Mom came into my bedroom this morning.

“Avery, I feel sick.”

She covered her mouth with the cuff of her pajama top.

“Are you serious?” I put down my copy of Beloved.

“What do I do?”

How was I supposed to know?! She was the nurse, not me. “Did you call Dad?”

Dad is staying at Uncle Jake’s house. Him and Mom decided it was best that he live somewhere else if he had to keep working. He’s an ER doctor. Uncle Jake’s family is quarantining at their place in Aspen. So while they’re spending their days going backcountry skiing and sipping champagne in their hot tub under the stars, we’re all crammed back together in this tiny house with nowhere to escape. Cue massive eye roll.

Mom shook her head. “I guess I should call him, shouldn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

She left the room and I picked up my book. I have to finish it by the end of the week for our class’ Zoom discussion on it. It felt easy to dip back into it, as if Mom had never even come in my room. I’ve decided I’m going to major in English. Mom and Dad aren’t too happy about it. I told them I’d choose another major, but my Modern Literature class has been the easiest to move online, and partially for that reason, I decided that English would be my major after all.

I drove back from college a few weeks ago. All the students received an email saying in person classes were cancelled for the remainder of the semester and that campus would be closing by the end of the following week. My roommate and I, along with a few other friends, spent every night drinking until they kicked us out.

Being home hasn’t been all that bad. Mom and Dad welcomed me back with a store-bought cake and a clean room. Andrew and Isabelle were nice to me for about 48 hours but they started annoying me after about two. Isabelle asked too many questions about classes and friends and what college was like and Andrew wouldn’t shut up about his new car—a beat-up Jeep Wrangler. Each of them have taken this whole quarantine thing in stride. Isabelle has fashioned herself into a YouTube star. She set up her phone in the living room and makes a new video every day—usually singing various Disney songs or doing a makeup tutorial. She isn’t even allowed to wear makeup but Mom let her borrow some vials of mascara and old tubes of lip gloss, saying she would rather her do that than watch television all day. Andrew thinks he’s the next stand-up comedian. One night he pulled on Isabelle’s pink ballet leotard and tights and performed a show for us. His knees bent into a shallow plié as his arm gripped the kitchen counter. “It’s all about positioning,” he said as Isabelle coughed up all the cookies she had just shoved into her mouth. We were all bent over laughing. Mom recorded it and sent it to Dad. She started crying as soon as she hit send, saying: “It’s just that I miss you father.”

He’s only been gone two weeks. It feels like two years.

 

Around noon Mom comes into my room again. This time I’m in my Intro to Theatre class—definitely not as easy to attend over a Zoom call. “Avery,” she says to me from the doorway, not wanting to get in the picture. I turn off my video and turn to her. “Are you muted?”

I nod. Just because she can’t figure out how to be muted doesn’t mean I can’t.

“I have an appointment at two. Can you take me?”

I look toward the computer. The class isn’t supposed to end until 2 but there’s at least six students who didn’t show up today.

“Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll just tell them I got to leave.”

A few minutes later we’re in her car. She’s changed into a pair of sweatpants and a waffle print top. She’s still in her slippers. She pulled my ski mask out from the basement and now has it around her face, covering her nose and mouth. I can’t find my tennis shoes but she yells to me that they won’t even let me in the office so I slide into the car in only my socks.

I didn’t really think about it all morning since I was busy with schoolwork, but now sitting in the car, Mom pulling out of the driveway with the ski mask around her face, I’m a little scared. I haven’t known anyone that’s actually gotten the virus. It all felt like an elaborate game of make-believe until now. I read an article in the New Yorker last week about how they’re going to allocate ventilators. I imagine Mom on one—and then wonder if she’ll even get one. I close my eyes and shake my head, as if the thought is only a bug that has whizzed past my ear.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asks me, turning out of the neighborhood.

“Nothing.” I shake my head again.

“It’s been nice to have you home, Ave.”

Then she starts talking about how she and Dad missed me and how there was no one to help separate Isabelle and Andrew when they fought over who got to sit in the front seat. I’m not listening anymore. I look out at the grass on the side of the road as it zooms past. It just started turning green. When I drove home I noticed it, as if someone overnight had brushed the dry, brown leaves in a thick coat of paint.

“Avery?”

“Yeah?”

“Honey, are you worried about me?”

I hesitate and scrunch my lips together like I do when I don’t know the answer in class. Finally, I nod.

“It’s nothing to worry about. I feel okay. Really. I think they just wanted to test me because my chart says I have asthma.” Mom doesn’t like to admit she has asthma. She has an inhaler from 20 years ago because she refuses to get a new prescription.

