#MOC19: One Bad Night

1.
It’s eleven-forty-five on the last Saturday night in March, nineteen days into my isolation. I’ve been lying in my bed for fifteen minutes, trying to will myself into sleep. But something’s isn’t right.

I feel the wrongness at my core, deep in my gut. It begins as a sense of unease—a conviction that my body has gone awry. Yet for the life of me, I can’t pinpoint exactly what. My soles suddenly feel clammy. I ease my feet over the side of the bed and out from under the blankets to give them air. Now my feet are cool, but the rest of me seems to be growing warmer. Do I have a fever?

Even as I allow myself to wonder, my skin flushes all over. My soles are dry, but the sheets are beginning to cling to the rest of my body. I didn’t feel hot when I got into bed. Maybe my fear is what’s making me perspire. Yet is it fear I feel in the pit of my stomach, then? Or is it something more? Something…contagious?

Is this it, then? Is this the day it happens to me? I thought I’d done everything right. I’d washed my hands, I’d kept my distance. I hadn’t congregated, hadn’t mingled. For nineteen days I’ve been nothing but good. And now—?

What in the world is happening to me?


2.
When did I first hear of this disease? I remember sitting alone in the waiting room of my doctor in mid-January, waiting for my six-month check-up, sleepily regretting my choice of the day’s first appointment. When my doctor finally strides in from the hallway, hand outstretched for a shake, I look up from the news story I’ve been reading on my phone. “Have you heard about this virus from that market in China?” I ask, as I slip the device into my overcoat pocket.

“The coronavirus?” he says. Perhaps it’s a doctor’s habit, but he’s always making statements into questions. “You’ve been reading up on that, have you?

“Is this something you need to be worried about?” Infectious disease is his bailiwick, so it makes sense he’d be drafted into action if this virus spread beyond China. I suppose I’m really asking, though, Is this something I need to be worried about?

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he says, as he maneuvers me into the exam room. “You know, I don’t even know how they test for that, does it even say in there?” He explains that there are standard tests for a variety of viruses, but coronaviruses are so different and exotic that he can think of only one hospital on the east coast that maybe would have the equipment to detect it. While he talks, I roll up my sleeves for the blood pressure cuff and open my mouth for his thermometer. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about right now? But I’ll be keeping an eye on it? But how are you feeling?”

“Great,” I tell him. “I’m feeling great.”


3.
I’m definitely not feeling great. Now it’s after midnight. I’m sweating profusely, but if I don’t move, I can pretend I don’t notice how damp my sheets have become. My feet are now freezing. I pull them back beneath the covers.

Do I have a cough? Am I short of breath? I know the symptoms of COVID-19. My lungs are free of fluid, though, and I can breathe without effort. That’s good, right? That means I’m okay? But this sweat upsets me. I shouldn’t be steaming beneath the blankets like this. The thermostats are programmed to keep the house cooler at night, and my bedroom window is cracked open a few inches for ventilation. On the back of my neck I can feel the cool air from outside. It makes me shiver. Chills—that’s a sign, isn’t it?

Maybe this is it. Dramatic scenes begin to flicker in my head, Me, shivering in bed. Me, coughing and wheezing. Me, wearing an oxygen mask. Me, on a ventilator. I don’t even have a clear picture in my head what a ventilator looks like. But I know they’re scarce, and they’re a last resort. Even the word ventilator terrifies me.

Oh god. I’m starting to sweat even more.


4.
Throughout all of January, the only person concerned with this new virus is the woman who cuts my hair—Melanie, a tiny Latina who never hesitates with her opinions. “I’m turning away anyone with a cough,” she tells me, when I see her a few days after my doctor’s appointment. “You’re not coughing, are you? You better not be coughing.”

“You know the coronavirus isn’t in this country yet,” I say, as she buzzes my head with her clippers.
“You don’t know that!” She stares at me in the mirror and repeats the words. “You don’t know that! I don’t care. If they walk in here and I hear them cough, nuh-uh. Not having it. Someone else can take them.”

She’s laughing when she says the words, but I know she’s serious. I’m laughing, too.

When I return for another trim shortly before my birthday, neither of us are laughing any more. “You know we went to Las Vegas last week,” I say, as I sit down.

“You’re crazy,” she tells me, as she flourishes the apron then fastens it around my neck. “Are you sick? If you’re sick, you’ve got to leave.”

“I’m not sick, I’m not sick. I was careful. I sanitized the heck out of my airplane seats,” I reassure her. “I washed my hands. But you know, we had a layover in Dallas, at O’Hare, on the way out there, for like, four hours. And I was sitting in my seat, watching the TV in one of the lounges, and they said that someone carrying the virus was reported to have passed through O’Hare only the day before…and I thought to myself….”

“You thought to yourself Melanie is right,” she interrupts, lifting the clippers from my scalp.

I nod, and our eyes meet in the mirror. “I thought to myself, Melanie is right.”


5.
Why am I so hot? Is it because I’m lying here after midnight, in the dark, in the quiet, wondering if I have a fever? Will I cool down if I open the window an inch or two more? Worse—what happens if I crack the sill wider and nothing changes?

