The Not Knowing

Covid-19 testing can be hard to come by and the waits for test results can be long (Adobe)

On Friday, Mar. 13, my healthy, 36-year-old husband lay in bed the whole day. A sweaty, shivery fever had blasted into our home out of nowhere, holding onto him for three days before loosening its grip. Its suspicious companion — a dry, persistent cough — was slower to rev up, but when it did, it was unlike anything we’d heard before. It took over a week to subside. At night, he slept on the sofa and snored vociferously.

The timing was at once perfect and too early. This, after all, was the last day our daughters went to school. The last day I set foot in Winn Dixie. The beginning of Spring Break. The country was only just beginning to seriously think about this virus coming for us. How could we have it so soon? There had been some travel, sure. Nowhere on ‘the list’. A family trip to Disney two weeks prior was more likely the culprit — or an errant sneeze in a Brickell cafe. (It later transpired someone in the office building was positive). 

So, we began our quarantine — completely unbroken now for three weeks. 

The running joke in the family, at least until recently, is that I am made of some kind of reinforced steel. I never get sick. I had asthma as a child but hadn’t needed a single puff of an inhaler for several years. I stocked up on now-unfamiliar asthma meds.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, I developed a mild fever and tickly cough. I soldiered on as usual, pouring energy into homeschooling. But one morning a familiar, sneaking tightness grew across my chest. Unusual — and unmistakable.

It was time to get tested.

We had heard of a clinic in Miami offering tests. When the receptionist noted our symptoms and travel history she quickly scheduled us in. We drove up and were greeted by a man in full hazmat, who recognized the school sticker on our car — his son was also a student there.

“But you live on Key Biscayne?” he confirmed, eyes widening. “Stay home!” 

We got out of the car one by one for the test, conducted by a nurse and deeply uncomfortable. A simple swab, dropped in a test tube and identified by name, phone number (and maybe driving license number?) written on a little label.

They were running low on enzymes, they said, so it would be three or four days (over the weekend). In the end five anxious days passed before they had our results. 

“You were both not detected,” said the lady on the phone. 

Huh? 

We were so sure. Was she sure?

“But I know you were worried about symptoms, so I would say to still stay home and be careful, because of the incubation window,” she said. I pretended I understood and hung up. 

Two weeks (or is it two years?) have passed in a blur of paint-spattered toddler tantrums and Zoom calls, among which we try to remember to savor this newfound family focus. We have not crossed our condo’s front door, apart from taking the trash out, and we don’t intend to. We are mostly recovered, although an extremely sore throat pursued me on and off for another week.

So, did we have Covid19? Who knows.

I hope we did, and that we are two of the reported thirty percent of tests that are false negatives. I know others in the same boat — and, come to that, I know our story is nothing compared to the countless personal tragedies unfolding by the second around the world, most excruciatingly for frontline healthcare workers.

Still, there is my father, with his rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s, living with my mother and 80-something grandmother in the centre of Liverpool. Mum still has to go out to get some supplies when she can’t get deliveries.

I hope I can see them again soon. See them again, period. But who knows?

I hope, when travel restrictions are lifted, I can easily take a test, find out whether I have antibodies and visit them in confidence. But who knows? 

The not knowing is what gets you, eventually. Sometimes, mindlessly watching the girls, I daydream about what it will be like to walk outside again to church, school, shops.

Then I wake up into the nightmare.