Pandemic

Soon after Bob went back in the hospital again, we started hearing news of strange happenings "out there."  "Out There" referred to the world below us, sequestered in our room on the 7th floor.  Some sort of virus from China.  Some people in the US were coming down with it.

It didn't affect us.  We were in a hospital room.  Everyone who came in put on sanitizer when they entered and washed their hands before they left.  If I stepped out of the room, I used sanitizer (or washed my hands) and put on a mask.  This was normal behavior.

But up there in our bubble, we heard of things.  Stores being stripped of toilet paper and chlorox and rice and pasta.  I called my brother on his birthday (March 13; Bob was in intensive care).  He and his wife had planned on going out to dinner, but she had a cough (allergy season) and didn't want to panic people in a restaurant.  Better to stay home.  Bob was in intensive care; I was in a hotel.  The next morning I go down to the hotel breakfast and the waffle station wasn't there, nor the oatmeal or the fruit.

 I saw a little of it. One of the things that Bob could keep down was tomato soup.  He could get it on his tray but it was thin and watery.  I would go buy the microwave soups that were thick and tasty and had lots of calories.  I ventured out to Publix.  At first it all seemed normal--the deli counter, the produce section.  Then I went to get the soup--and it was rationed at 2 cans per customer. I turn down the paper aisle and the shelves were empty.  Odd.

A few days later I went to WalMart.  There was a limit on how many people could go in, carts were wiped before you got them.  As in Publix, much of it normal, much of it very odd.  No ration on soups but there weren't many on the shelf.  No human check out--it was all self serve.

But I still thought of it as "out there."  It would be all right when we got home.  Although Gill told me that her husband was now working from home.  Her pool had closed.    I heard of restaurants closing.

It moved in.  I had to wear a wristband to show that I was allowed to be in the ward.  If I left the building I had to have my temperature checked to come back in.  The boxes of masks that used to line the hallways were gone.  People had been stealing them so instead they were doled out as needed. (stealing them??  Seriously?  You're stealing them from people who are seriously immune compromised?).

I had thought, when Bob insisted that I keep the hotel room, that from time to time I could use the gym or the swimming pool.  But they closed.  There were fewer and fewer cars in the parking lot; the hotel smelled of disinfectant.

After Bob died, Rob and Jeff came to get me.  They called when they arrived because Jeff didn't want to come into the hotel.  We have been friends a very long time.  And I had lost my husband and their friend.  But there was no running to each other.  We had to pause and think about hugging (Rob shamed Jeff into hugging me.)

They brought me home, where I wanted to be.  But it's not normal.  Not that it could ever be, with Bob gone.  But it's not normal at all.  There should have been people coming to see me, or asking me to join them for walks or lunch or tea or just to hold me and let me cry.  There should have been a memorial service and casseroles.  But I'm just here, alone with the cats.

Oddly, my mind tries to connect the two (because minds are storytelling machines).  I feel like a pariah.  An outcast.  I am a bereaved widow, therefore no one should see me or talk to me or, especially, touch me.

I am untouchable. Alone.