By Andrea Blanco 

COVID Diaries: Honorable Mention

When will my lungs expand inside my rib cage like they once used to? I think they’re still afraid to assume it’s over.

The vaccine comes as unexpectedly as the infection. I’m standing at a bus stop outside a hospital in Queens. The leftover winter cold makes me seek refuge between the glass doors of the building entrance. A nurse approaches me and asks if I want to take one of the two doses they have left. Two patients missed their appointment. I say I do. In the back of my head, I wish it was my hypertensive, immunocompromised mother here in this hospital corner. She’s two thousand miles away, in a country that only started vaccinating mid-February.

The wait for her will be months.

I tell the nurse I’ve had COVID before. She says she did too, no worries. When I call my mom, ecstatic to tell her I got vaccinated, she’ll ask, Isn’t it dangerous to have so much viral load in your body? An excuse for her to keep worrying. Worrying is her love language.

Somebody will tell me afterwards I only need one dose, that I already have antibodies. I trust the nurse.

She walks me to the elevator and then through the lower level of the hospital. It resembles a labyrinth and there are arrows pointing at the place where it happens. It’s the end of the day and there’s more staff than patients. They’re happy. In the E.R building next door, many died from COVID.

There’s a pinch. A rub in my shoulder. A 15-minute wait in a separate room. My next appointment is on March 18. My arm will hurt in a couple of hours, but I’ll walk to the bus stop smiling at the randomness of what just happened.

I’ve missed the bus home.

***

I had COVID. I had it later, when we sort of understood better it wasn’t a death sentence for everybody.

During the crazy days of spring and summer, I came home and took off my uniform outside the backyard door. I’d half-joked, half-confessed I had to work because if I stayed home my father would drive me crazy. Washing my skin aggressively in the shower, I’d cry on how unjust everything seemed. How surreal.

I felt lonelier than ever. I used to hate my hour-and-a-half commute to Baruch, but this new reality seemed a new kind of worse. Life suddenly became late night shifts on autopilot at a fast-food restaurant. Barely breathing through my mask in the heavy summer air. Early morning Zoom lessons from bed with my camera off. Last minute, hurried paper submissions. Takeout food and day-long naps.

When I couldn’t sleep for three straight days and the anxiety became too unbearable, I checked myself in the same hospital I would receive the vaccine five months later. I stayed the weekend and learned that a COVID test could come back in 30 minutes.

Then I went back to work. Hung up on my mom every time she cried on the phone that I should quit. A friend questioned if I was essential. And even though I didn’t completely believe it, I argued back that, as silly as it seemed, if we could allow people to order tacos in the middle of the chaos, then we were giving them back some sense of normalcy, of hope. That seemed essential.

I did enjoy the quietude. The walks around the park coming home at 2 a.m. Lonely rides in the Q24 bus, now passing by sooner, more often. Taking pictures of forgotten masks, gloves in the street and empty supermarket aisles for my photography class.

I had COVID after working customer service for seven months, after attending a protest over the summer. When I sort of thought I had to be immune to it. Over Christmas.

I lied to my parents and told them I was joining my sister for Christmas dinner and ignored their video calls. And while I laid in bed, repeating to myself I was young and strong in the middle of a migraine and a cough attack, I realized how lucky I was that my 64-year-old father was away, visiting his sick mother, and couldn’t get infected.  I’m grateful for the timing.

I had a realization on Christmas Day.

It dawned on me that 2020 wasn’t a simulation or a bad dream. I saw my sister double park in front of my home. My niece and nephew running towards the backyard door and leaving a Tupperware with turkey and glazed ham inside. Their hands waving goodbye while I watched from afar.  I couldn’t help the tears at how much I missed them.

At how fortunate I was to have lived through it all.