But later didn’t come.
Five days after the funeral—four days after lugging my suitcase through O’Hare Airport, three days after my confrontation with Principal Curtis—I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, when I coughed.
“It’s just a cold,” I told Chris when the cough persisted the next morning. Chris, with a superabundance of caution, insisted I get tested.
Two years into the pandemic, I had finally caught Covid.
8
Anne
“I can’t risk exposing mypatients to infection,” Chris said when I called with my test results.
“I understand,” I said.
Because Idid. He treated children whose immune systems were already wrecked by cancer and chemo. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t take care of me. Couldn’t even see me.
“Even if I don’t get Covid,” Chris continued, “I still need to quarantine.”
And there it was, the faintest note of accusation. I had already contaminated him by getting sick in the first place.
I winced. It’s not as if I expected him to rush to my side, full of love and anguish, to declare he couldn’t live life without me. Like Anne Shirley in the movie, dashing to Gilbert’s sickbed.
“This could kill you.Icould kill you,” he had said to me early in the pandemic, his voice thick with feeling. “I won’t put you at risk.”
As much as I’d argued to move in together then, I’d never doubted he was putting me, my health and safety, first.
When had that changed?
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Get lots of rest,” Chris said now, doctor to patient. “Drink lots of fluids.”
“I will,” I promised.
“You can take pain relievers for the fever. Do you have a pulse oximeter in the house?”
I wasn’t sure I even had Tylenol. “I’ll be okay,” I said, rapping on the table.Knock wood.“Honestly, I don’t feel that bad.”
If I said it, it might even come true.
—
“Take all thetime you need,” Sarah Thompson said when I gave her the bad news. “The important thing is for you to get better. Ned and I can cover your classes.”
I closed my eyes in relief. “Thank you.”
After my almost firing, staying home felt like an admission of guilt. Or defeat. It was totally possible Jim Curtis would use my sick leave to decide I was not, in fact, a good fit for Ravenscrest. But at least as long as I was out sick, I couldn’t be forced to apologize to the Quinns.
Besides, I didn’t have a choice.
My temperature climbed to a hundred and two, then a hundred and three. I crawled into bed, emerging only to toddle to the bathroom. My head throbbed. Even my hair hurt. My sleep was wracked with nightmares, vivid dreams about teaching naked or falling from roofs or searching for my dad. When I woke, coughing, my sleep T was wringing wet and my sheets were soaked with sweat.
I wanted my mom. “You’re not dying. You’ll be fine,” she would say briskly when I was a kid. Making up my bed with fresh sheets, bringing me ginger ale and pretzels. I couldalmost feel her hand on my forehead, checking my temperature, stroking my hair.
I blinked back tears. Even the thought of calling Mom exhausted me. I didn’t want to worry her so soon after my father’s death.
But mostly, keeping things from my mother was a reflex reaction, a knee-jerk move, like kicking out when the doctor taps your knee with a rubber hammer.
