Jed Wolf

I was at a stoplight when I noticed hip-hop music throbbing from the car beside me and a girl behind the wheel twerking and jerking with abandon. We were both alone. She in rhythm and I, motionless listening to how Republicans were plotting to oust Liz Cheney when I began thinking of how little I’ve done with abandon in my life and how a young expressive black girl has such different ways of coping with current affairs.

I’d had a sore throat for several days, night sweats, a mild cough and no fever during the day and though I had my first vaccine a week ago, I thought it was a good idea to get re-tested. 

With no reaction to the first vaccine, nearly a week had passed before I started getting this sore throat. I didn’t want to worry Dave and though I spent much of yesterday in bed, I planned on getting tested at the crack of dawn this morning ‘cause a brand new dishwasher was arriving from Lowes around 9AM and I had to hook it up.

I woke, yanked the old one out, slid it to the porch and took off at dawn with my coffee to the test site. I’d been to the one at the hospital parking lot before, but it was no longer there.

It was my first time wondering if I actually had Covid. I rolled my window down wearing my mask and meekly asked some passersby if they knew where to get tested. They shrugged their shoulders in that “every man for themselves,” Q-annon sort of way, I imagined everyone the future would be like…  

I went into the Emergency room and greeted a shrugging security guard. When I told him I might have symptoms he stepped way back not knowing quite what to do with his hands asking if I wanted to check in, then said there might be a testing site somewhere at the Agricultural Center.

Like rays of the rising sun, my plans for a quick test were lengthening. The AG center was many miles away. I called Dave to say that I might not be back before the dishwasher’s arrival but didn’t tell him I was sweating. It was 36 degrees outside and my truck heater was blasting. My coffee was long gone and wishing I had something to test my tastebuds, I felt too hot to take off my heavy jacket.

The Agricultural Center is a place we normally enjoy visiting. There’s a big community garden, a greenhouse and lots of interesting beds full of native plants but this morning it was gleaming with frost as wisps of steam rose from its dark lake. I followed needless twists and turns of traffic-coned tracks through muddy grass ’till I reached the diminutive AG building and parked. It had opened at seven and now eight, I was the only one there.

A month before, the hospital parking lot was jammed with cars all days long. What happened to the urgency for testing? There are not nearly enough vaccines. What was happening? “Is this a Florida thing,” I thought gazing at the steaming, bleak lake. 

I walked in but no one greeted me. I might have had a gun I thought and very well could have in this state. “Hello, Hello,” I shouted around a corner recalling the hip-hop girl’s joy. Finally a face-sheilded, masked person showed up and handed me a pen. “I have symptoms,” I said and the dude jumped back.

“This whole thing is apocalyptic enough but when professionals act like actors it’s fictional qualities are better not mentioned to the masked front-liners guiding me though these Tunnels of Love,“ I thought. 

Last week the empty Sears building at the Regency Square Mall was coned off for bluing seniors to get our first vaccines. We were directed by camouflaged Marines through curtained halls to rows of tables for paperwork then funneled through more fun-house cones and curtains to receive our long-awaited injections in a huge music-filled hall. While waiting for side effects, interns attentive to a large clock near a boombox playing Pharrell William’s “Happy,” lazily encouraged us to join them to hasten whatever bad reactions we might have.

Just now an ad popped up on my screen offering prize money for the best poem about the vaccine.

Even though Medicare didn’t cover it, I asked the Agricultural Center interns what they would do if they had symptoms so in addition to the 3-day result test, got a “quick test” for one hundred and eighty smackaroos. “I hope you’re getting a cut, have a blessed day,” I muttered as I left, but before I even returned home I got a call saying I was negative.

“I should feel something,” I thought but these days, relief like hope feels like a gamble of which I’m incapable. Twerking and jerking – not a chance. I’m glad for whoever can and why, but after two trips to Lowes and people not jumping out my way because of what I choose to say, I’m grateful to return home in the cold with a cold to hook up a dishwasher.