Covid in 3 Acts

a drawing-room comedy

With all this chat about monkeypox and death-flu, you’d think coronavirus was over and we were onto the next shiny object. But no, our old friend is still surprising us with new variants, paths and intensity; re-infections are on the rise and experts warn that this winter will be brutal for our overburdened health departments.

For a long time, I felt like we might never experience the feverish pleasure, but over Easter, Covid took down our family of five in a tidy package deal. I present the experience, in three acts.

The First Act

Normal World.

The first term of the year is a real bastard. There are high school dramas and primary school dramas, work dramas and aging-parent dramas. We activate our pandemic coping mechanisms: cry, hug, and rally, cry, hug, and rally, cry, hug, and rally, in a Groundhog Day loop. I am awash with stress, and make the decision to take a years leave of absence from my training job before all my balls tumble. As the Easter holiday approaches, the weather turns apocalyptic. Mould blooms everywhere and the road nearly washes away in a flood.

Inciting incident.

At the start of the school holiday, Keith starts to feel unwell. We stare silently at the positive RAT, a shock after so many negative versions. My first emotion is relief: finally, a clear directive after so long in limbo.

The plague hits during the final gasps of household-contact iso in NSW, and we are all confined to barracks. I assume Matron mode.

I’m delighted to unearth a stash of chicken soup from the freezer, panic-stashed so long ago; less delighted to cancel all our plans. I had organised the children’s first ever trip to the Easter Show, and a weekend looms full of visits with Mum and my country sister and nieces. It hurts.

Despite this I feel the expansive sense of time opening, what I think of as the ‘airplane seat’ sense of clarity: I am strapped in, and can do nothing but the task at hand until this ride is over. I am pulled in so many directions in everyday life that shrinking into a single problem is a blessing. I’ve been starting to fray under the pressure, and although taking leave from my training team is a painful decision, it gives me some room to breathe. The next draft of my book is due at the publisher in two weeks.

The first three days of iso are quite lovely. I set up an ‘outdoor’ hospital in the sun and make orange juice and crisp fresh beds. We watch Death On The Nile and Seinfeld. The children are all fine but Biggles the dog has taken to suddenly racing down the corridor and barking at the side of the bath. Has he gone mad?

Keith feels pretty rough. The chills come and go. Even Vitamin C can’t save him from this one. (Keith is obsessed with Vitamin C, ascribing it with almost mystical powers.  ‘Take some Vitamin C,’ Keith will say in response to any illness, from a runny nose to a hangover to violent rectal herpes.)

The Second Act.

Rising Action. Obstacle, Obstacle, Obstacle.

We settle in. Time become meaningless.

Keith is having awful insomnia. I suggest Valium. Fifteen-year-old I says that she always thought ‘Valium’ meant ‘Viagra’ , so we keep suggesting Keith take a Viagra and go back to bed. ‘What’s Viagra?’ asks 10-year-old G. ‘Medicine for sexytimes,’ I tell her. ‘Ew!’ she says. ‘Sorry I asked!’

I am in a maddening phase of my rewrite, where everything is dismantled and I feel like I’ll never be able to pull the book back together. At night, we’ve been reading the manuscript out loud which is at once wonderful, as we remember our time in France together, and excruciating, as my vulnerable, raw and embarrassing thoughts are offered up for discussion. Still, the family are in the story, and they must OK it.

Thirteen-year-old T helps with the words. ‘How do I say ‘the ears of the house are ringing’ after we have that big party?’ I ask. ‘The house partakes the guise of ringing ears while its nose runs glitter,’ T offers, and then after a moments thought, ‘the house partakes the guise of a hungover morphine addict’. Both of us have a tendency to loftiness.

Another time I ask T for their thoughts on communicating that time is racing. ‘The wind knocked the clock out the window?’ they suggest.

Poor I is the next to go down with the plague, with chills, fever and a general sense of cotton-woolishness. I read Richard Glovers The Mud House out loud to her, perfect invalid fare, and we watch When Harry Met Sally.

Darling young G and I play her current favourite game Cromwell Manor, where we pretend to be Downton-esque housemaids. ‘Quick! We must clean the parlour before supper or Mrs Benson will be frightfully cross!’

Biggles continues to race to the bathroom and bark at the wall. We start calling his tormentor the Ghost Mouse. Keith gets a ‘Covid bump’ when a kind archaeologist friend drops off the shopping and talks to him over the fence about Homo Erectus (who the children call Horny Man). Keith feels much better for an hour or two, and then takes a dive.

On Day 4, I’m starting to feel a bit unwell. But it’s hard to be sure. My ‘normal’ these last stressful months has been heachachey, fatigued, overwhelmed and perimenopausal. And my throbbing brain could easily be the result of the discordant, crazymaking hold music that Woolworths fed my ears while I spent an hour trying to sort out our misdirected food shopping order. On Easter weekend. Fun!

Both G and I RAT test negative and feel strangely upset - after a day of spluttering and sneezing, is it possible that, like last time, we have a cold and not Covid? I’ve lost my ability to sit with the anxious anticipation of the last two years. The hanging Sword of Damocles has become unbearable.

Finally, two lines appear, and I feel that strange relief. Damocles sword has fallen, and at least I know what I am dealing with. Unfortunately, T is positive too, and so now there are four cases in the house. Rolling iso boots our period of house arrest another few days on. My first symptom, aside from the ever-present headache, is a terribly sore back.

