Our hero (to whom the narrative has now returned) goes to the doctor to check out his cold:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The cold hit me in the morning. I woke up with the tell-tale tickle in my throat. In years past, I would have drowned myself and the cold in vitamin C, but diseases of 2018 just laughed at vitamin C. They loved that shit. They asked for seconds. Cold medicine wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much better. It used to just mask symptoms so you could get through the day. With these viruses, cold medicine actually made things worse. I saw a guy with H8N3~pt87 (a newer and rarer but less deadly strain of Westphail) on DayQuil who sneezed his own goddamn nose off. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not kidding. He covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, sneezed, and when he lowered his hand, his goddamned nose was gone from his face, sitting in the goddamned handkerchief in his hand. He freaked out. I freaked out. His mom freaked out. The whole situation was horrible and really put a damper on the mood of that evening. So, I stayed away from the C and the Quil, and headed out the door and right to the damned doctor. The closest doctors to me worked out of a Catholic Church which had been converted to a medical center the summer before. The building swarmed with nuns who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been pressed into duty as medical assistants and security personnel who eyed everyone that entered the church as a potential threat. The line was long, but there was plenty of reading material on hand to make the wait go by faster. I put on the supplied surgical mask, its inability to block the virus had already been proven in clinical trials, but in terms of having something for show, there was no equal. I settled in to wait while reading a six year old copy of Time Magazine. When they finally called my name, I had read it cover to cover. Twice. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right this way, Mr. Graves,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said a pleasant young woman. The yellow and black HAZMAT suit she wore did its best to mask her curvy figure but failed; the hooded headpiece was similarly ineffective at hiding her beautiful features. I tried to make out if she wore a habit underneath the suit but couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thank you, Miss –\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0I made a show of reading the nameplate printed above her left breast; further excuse to stare. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alcott. How are you today?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I saw her frown through the plexiglass covering her face. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a rough day,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she admitted. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had seven positive cases. Three went right to DEI.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She paused and collected herself. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry, I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be telling you that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alright,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said, though the news did little to calm my nerves. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I asked.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She sighed and shrugged, a gesture muted by the suit. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Still, I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t–\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Honestly,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the new reality. The sooner we accept it, the better.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I guess you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re right, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easier to accept when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not about to face testing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She shuddered and caught herself again. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Listen to me, going on and on like this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She lead me into a makeshift examination room near what used to be the church altar and showed me to a gray folding chair next to a tray of medical instruments. A guard stood ominously behind the chair, a rifle slung across his back, his right hand resting on a pistol loosely carried in a holster on his hip. The visor on his helmet was tinted darkly; I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discern whether there was a man in there or some sort of brand new security robot. He stood so still, it was impossible to tell. \u00c2\u00a0A pair of handcuffs seemed out of place amongst the swabs, scissors and other devices on the tray, but their import was not lost on me. If the test came back positive, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be wearing those in short order.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The doctor will be with you shortly,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the woman.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I hoped you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be doing the swabbing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said, imbuing my words with as much double meaning as I possibly could. Remarkably, even though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spent most of my days over the past several years just holed up in a fleabitten, run-down motel which catered to the lost and transient, I still hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lost my natural rapport with members of the fairer sex. Or at least, I thought I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Her face darkened visibly.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you attempting to flirt with me, Mr. Graves?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asked.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realized I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been so transparent. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can you blame a guy for trying?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Her hand disappeared into a pocket of the suit, coming back out with a string of rosary beads which she fingered nervously. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153With a nun in a church that has been turned into a last bastion in the defense against the growing horde of the walking dead which threatens to destroy everything that God and man have created? While on the verge, yourself, of learning whether you are to join that horde? Yes, I can blame a guy for trying.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The guard behind the chair coughed, obviously trying to stifle a laugh. It must have been the funniest thing he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard all day if it caused him to break his stoic silence. At least now I knew there was something living and breathing inside that uniform.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our hero (to whom the narrative has now returned) goes to the doctor to check out his cold: The cold hit me in the morning. I woke up with the tell-tale tickle in my throat. In years past, I would have drowned myself and the cold in vitamin C, but diseases of 2018 just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo","tag-excerpt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}