I’m not a hypochondriac by nature. I don’t balloon colds into life-threatening illness; I don’t experience an itch and investigate WebMD until I’m convinced I have a brain tumor. Ever since this virus, though, I’m constantly on the watch for symptoms. My day’s-end survey consists of a string of self-evaluations: Am I coughing more than normal? Am I unusually short of breath? Am I fatigued? No, am I really fatigued, or am I just everyday-stress-and-strain tired out?

Tonight feels wrong, though. I’d felt fine earlier in the day. My appetite had been healthy. I’d gone for my usual exercise, done nothing out of the ordinary. How suddenly is the coronavirus supposed to hit? All I can think about are the celebrities who’ve been in the hospital, the accounts from the infected of how painful it is for them to breathe, the reports from the medical frontlines of weary doctors and nurses who’ve seen patient after patient flatline.

The longer I lie here, the more difficult it is not to panic. Yet I’m afraid to move. Moving would only confirm how damp I’ve made the sheets. How hot and feverish I really am.

So I lie still, and make mental calculations. How long has it been since my last night out?


6.
It’s the ninth of March. We’ve had these tickets for Company for some time—the new staging, with Katrina Lenk as a female Bobbie and Patti LuPone singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Greenwich has already begun to shut down: the schools have closed, my classes have been canceled. I shouldn’t be taking this risk. But c’mon, it’s Patti LuPone. I can’t imagine not going.

I’ve got strategies, of course. On the Metro North train, I wipe down my seat, and the grips in the headrest in front of me. I sanitize my hands. My ticket’s on my phone, which the conductor reads with a glance. No contact there. During the journey I sit very still and read my book on my device, being very careful not to touch or rub my face. And when I get to Grand Central, I walk cross-town to the theater. No crowded subway shuttle. No cab. Just a straight walk there. Once I arrive, I immediately wash my hands in the restroom, and take my seat.

The theater is crowded as curtain time approaches. Shortly before the lights go down, a couple arrives to assume the last pair of seats in my balcony row. The woman coughs as she sits—a deep, bronchial rattle of her lungs. Simultaneously, everyone in the vicinity swivels their heads in her direction. Every face registers concern. The woman makes a show of covering her mouth with her Playbill, then lets out a smaller, less dire, cough.

Is she six feet away from me? Six-ish. Maybe. The lights dim, and the curtain rises, and I allow myself to forget the people around me.

We walk straight back to Grand Central after. In the archway of Track 27, a man in a trench coat stands reading a newspaper. His face is completely obscured not only by a mask with twin respirator filters on either side of his jaw, but also by what looks like a pair of welding goggles over his eyes. I can’t help but stare. Overkill, maybe?

Melanie might not think so.

As I dig for my hand sanitizer and prepare to disinfect my space on the train for the trip home, I realize that tonight is the last time I’ll be out for a very long time to come.

The next day there’s a report that one of the ushers at the show next door to Company has been diagnosed with COVID-19. My close calls are getting closer. I’d pushed through that show’s crowds on the walk back to Grand Central. Had the usher infected anyone who’d been in that throng—no. I willed myself to stop thinking about it. Anything that had happened, had already happened. I’d find out soon enough.


7.
I can’t stand it any longer. Stewing in my fears and sweat isn’t doing me any good. I at least have to get up and check to see what’s wrong. I fumble for my spectacles on the night stand, swing my legs out from beneath the blankets. I’m definitely covered with perspiration; I can feel the cool air of the bedroom raising goose flesh on my shoulders where my skin is dampest.

Something happens the moment I’m upright. That feeling of vague unease at my core solidifies. My stomach flips, then burns. I have one of those sudden convictions that I need to get to the bathroom as quickly as humanly possible. I pad quickly out of the bedroom, across the hall, and land on my knees in front of the toilet. My abdomen compresses; my chest expands. I begin violently hurling the contents of my stomach into the john.

And yet, the entire time I’m doing it, I’m thinking to myself Oh thank god. Vomiting isn’t a primary symptom. I’ve just got a stomach thing. I don’t care how terrible it feels in those moments to be losing what feels like several days’ worth of meals. I don’t give a rip how awful the ejection sounds. I’m just relieved that in the lottery of symptoms, I hadn’t drawn a dry cough, or shortness of breath. I’m happy that I might have dodged a bullet.

When I’m done, I wipe my face and mouth with a wet washcloth. I rinse with mouthwash. Then, still on my knees, I grab the thermometer from the sink, press the button to activate it, and stick it beneath my tongue. It beeps a moment later.

“Ninety-nine point four,” I say aloud.

Curiously, even after what I’ve just been through, I feel immensely better. I’ve probably eaten something bad, I tell myself; Whatever it was seems to have been purged from my system. More comforting still is the proof I still hold in one hand that my body’s heat isn’t elevated in a serious way. I’ll check my temperature almost hourly for the rest of the night, but I’m okay. A little wobbly, but okay. For now, anyway.

I’ll take that ‘for now,’ though. I’ll take it and try to make it last as long as I can.





This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .