Monique Sager
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
In the first two weeks of quarantine, I scrubbed everything. I became paralyzed with fear when another person walked by me on the street, and I washed my hands until they were raw, wondering if soap did anything to kill the virus. I Lysol-ed the mail. I Lysol-ed my shoes, I wanted to Lysol my hands, but I knew I shouldn’t. I went for a walk along the river and was so terrified by the hundreds of people running by me that I vowed never to do it again.
As the days went by, I have stopped leaving the house, for anything. My boyfriend and I now wait until we are down to our last can of tuna and bag of lettuce and then, together, holding hands, we go to the grocery store, exiting the house as if we are entering a warzone.
As my time in the hospital grows further and further away, I’ve been able to push back some of the immediate fear I felt back in February, the terrified look on my residents’ faces as we all sat in a work room together, coughing and coughing and coughing, with no windows to open or masks to wear. We make our small apartment our whole world, moving our laptops from the kitchen to the bedroom and back again, trying to make it feel bigger than it is. I feel safe inside, shielded from the chaos I had seen in the hospital.
Eventually, I stopped Lysol-ing my mail, my shoes, my keys. If I get this virus from my Amazon package, I’ve found myself thinking, so be it.
My boyfriend and I have waited to get sick, counting the days that go by without the telltale signs. We are suspicious of every cough and sneeze. Any runny nose could be the inevitable, about to hit. But it hasn’t hit, and over a month later, we are both still here, sitting at the kitchen table attending to our respective business.
We are healthy. We are terrified. We are complacent, guiltily enjoying the time off from clinic and from work, the ability to be together. We keep the TV on silent all the time, to anchor us to the world outside. Each morning, we watch the news, check the stock market, watch whatever savings we had grow smaller and smaller. We make each other coffee, fall asleep to the TV, and wake to do it all again.
I’m supposed to be a medical student, but I don’t feel like it. I feel like a shell of myself, devoid of purpose, wandering around my apartment and watching the world grown silent out of my window. The hours pass by, blending into each other, the TV plays on in the background, and I forget what day it is. I am supposed to be studying now, taking shelf exams now, but I forget why that used to feel so important. My Lysol bottle sits unused on my counter, and I wonder why I needed it so much.
I only exist in this endless cycle. Watch the news, drink my coffee, run out of food, creep from the house, repeat. I watch the cherry blossoms bloom outside my window and realize it is spring. April slides by me, quietly warming air which I will not feel on my skin.