? How can that be? “Beware the Ides,” indeed.

I still remember when I realized we were in for something serious. Since January, my then-husband had been reading aloud increasingly ominous headlines out of China, which were concerned with the spread of some new kind of virus. He seemed almost captivated - even gleeful - at the idea that this disease might migrate westward and wreak all kinds of havoc here in America. This is because he is an agent of chaos. I am not (well, not usually, anyway), and I'd been putting him off, preferring, by some defect of personality, not to play-act the literal downfall of society in real time.

But by March 9, 2020, I knew I had to listen to him. Yeah, I remember the exact date! That was the day I casually went to my beloved regional superstore chain, Meijer, and was unable to locate hand sanitizer, soap, Clorox wipes, or toilet paper for love or money. And the shortest line I could get in to check out was 23 people long.

I stood there in dismay, not understanding why the store had suddenly become so busy. As my frozen pizza steadily thawed, I pulled out my phone and tried to see what the commotion could be about. This being the Midwest, I guessed that we were in for a late-season blizzard.

That wasn't quite it.

I understood right away that there was no getting out of this until there was a vaccine. I awaited it eagerly, and it made good sense to me to avoid crowds, to shift encounters outdoors where at all possible, and to mask up once doing so was officially recommended. I used curbside pickup. I waved to my parents inside their house as we talked on the phone. I dropped off Christmas gifts on the porch. Nowhere did I see caution against a little-understood disease as a political issue, and I got exasperated with those who did. Being careful just made sense to me.

And so 2020 became 2021, which turned into 2022, and so on. I stayed safe inside my house, which was really a succession of dwellings: my Indianapolis house with my former husband, the RV Dave and I would later rent in Twentynine Palms, CA, after my husband and I had separated, and the apartment where we now live, in Yucca Valley. Add to this approximately 45 individual hotel rooms, each stayed in strictly for fun, and I must say that I've been incredibly lucky.

Or, rather, I've been incredibly privileged.

Post-2020 social theory has taught me to add in this verbal asterisk when narrating the more-than-typically-fortuitous circumstances of my life. How is it that I was able to separate, then divorce, during a pandemic with no loss of income or security - and without getting COVID? How is it that I was not forced into an office or factory or hospital or school, in perhaps the shittiest conditions in living memory, to be worked to breaking and exposed to this disease? How is any of that fair?

It's not fair, I suppose. There's no reason why I, a childless person, should not even get COVID until 2024, when it can be managed, while a beloved husband and father of four tragically contracted a fatal case in 2022. Yes, I know that person, and I bet you do, too. There's no reason I should remain placidly perched upon my couch, safely bingeing Disney movies and “Seinfeld,” while someone else takes their life in their hands to nurse coronavirus patients or to keep school running. I'm not more deserving of safety! If anything, given my comparatively meager contributions to society over the past several years, I might be less deserving.

I don't know why things happen the way they do. I just try to roll with whatever it is.

That's what I'm doing now. It's 8:03 AM, a time I normally prefer to sleep past. (Aha! Privilege!) I've taken my morning Paxlovid; it has filled my mouth with what I imagine is the exact taste of disintegrating moths, such as one might find inside a very old newspaper, or in a shut-up linen closet.

I'm waiting for the pressure in my ears to subside and take the dizziness with it, so that I can go make a cup of coffee without inadvertently walking into a wall. I'm still not coughing. The hit-by-a-car feeling is gone. I just feel like I have a bad cold.

And I'm very grateful. Go ahead, Life: dock points from me in some other area to make up for the undeserved ease of this experience. I totally understand.