That same article in the New Yorker talked about how families can’t see their loved ones once they’re admitted to the hospital, and how many families are having to say goodbye to one another over FaceTime.

“Mom, do you have a fever?”

“No. I just feel a little short of breath. That’s all. Not even a cough.” The wrinkles around her eyes curl and I can tell she’s smiling even though I can’t see her mouth through the powder pink ski mask.

We continue driving and Mom tells me that there will be two people waiting for her outside the office when we arrive.

“Dr. Mary said they’ll be wearing yellow gowns and masks. And they also have those face shields. I’ll go in and sit on some blue chucks.”

“Blue chucks?”

“Oh, just a pad on the table.” I hate when Mom uses her nursing terminology. Or Dad uses his doctor jargon, for that matter. “They’ll do a quick nose swab and then it will be done.”

When we pull up to the office though, there’s not the two promised people in yellow gowns. Instead, there’s a man dressed in a green polo, an N95 mask on his face, and his phone to his ear. There’s a white sandwich board sign that reads “Tests Inside. No other visitors or patients please.” The man’s back is to us so that when Mom pulls up to the curb and gets out of the car, handing the keys to me, he doesn’t even turn to look at her. I pull the car into a parking space just off to the entrance. There’s only a few cars in the parking lot.

I pull my phone out of my back pocket and call Zach. I guess you could say he’s my boyfriend although I’m not really sure he fulfills those requirements quite yet. We only started dating a week or two before they cancelled classes and now we can’t even see each other in person. He lives a three-hour plane ride away. We talk on the phone every day, so it feels like we’re in high school again. Sometimes we argue about who’s going to hang up first. (I usually win.)

“Hey,” I say when he answers.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“My mom’s getting a test right now.”

“Test for what?”

“Coronavirus. Obviously.”

“Seriously?!”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t have any symptoms.”

“I mean, how are you holding up? How are you feeling?”

Zach tends to do this—ask about my feelings. I’m not entirely used to it. “I’m fine. I guess.”

He’s quiet.

“It’s kind of scary,” I say. “I don’t want her to get super sick like some of the people I’ve seen on TV.” I pause, rubbing the seam of my sock. “I don’t want her to have to go the hospital, you know?”

“I know.”

We’re both silent again.

“This is like a contagion movie or something,” he says.  “I’ve seen people in those N95 masks in the grocery store. It’s bizarre.”

“Yeah, there was a guy outside the doctor’s office in one,” I say. “I didn’t even know what an N95 was before all this. I thought it was some weird chemical when they first started talking about it on the news.”

“Me too. You know Contagion is in the top ten movies on Netflix.”

“I saw that. I can’t believe anyone can watch it right now. I mean, we’re living it.”

“I watched it last night with my brother.”

I laugh. “How was it?”

“It hit a little too close to home.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it did.” I can tell we’re both smiling.

Mom walks up to the car then. She’s wearing a light blue mask, one that she didn’t have on before; it hooks neatly around her ears. She opens the driver side door and asks who I’m talking to. I tell her.

“Hey, Zach. I gotta go.”

“Yeah, alright. Call me later.”

“Okay.”

We hang up.

I climb into the passenger side.

“When will the test come back?”

“They said two to three days.”

“And what are you supposed to do in the meantime?”

“They said I should isolate.”

“Which means you can’t leave your bedroom?”

She nods in the affirmative. I ask if we should tell Dad to come home. She says she still doesn’t think that’s a good idea.

“What if he infects you and Isabelle and Andrew?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Well, you might already be infected.”

I know this is a big deal. But sometimes it’s hard for me to grasp the reality of it.

“No, I don’t want him to come home,” Mom says. “I mean I do, but I think it’s best he continues to stay at Uncle Jake’s house.” She inhales and I can see how her breath gets caught in her chest. “You’re going to have to pull your weight, Avery.” She says I’ll need to help with making dinner and ensuring that Isabelle and Andrew are doing their homework.

“Okay.” I fold my arms and stare out the window. I still have to attend my economics class today. How can I possibly sit through a two-hour lecture now though?

Mom pulls out of the parking spot and we head in the direction of home. It’s not a long drive. Only about fifteen minutes or so, less now that there are fewer cars on the road.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says to me when we pull into the driveway.

We look at one another. Normally she would hug me at a time like this but instead she just stares, the blue cotton obscuring any other expression.

Brenna Cameron is an emerging writer and a medical student at the University of Colorado. She enjoys spending time outside skiing, camping, and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. You can follow her at bcamtravels.wordpress.com.