Keith is down in his office working. He retreats back to bed as his symptoms come and go. I set up the convalescent couch outside for I, and then go to bed. Poor G, the only one Covid free so far, cries with FOMO. Where are her two lines? It’s not fair!

Climax.

On day 2, after an unpleasant nights sleep with an aching back, my sinus headache is starting to bite. I long for a nurse, as the house gets messier and I make my own snacks. I talk George through making a toasted sandwich today. It is burnt. When I am the Matron, I am all about the fresh beds, water, juice, and Viagra. Where is my Viagra?

The problem is that when the Matron goes down, there is nobody to run the Cromwell House hospital as I wish it to be run. Overall, Keith and I have different approaches to illness. 

Given my wish, I’d like to fully indulge in the business of being sick.  I want cups of tea offered periodically, and paired, perhaps, with little tempting sandwiches with the crusts cut off, if it’s not too much trouble, thank you so much. Soothing voices. Cool washcloths. Worried nurses conferring in mutters outside the door about my prognosis and lengthy discussions of the progress of my various symptoms. Compliments on my bravery would be received graciously. I would ideally like to be cared for like a Georgian lady who has laced her corset too tight and caught a little attack of the vapours. 

Keith is the opposite. He wants to curl like a hedgehog, ignore his symptoms and tough out the episode until it is over. He does not want a cooling hand on his forehead. He would prefer the kind of treatment he would get as a member of the Foreign Legion, or in Ancient Sparta, or perhaps as a boy at Prince Philip’s infamously hard-core Scottish primary school Gordonstoun. Keith finds sympathetic inquiries about his health to be somewhat enraging.  He won’t indulge me in conversations about his symptoms, which is infuriating.

Of course, when one of us is sick, we treat each other how we ourselves would like to be treated. As you might imagine, this doesn’t play well for either one of us. Keith, curled in a stoic ball and trying to sleep in the middle of the night while feeling rotten, tells me to stop asking how he is feeling. I am indignant.

Darkest Moment.

On feverish Day 3, I have an emotional meltdown and cry that the bedroom is a mess and nobody is looking after me. I wail snotty baby tears while Ted plays his new piece, Prokofiev’s wild ‘Suggestion Diabolique’ and Biggles barks at the Ghost Mouse outside the door. The next day I felt ashamed and dizzy. My sinuses burn, and my dignity is bruised.

Third Act:

Resolution, falling action, and the tying up of loose ends.

At some point, we hear a faint squeaking and realise that the Ghost Mouse is real. Biggles isn’t crazy! Somehow, a mouse has become trapped under the floorboards between the bath and the floor, making a total of seven of us in this mad iso cabin. We hear the scratching only once, however, and a terrible smell begins to waft up as I have my bath. Keith and I resign ourselves to waiting out an unpleasant period while the Ghost Mouse decomposes. (An awkward Airbnb entry, should we rent out the place.)

Finally, to her relief, G get two lines on a RAT. Thankfully, she sails through with barely a symptom, but her positive result marks a clear ending to our quarantine. Just as our eleven days of iso comes to an end, the government ditches the Close Contact rule, so we’ll never be in this position again. Is it strange to feel the the slightest tinge of nostalgia? I hand in the new draft of my book to my publisher, and unclasp the belt of my airplane seat. Slowly but surely, the engine of life ramps up again.

As you were, troops! We return to baseline: slightly headachy, fatigued and peri-menopausal, the bathroom sporting the faint diminishing scent of Ghost Mouse,  but armed with some of those blessed antibodies that will protect my frail Mum from our hugs.

The ‘hybrid protection’ of vaccination and recent infection means we should be prancing about licking supermarket trollies and pressing close to strangers in bars. But then the unpredictable universal comedy machine of the moment sends a nasty flu, which takes Ivy down first. Mothers Day is cancelled. Monkeypox enters the news cycle. Winter arrives with a brutal, icy slap.

2022 rolls on, like a tank.

Watching, Reading, Listening

Ivy and I have loved Shallow Grave and Heartstopper recently.

I’ve devoured The Palace Papers, Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, Tilly Lawless’ Nothing But My Body and Tabitha Carvan’s masterpiece This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch.

With the family, we’re liking Seinfeld, Gruen, and Annabel Crabb’s wonderful Tomorrow Tonight.

Out loud, G and I are reading Ruth Parks’ gorgeous Callie’s Castle (again).

I’m listening to lots of history, especially liking You’re Dead to Me and The Rest Is History. For writing, I love Writers Routine and the wonderful Michelle on Writer’s Book Club (here, an ep with beloved Nigel Featherstone.)

Alone, I loved Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in The Staircase, which is basically a giant procedural, if you like that kind of detail, and I still find great, possibly unhealthy, pleasure in Below Deck (read this newsletter from the archives for a breakdown of my obsession. ) I’m all super-yacht vernacular. I do turn-downs of the children’s bedrooms every night, tucking in their hot water bottles. ‘The primary is up!’ I tell Keith in the mornings and ‘heads and beds’, I tell myself as I tackle the housework. I even had friends over for dinner and when things got loose, made them do a ‘Hurricane Katrina’; where they take a shot, and you immediately throw a glass of water in their face and then slap it. Below Deck might be a bad influence. But I just can’t stop.

Hang in there comrades! Look after yourselves if you’re facing down those two lines and don’t kiss any monkeys, no matter how much they wink at you.

xRach